Brand: "Øresund" - analys av regionen som territorialiserad simulering

The topic of this thesis interest is the relation between branding as a place making/marketing technology and the process of regionalization. The main proposition advocated is that the officially communicated image of the Øresund Region, as a cohesive place and community, is a space that has been configured with branding and can be described as a territorial simulation. The concept of territorial simulation consists of two conjoined terms: simulation which aim at explaining the idiosyncratic brand image, as a social formation, which does not represent the place it imitates but commoditise it; and territorial which seeks to visualize the process of the unfolding of this image as a territory. The main argument is made in the third chapter, which traces the process of actualization of the brand image as a territory: ?Øresund?. This process of territorialization is dramatized as three aspects of the Deleuze and Guattari concept ?the refrain?, which renders three basic questions: What points of order are there? How is a circle of control drawn? What lines of flight exists? The empirical answers presented in this study are of limited originality; the main finding is the theoretical framework enabling an enhanced understanding of branding as place making technology