Branded Places and Marketplace Exclusion

This article analyses the development of a branded place in a Brazilian city. Drawing on Lefebvre’s spatial triad, I show how the intertwined practices of hegemonic market actors in alliance concur to produce a city space that caters to the aspirations and ways of life of local elites while actively excluding lower-class groups from it. I distinguish three main elements of branded places –architecture and urbanism, brand narrative, and spatial governance– and demonstrate how they produce physical, symbolic, and social boundaries between middle- and lower-classes in the city. These findings contribute to understanding the ways market-mediated spatial dynamics perform exclusion of most vulnerable groups in post-industrial cities and extend place brand literature by accounting for the less documented practices of invested stakeholders in the production of branded places.