The Evolution of City Labelling in the Literature

• Main Author: Pevcin Primož
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sciendo 2019-06-01
• Series: Economics and Culture
• Subjects: urbanisation; cities; city labels; content analysis; smart city; m39; o35
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.2478/jec-2019-0005

Research purpose. Various city labels have become increasingly popular both in literature as well as in urban policy-making. It has become relatively common that cities make a proclamation that they either are or would at least like to become, smart, sustainable, digital, creative, intelligent among other things. These proclamations have become popular for the purpose of solving complex urban problems, electoral gains at the local level, and also for marketing reasons. Nevertheless, those city labels often have a blurry line, in terms of what each label represents and should stand for. It is evident that utilising appropriate city categories and labels has become a rather complex issue. Consequently, this paper would like to investigate this issue. The paper questions the dynamics how different city labels were used throughout the time and to which academic fields are specific city labels related to.