CITY BRANDING EVALUATION AND ANALYSIS OF CULTURAL CAPABILITIES OF ISFAHAN CITY

摘要

The aim of the study was analysis and evaluation of cultural capabilities of Isfahan city as a symbol of Iranian-Islamic culture and civilisation in order to brand the city. Taking into account the fact that city branding is the result of consensus among the public and the officials, the study attempted to fulfil three aims through bidirectional examination. From one direction, the study focused on a centralized top-down look from the transnational, national, regional, and local level while the other direction was a bottom-up look from the people's view (foreigners, domestic visitors and residents). To achieve these aims, the study first sought to find out, by reviewing documents, the identity as envisaged by the authorities, and the identity as perceived by the public through Anholt's criteria (2007), which are related to aspects through which a city is perceived (visualisation, place, potential, dynamism, people, and infrastructure), and also to evaluate the matching degree of the two approaches compared to each other. Second, it sought to identify the most prominent feature of Isfahan's cultural identity as the most important competitive advantage of the city in order to brand the city. Third, within cultural components (handicraft and local arts, buildings and historical monuments, lifestyle and customs and traditions), it sought to examine and evaluate the correlation among indexes (visualisation, place, potential, dynamism, people and infrastructure) through which people understand a city.