A Great City Is Its Perception In Citizen Participation

The Citadel in Alba Iulia, Transylvania, Romania

When you’re building brand awareness for your city, perception plays an essential role. It’s not just about your city’s infrastructure, investments, opportunities, or modernisation processes; a unique angle that showcases your city to the world can create long-lasting positive effects in terms of citizens’ participation, and the way this can be reflected in the media.

Take Alba Iulia, for example. A city with 74,000 inhabitants, like thousands of other cities in Europe. But how many of them have broken two world records for public participation in big urban regeneration projects, as part of the awareness process implied? Alba Iulia is one of the oldest historically charged hearths of Romania, modernised over the past decade through a successful city brand strategy supported by a mix of public and private funds, especially EU-funded projects, led by the City Hall and supported by the local population. With this, Alba Iulia has succeeded in managing the largest urban renewal project of a bimillennial historical site: the Alba Carolina Citadel, which is the largest of its kind in Romania and also Central and South-Eastern Europe. In this project in particular, there is a lot of strength in the support of its people, and we’ve managed to hold two Guinness World Records that have put the city on the national and worldwide media map.

Its renovation process started intensively in 2003 and finished over a decade later, bringing people together in pride and support of this urban transformation. Before the modernisation process was over, in 2009, 9,758 people gathered as part of a large PR stunt to create the biggest hug in the world, held around the city’s historical Citadel. Even the President of the country at that time, Traian Basescu, participated.

Nine years later, in 2018, with the Citadel already revived into part of a new, smart European city, people gathered once again to break yet another Guinness record for the largest human image of a country, with close to 5,000 people recreating the silhouette of Romania to commemorate the centenary of the country’s Great Union in 1918.

In the short years before and in between these two World Records, the ownership of the Citadel was transferred back to the local council from the Ministry of Defence, becoming one of the country’s largest public space in the process. Not only did it go back to its people, but it also became a symbol of the city and the centrepiece of its modern branding. From a forbidden part of the city in the heart of Alba Iulia, the fortress has become a vibrant destination for both residents and visitors alike, with a huge social and cultural impact.

A clever mix that combined a great city strategy with the support of the locals, relevant NGOs, companies and public institutions, eager to be part of a forward-thinking development which put their city in the global map, brought strength to the image of Alba Iulia and took the strategic actions put into motion over the last two decades even further. It proves the effectiveness of a good strategy that prises human values and their desire to advance.

At the end of the day, every city's development needs to address its people. And if you truly have their support and involvement, half of the job is already done.