Branding New Towns: The Case of the Greater Cairo Region, Egypt

Place identity driven branding is utilised in many cities to set the ground for a dynamic identity redefinition based on place image and place culture (Kavaratzis and Hatch, 2013). However, there seems to be a lack of knowledge in the field of place identity, particularly in new town developments in Egypt. This study aims to determine the way place identity influenced occupancy and aims to find how place branding could be a powerful tool to address this issue. Place identity refers to the mixture of feelings about specific physical settings and the symbolic connections to a place that defines self-identity in relation to the environmental past (Proshansky et al. 1983). Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) offers a tool to map landscape values as a measure of place identity, alternatively called social values for ecosystem services (Sherrouse et al., 2011). Landscape values are the subject of multiple PPGIS studies (e.g., Brown and Kyttä 2014; Brown and Fagerholm 2015), but have yet to be linked with the built environment, namely, the newly developed urban settlements. Urban growth in the Greater Cairo Region (GCR) is not without challenges. It often happens at the expense of the most productive arable land, which is in short supply (Brundlandt, 1987). Therefore, the vision for sustainable urban development is constrained within two priorities; these priorities are re-developing existing urban areas and planning new desert cities beyond the fertile Nile Valley. Both dimensions serve the purpose of preserving the agricultural land through legislative control measures (GOPP, 2015). The current development strategy of desert new towns in the Greater Cairo Region has reached less than half the occupation target despite a significant portion of the total national development expenditure being spent on providing them with necessary infrastructure (Sims 2012; 2014). This study collects data to refine place identity theory for new towns as a basis for appropriate place branding