Sibiu Between European Capital of Culture and Brexit: City Brand Perspective on Citizens
Sibiu Between European Capital of Culture and Brexit: City Brand Perspective on Citizens

Summary/Abstract: City branding represents a particular category of commercial branding, aiming at attracting resources to cities in a way that ensures the wellbeing of the citizen. Sibiu has embraced the EU cultural challenge and transformed European Capital of Culture (ECoC) into a success city brand by culture strategy, certainly improving the livability of the city. Ten years later, Sibiu, as a small-medium sized cultural city with strongly proved European valences might be facing a similar challenge. Its reaction is totally different. This paper sheds the lights of the city on the citizens, as stakeholders, publics or consumer of the city, revealing a possible explanation of this different behaviour of Sibiu. The research is based on in-depth interviews conducted in the summer of 2016, aiming at identifying the attitudes, opinions and reactions to BREXIT. The main conclusion is that the interviewed persons favorably reacted to the city development by culture as an expression of history, identity, personal achievement, while politics is the attribute of just some part of the city. The interviewed persons oscillated very much between the European feeling and the traditional paradigm of less important country in the EU or in the geopolitical context.

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