The German-Russian Forum organizes all two years meetings for twin-cities between Germany and Russia. In 2009 the conference took place in Volgograd, in 2011 partners will meet in Rothenburg ob der Tauber .
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STADT:KERN:GESUND lautet das Motto des Wettbewerbs “Ab in die Mitte” für das Jahr 2010 gab das Ministerium für Bauen und Verkehr des Landes NRW bekannt. Alle Gemeinden wurden aufgefordert, Konzepte zur Belebung der Stadtzentren vorzustellen. …

Russia is discovering Regional Marketing, a concept first establisehd in Western Euope in the 80ies. There major cities first started to use city marketing to brand their down-town activities …

Expo Mall Russia used its exhibition in spring 2009 in Moscow as a chance for a platform to discuss the status quo of the present financial crisis and to work as a conference centre for the regional city administrations and real-estate manager as well as retailers.
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From its origins in 1993 as a conference at the University of Reading/England the European Real Estate Society (ERES) in 1994 at the Amsterdam meeting became a formal society. ERES was established to create a structured and permanent network between real estate academics and professionals across Europe. ERES is dedicated to promote and advance the field of real estate research throughout Europe. …

How big is the impact of students at their university-towns? Can they actively contribute to the branding of their city? In how far can a student-blog be used for academic research about student-habits ?

At the fourth ERA-workshop of Prof.B.Hallier with the South Bohemian University of Budweis his class not only questioned and analyzed the ranking of retailers as targets of students versus university administration, but they created an own BudweisStudentBlog. …

Application of marketing principles and practices to places has gained momentum over the past twenty years. Most city and town authorities are aware of the need to embrace marketing strategies, tactics and tools to position, promote themselves, and broader, to achieve development goals. In parallel, the emerging academic field of place marketing in large part advocates the use of traditional marketing tools and techniques by city managers, emphasizing the benefits of marketing places. As a consequence of this focus, controversies arise, and the undesirable and unintended consequences of marketing cities have been largely ignored. This is not surprising since many of the impacts and outcomes of city marketing are of a long-term nature and difficult to monitor and measure.

Therefore a Special Issue of the Journal of Town and City Management will be published. The purpose is to widen the perspective of city marketing theory and practice to encourage a more holistic approach that also considers the undesirable and unintended consequences. City marketing professionals (local authorities and consultants), at the coalface of marketing, and marketing academics at the cutting edge of theory development and testing, are invited to submit papers for the special issue. Authors are encouraged to identify the important, yet often overlooked contradictions and consequences of marketing cities and town centres which frequently create controversy amongst stakeholders. All submissions must feature original content (new thinking, lessons from practice, research results, case studies, best practice) and where relevant be supported by references to examples and existing literature. (more via email)

The public private partnership initiative „Going Down-Town“ was kicked-off in North Rhine Westphalia/Germany for the first time in 1999 by the regional government and the department store-chains Karstadt and Kaufhof. The initiative wants to link shopping, culture, living to revitalize the life in the city-centers.

In Ahlen

The annual competition activated 172 cities and communities to create between the years 2000 and 2008 a total of 588 concepts of which 193 got financial support for their transformation to reality. Also for 2009 the competition has 24 winners which get up to 60 percent of their concept-costs paid by the initiative. The rest of the costs has to be paid by the cities/communities and their local government or sponsors.

REAL CORP 2009 will organize its 14th international conference in Sitges/Catalonia/Spain in April 22-25th 2009. The call for papers can be checked at http://www.corp.atThe conference will be jointly organized by the Central European Institute of Technology (CEIT ALANOVA), the Competence Centre of Urban and Regional Planning (CORP), the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP); supporter is the city if Sitges

At Expo Real 2008 a total of 1,856 companies from 45 countries participated. 487 came from abroad – 62 of them from Russia. The exhibition space was 74,000 square meters over a total of seven halls. This was a growth-rate of 17 percent compared with last year.

There was also an increase of visitors by 7.7 percent. They came from 77 countries – top of them Germany, UK, Netherlands, Austria, Russia, Switzerland, CZ, Poland, USA, France and Spain. Beside the exhibition about 100 workshops with 500 experts attracted the visitors – one of them was the Retail Special organized by Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier. The next Expo Real will be on October 5-7th 2009 ( more ).