strategic city branding; from theory to practice

Cities are in search for new ways to get promoted. regarding the fast changes in technologyand the shift from local to a globalized environment, cities are forced to compete with each other in orderto become an attractive tourist destination, workplace, cultural rich place and much more. city brandinghas been introduced as a new and creative solution to be adopted by cities to achieve success in this hardcompetition. although the promotion of cities dates back to the 19th century, the emergence of conceptssuch as place marketing, place branding, and city branding is relatively new in the academic language.city branding is not only a promotional activity but also it should be considered as a strategic process.so, city branding should be a visiondriven process in order to be successful. but unfortunately, there is agap in strategic city branding literature from the practical point of view. this study focuses on filling thisgap by reviewing the evolution of city branding from city marketing, identifying the relations betweencity branding and strategic spatial planning and then examining the lessons learned in the case study ofdamavand city near tehran. thus, damavand strategic city branding process is explained step by step inthis article, as to create an applicable framework for other iranian cities like damavand which have greatbranding potentials. this strategic process led to identifying damavand’s branding vision as “a mythicalparadise”, and also proposing 42 different city branding plans for damavand