Branding through Juxtaposing City Identities

Tilburg City Center Map

For my *Juxtaposition of City Identities project, another major source of inspiration was [Ana Miriam Rebelo and Heitor Alvelos’ Contested Urban Identities: Branding and Antagonism in the City of Porto](https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1696093/1696094), *an artistic-activist work that questions how city branding can erase or clash with lived realities.

As a designer, I enjoy working with brand identity. Yet when it comes to communities and emotions, I feel the need to scratch beneath the glossy surface and reveal the tensions underneath. In Porto, the city’s branding campaigns sparked not only visibility but also protest, a reminder that branding is never a one-sided narrative.

Image from Contested Urban Identities: Branding and Antagonism in the City of Porto by Ana Miriam Rebelo and Heitor Alvelos.

Juxtaposition of City Identities was not only about layering the perspectives of those who feel foreign to a city, but also about repositioning these subjective encounters onto a marketing map, or even gently disrupting it.

Feeling foreign in a city came with its own contradictions: the excitement of being in a new place, but also the quiet discomfort of not fully understanding its rhythms, codes, and invisible rules. Over time, I realised that this experience was far from the romantic story I once imagined. In response to this tension, I created a new city map titled Not to Enjoy in Tilburg. Moving through zero information, culture shocks, and a deliberate friction with marketing logic, I chose this title as a way to question what and who city branding is really for.

A city never has just one identity. As foreigners, we were searching for the version of the city we could belong to. Yet when I spoke with locals, and with newcomers who had been around for a while, a shared description kept appearing: Tilburg is ugly, but the community is beautiful.

Looking back, and remembering the comfort I felt while placing the child-like drawings over a polished city marketing map, I see more clearly now what this work was circling: a city that is both “ugly” and caring, fragmented and welcoming. Not to Enjoy in Tilburg was never simply about rejection, but about holding these contradictions together and asking what kind of belonging can emerge from them.

UrbanIdentity #CityBranding #Belonging #ArtisticResearch #Cartography #UrbanImaginaries #CriticalDesign #TilburgCityCenter