This paper makes the case that conferences and award ceremonies are important means throughwhich best practices are presented as being successful, transferable and transformative. To dothis, it draws on the expanding literature on policy mobilities and a case study of the EuropeanWeek of Regions and Cities conference and one of the centrepieces at the conference, theRegioStars awards ceremony. Organised by public bodies within the European Union andEuropean Commission, these events take place annually in Brussels, and focus on best practicein regional and urban policy. The paper elaborates on its main argument in three ways. The first isthat award ceremonies and conferences shape and are shaped by institutional, spatial and scalardynamics. The second being that learning and educating are central to the performance ofconferences, award ceremonies and the associated mobilisation of policies. The third argumentis that such events have important consequences for those hosting the events.

More and more cities around the world are adopting green-city labels and are making use of their urban environmental policymaking for the purpose of place branding. However, the nature of the relationship between the branding of green cities and urban environmental policymaking is contested. Some researchers have highlighted so-called ‘greenwashing’ and the cherry-picking of easily attained goals. Others argue that green branding is driven by altruism, rather than intra-urban competition and entrepreneurialism. Drawing on literatures on policy tourism and green place branding, this article presents a longitudinal study of green branding in Växjö, Sweden. It contributes to the debate on green place branding by showing how two sets of contradictory impulses – entrepreneurialism/competition versus altruism/cooperation, and cherry-picking/greenwashing versus comprehensive environmental policymaking – affect the relationship between green place branding and environmental policy. In particular, the analysis illuminates the changing role played by policy tourism in shaping both the development of environmental policies and branding practices.

Policymobilitet är temat för 2018 års Ymer. Det är ett forskningsområde som vuxit kraftigt under de senaste två decennierna. Som praktik har dock policymobilitet förekommit betydligt längre än så, inte minst inom samhällsplanering och politik. Här har intresset för att hämta inspiration från andra platser och att lära sig av andras erfarenheter varit etablerat sedan länge. I den här boken presenteras en lång rad olika perspektiv på policy, och på dess sociala och rumsliga mobilitet och påverkan. Kapitlen diskuterar nutida och historiska exempel från Sverige i huvudsak, men även från Norge, Danmark, Ghana, Kenya och Sudan. Kapitlen diskuterar policy med olika perspektiv på skala - från det lokala och regionala till det nationella och internationella. Tillsammans bidrar dessa med en fördjupad kunskap om såväl policy som policymobilitet, och om hur makt, traditioner och strukturer påverkar hur policy utformas och sprids till olika platser. 

The 1992 Rio Earth Summit represented a crucial point in time at which the key role of the local level for sustainable development was importantly endorsed. However, since this UN summit, ideals about how to design local sustainable development have changed significantly. This paper investigates how local policy in ten second-rank cities in Sweden has adopted decoupling arguments and endorsed green growth concepts established through international governance communities. Using content analysis of politically ratified steering documents in these cities, the main findings suggest that local strategising related to the policy goals of green growth is mainly related to energy efficiency. Derived from the decoupling argument, one factor behind shallow integration of green growth into municipal policy is that green growth could be considered a political and contested concept. The fact that there has been limited implementation of this framework across the investigated municipalities prompts reflections on how the results could be explained by institutional ‘match’ or ‘mismatch’ between local institutional environments for policy interventions and the green growth concepts promoted by international communities. The adoption of green growth concepts requires local authorities to broaden their commitment for interventions in interactions with industry and business.

A growing number of cities around the world have taken advantage of their green image of the purpose of place branding. In the research literature, it is suggested that these practices are motivated by place-based competition over financial and social capital, combined with more holistic motives of sustainable urban development. However, although an increasing number of green cities are engaged in place branding, few studies have researched the impact of place branding on environmental policy-making in a city, building up to the question: how is local environmental policy-making affected by green place branding? Addressing this issue, this paper critically investigates how the continuity of local environmental policy-making is affected by place-branding practices. To tackle this task, the paper firstly develops an analytical framework aiming to understand how green cities emerge and become famous based on their policy-making. Secondly, using that framework, this paper present an in-depth case study of a city branding itself as the 'Greenest City in Europe'. Drawing on the growing body of work on green cities, this paper investigates the 'understudied' practice of using policy for the purpose of place branding as well as the impact of place branding 'on the environment'.

Place branding is commonly conceptualized with a focus on big cities, such as London, New York and Singapore, building from concepts and models from mainstream branding theory. In contrast to such conceptualizations, this thesis focuses on place branding in small and medium-sized cities. The present thesis aims to study place branding from a geographical perspective. It starts with debates theoretical and empirical understandings of place branding; what it is and how it is affecting the places where it is introduced. The thesis develops and argues for a perspective of territoriality and relationality to place branding discussing concepts, methods and empirical approaches to carry out place branding research using geographical perspectives. Empirically, this thesis focuses on in-depth studies of place branding in small and medium-sized cities in Sweden. By analyzing the development of place branding over the course of time, nuances and aspects of both territorial and relational origin emerge, situating place branding practices within a wider spatial contextualization. Four individual papers are presented, which taken together contribute to the aim of the thesis. Paper 1 introduces the place branding research field in geography and how it has developed; Paper 2 investigates the phenomena of flagship buildings located in small cities and towns; Paper 3 discusses the relationship between policy tourism and place branding; and Paper 4 analyzes how local environmental policies are affected by green place branding. The thesis demonstrates the complex and continuously interchangeable spatial structures and place contexts that create and re-produce the geographies of place branding. Here, research models and methodological examples are presented to illustrate how place branding can be studied from a geographical perspective and thus improve theoretical understandings of place branding.

Flagship buildings are promoted as a good strategy to stimulate economic development. Pushed by a range of actors, “best practice” examples are being copied from place to place around the globe. Flagship buildings are accompanied by a discourse of place branding that stresses a need for cities to improve their attractiveness. Drawing on this discourse and ongoing discussions on deterritorialization and reterritorialization in urban and economic geography, the author argues that there is an overly deterritorialized approach to flagship buildings in the place-branding literature. Using a conceptual framework inspired by the reterritorialization debate, she introduces the concept of “flagship space,” emphasizing a dualism in place branding encompassing both deterritorialized and territorial processes that in interplay create best-practice examples. The empirical analysis examines the development of five flagship hotels in Sweden. The author concludes that the five hotels have both created and are constantly reproducing their statuses as flagship developments. However, the creation and reproduction of status is not only upheld by the operators of the hotels but is also a joint effort of actors in the local community. Through these processes and practices the understanding of the hotels is broadened from merely being flagship buildings to creators of flagship space.