Case B: Culture-led Urban Regeneration and Brand Building in Alpine Italian Cities

In post-industrial economies the role of culture in leading cities away from vicious development circles and towards economic and social recovery has become increasingly important. This is achieved through the injection of creativity and knowledge into traditional development models and their outputs. The nature and intensity of culture-led urban regeneration depend on the combining of urban heritage resources and productive traditions with innovative policy-making and thus manifest both continuity with the heritage aspect and profound change. This chapter theorizes how culture can transform socio-cultural and economic and urban balances and affect the image-making and repositioning strategies and branding of cities. Exemplary cases in culture-led urban transformation and urban brand building in the Alpine Italian cities of Trento and Rovereto are used to discuss this process.