This collective reflection unpacks the double-edged dynamics of urban thematization and city branding, offering a critical examination of how cities are strategically packaged for global visibility. Drawing on cases across Spain and Latin America, the authors argue that branding logics reduce urban space to consumable narratives, often prioritizing spectacle and investor appeal over social justice or cultural depth. The city becomes a controlled stage, its complexity edited for external audiences. While thematization can stimulate economic growth and promote recognition, the article emphasizes its risks: gentrification, cultural displacement, and historical erasure. Urban branding, when divorced from local participation, results in the creation of urban simulacra—pseudo-places that aestheticize poverty, commodify heritage, and erase conflict. The text proposes that any genuine attempt at urban thematization must incorporate critical pedagogy, memory practices, and democratic engagement. Cities must be understood not as brands but as collective imaginaries, whose identities are always in flux, contested, and co-produced. Through thoughtful dialogue, the article calls for ethical frameworks that allow branding to become a tool of empowerment rather than enclosure, enabling cities to tell stories that are plural, open-ended, and rooted in shared experience.
Pellicer, I. and Saga, M. (2015) ‘Tematización y ciudad marca. Conceptos, efectos y estrategias de acción’, URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 5(2), pp. 225–239.
