City Marketing Strategies Based on Knowledge Economy, Creative City and Maker Culture

2. Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil

Abstract: Since the late 20th century, gentrification has been generalized as a strategy to sell the own city as a merchandise and many municipal administrations have been diversifying their city marketing strategies. Nowadays, it is possible to observe the instrumentalization of fashion concepts from technological innovation debate as city marketing. This article shows it through literature review in three phases. The first phase explores the meeting between the knowledge economy debate and urban revitalization which resulted in new operations associated with technological parks. The second phase deals with the fad of creative city. And the third, more recent phase, explains part of the unrolling of maker culture in urban development. The purpose is to highlight that this instrumentalization could boost an “optimism” in business and promote a “smokescreen” over social problems and gentrification frontier.