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places less important, while reducing the 'qual-
ity of authentic places' to simple location factors
(Hassenpfl ug, 1999), so greater effort is spent
on differentiating them by increasing their sym-
bolic value: the fear of not being noticed drives
the quest for achieving symbolic advantage
over other competing cities. This is done by cre-
ating city-myths, reimaging or visionary strate-
gies, or referring to the city's great narratives
(Griffi th, 1989). In particular, visual strategies
are chosen for symbolic advantage; the compe-
tition for reputation of cities is nowadays carried
out iconographically (Löw, 2006). Iconographic
strategies in tourism stress the constitution of the
Other or the design of effective tourist experi-
ences (Mellinger, 1994; Sternberg, 1997).
Publicity and advertising have been impor-
tant factors in place-marketing, though the bud-
get used for them seems to be very small
compared to other forms of commercial adver-
tising, and local authorities seem to be the main
actors here, not international advertising agen-
cies. They tend to communicate less informa-
tion about functional qualities and emphasize
material artefacts (or the materiality of the city)
for its symbolic loading. The logic behind this
idea is that 'rooted' materiality gives competi-
tive advantages in a 'space of fl ows' (images of
cities, information about them) because of its
(relative) immobility.
A strong tendency towards homogeniza-
tion and convergence in the advertising strate-
gies can be observed, both in what is included
and excluded from the imaginary created for
these purposes - downplaying or silencing
problems and portraying only highly selective
versions of a place's history.
The creation of new urban landscapes by
fl agship buildings and expensive consumer
zones supports this tendency, as the services of
very few superstar-architects are used to create
the symbolic and material atmospheres desired
for creating upscale lifestyle enclaves. The gap
between anticipated and preferred living condi-
tions, however, has been revealed in different
studies, e.g. by Noller and Ronneberger (1995).
Next to the architecture of superlatives, more
subtle ways can be found by renaming places,
or by theming urban landscape from a selection
of 'premixed design packages that reproduce
pre-existing urban forms', as Boyer (1992)
describes it (p. 184; cit. from Griffi th, 1998). A
description of these phenomena by urban soci-
ology applying the concept of relational space
as a social product (see below) would defi ne
them as (re)arrangements of people and social
goods found in architectural drawings showing
the intended 'users' and trying to locate the vir-
tual building in its later environment. This
development may lead to homogenizing picto-
rial representations of buildings not even built
yet by the use of templates provided within the
software used during the design process (Löw,
2003). This thesis can be extended to visual
representations of an actual built environment,
the city, in electronic media in the context of
professional production of images for place-
promotion purposes.
Visual imagery of cities, as important tour-
ist spaces, differs by the mode of production
(professional/amateur), the technology used
and the social acceptance, i.e. the level of trust
and estimation of authenticity accredited to the
images by the observer. Professional photogra-
phy in glossy brochures may look attractive, but
the uncertainty remains if the perception
in situ
will match the picture professionally produced -
this is one major motive in (urban) tourism,
seeking images that have been picked up from
guides, books or media generally (Jenkins,
1999) or that have already become part of a
globalized and collective archive of iconographic
references and a quest for re-producing its per-
spective as a kind of self-insurance about an
authentic reliving of a framed (tourist's) experi-
ence as a desired experience. With the advent
of social networking Internet sites, new actors
appear on the scene: the users and tourists them-
selves. Non-professional images of tourist spaces
are far less suspected to direct the observer's gaze
and perception (see Dann, 1996a, for a method-
ical discussion and Dann, 1988, 1996b, 1996c,
about the extent to which images can control
and determine tourists' behaviour). Their level
of authenticity is far higher at fi rst glance, driven
by the idea that images produced as a kind of
grass-roots or bottom-up visualization are more
likely to match one's own experience visiting
the place in question. The next steps in this
development are Web-based social networking
sites directed to tourism: photo-sharing sites
with the possibility to comment on the places
visited and evaluate the accommodations and
historic sites.
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