Social Urban Identity Formation and Local Government

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the issue of whether city governments could or should be engaged in (social) urban identity formation. From a functional angle, social urban identity formation can help to gain loyalty and pro-social and environmental behaviour. Earlier and current research on urban identity and urban development in three quite different cities, Rotterdam, Szczecin, and Tirana, informs our reflection. The city cases are described in terms of urban development and social urban identity. The paper concludes that social urban identity formation can be helpful in cities, but there is a risk of political control over urban symbols and narratives. Topics for future research are identified.

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“…Social identity has become a central object in the psychological sciences and is associated with a person's awareness of affiliation with certain social groups ( Leaper, 2011). At the level of urban planning, the social identity aspect exists in the form of group identity, which involves both the categorisation of the "in-group" concerning the "out-group" and the tendency to perceive personal group with a positive bias towards other groups (Nientied et al, 2022). The physical space of this type of formation is expressed by the specifics of lifestyle and can be either closed (Farid & Ahmed, 2018) Here, in 2012, a residential environment was created on the site of one of the largest art colonies in Europe.…”