Sustainability in Place Marketing, Branding and Management

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable development and management are crucial components of the Sustainable Development Goals, which impact cities, communities and places. Places are often regarded as being in competition with each other—for residents, tourist visitors and economic development. This imperative has proved to be a stimulus and catalyst for place marketing and, more recently, place branding. However, an important question to ask of such activity relates to the extent to which it is sustainable, in the sense that the constant drive for place-related economic growth is compatible with the need to both provide a societally fair place to develop and nurture populations and simultaneously conserve the Earth’s resources more widely.

The aim of this Special Issue is to explore the role of sustainability within place marketing, branding and management. The scope of our inquiry is deliberately wide to incorporate a range of viewpoints and perspectives, from discussing how sustainability principles might be used to develop effective place marketing messages and place brand positions, to asking whether sustainability and place marketing/branding are even mutually compatible. 

We welcome contributions that address the subject of sustainability in this context, at a variety of spatial scales from neighbourhood to nation, and drawing on a variety of academic disciplines for inspiration, in order to advance the debate about this important issue.

Prof. Dr. Gary Warnaby
Prof. Dr. Morven G. McEachern
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• place marketing
• place branding
• place management tourism
• economic development
• sustainability