Place identity beyond province and metropolis: Paths and perspectives in Germany's “capital region” Berlin‐Brandenburg

The purpose of this paper is to discuss communicative problems and perspectives in the branding‐process of a metropolitan region. It pursues the question of how intended place politics and non‐intended socio‐spatial developments impact the process of place branding for Germany's capital region Berlin‐Brandenburg. The metropolitan region is here discussed as a special type of place identity. This type follows wider trajectories. There seems to be a lack of knowledge in how to manage a metropolitan identity.

The paper focuses on theoretical and practical perspectives of metropolitan place branding. A methodological approach to this case with the research approach public branding was developed by the Leibniz‐Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning (IRS) in Erkner, Germany.

Berlin, as an urban space of international significance, continues to stand in a direct spatial and functional relation to the structurally weak areas of the surrounding federal state of Brandenburg. As a consequence, the most diverse array of trajectories, resources, infrastructures, lifestyles and spatial interpretations demand new answers for place branding in metropolitan regions as future spaces of identity. The providing and conceptual integration of intermediaries in the field of knowledge‐based institutions plays a fundamental role in the spatial arrangement.

The paper asks for the preconditions to generate public brand‐knowledge. This knowledge is seen as the key factor for communicative re‐constructions and for identity building in disparate social spaces.

The deliberations try to give answers to the discussion of how far metropolitan place branding, as a worldwide future marketing prospect, can integrate old and new conceptual ideas about handling metropolitan disparities. The deliberations also implicate the question to what extent persuasive strategies for metropolitan brands have to observe limits. In this understanding, the paper gives five recommendations for place managers.

Processes of identity formation in social spaces follow certain comprehensive strategic paths and local particularities, whose concurrence becomes an object of metropolitan branding.

A relationship between governance and branding discourses within spaces of identity is discussed. It is here a matter of the fundamental question, namely, under which internal conditions social actors develop a spatial brand in a metropolitan region.