This book helps community leaders identify the unique personality of a place, design strategies to maintain that place's authentic personality, and promote that personality to tourists and potential residents.
Communities worldwide risk losing their soul-the distinctive character expressed through local stories, traditions, food, music, crafts, entertainment, and events. Business closures, homogenization, and imported retail also threaten community character. Since “authentic experiences” are among the primary motivations for traveling, this loss of distinctiveness can also have economic implications. Maintaining the balance between preservation and promotion, between residents and visitors, becomes more critical for community well-being. Some communities explore local characteristics as a branding opportunity and attract new residents, focusing on their authentic historic and cultural assets to provide immersive experiences. Other communities use placemaking and placekeeping to retain their unique character. Drawn from the author's extensive travel and work in the U.S. and around the world, Preserving and Promoting Personality of Place illustrates various solutions to saving and sharing a community's diverse character and explores how communities can enhance their personalities through the often-intangible assets that distinguish them from neighboring places. Using more than 50 case studies from the United States and other countries, this instructive and informative book offers specific strategies for retaining a sense of place and leveraging this distinctive “personality” as the basis for a community's cultural and economic prosperity.