“Western Gates of the Urals”: geocultural branding of a small city

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of the image resources of Vereshchagino -a small town in the Perm region, which should be used in the process of implementing the strategy of its geocultural branding. In popular scientific works and mass media, the city is called the “Western Gate of the Urals”, meaning that the Vereshchagino railway station is a key point, bypassing which, freight and passenger trains leave the Ural region. In 2023, Vereshchagino station will celebrate 125 years since the moment of its foundation. At the beginning of the XXI century, the dynamic development of the urban environment in Vereschagino was interrupted. The municipal authorities missed the opportunity to pursue a policy of territorial marketing branding, to actively promote the brand images of the town in the Ural geocultural space. Today, Vereshchagino has accumulated typical problems for a provincial town – demographic, communal, and socio-cultural ones. Urban communities express dissatisfaction with the visual and aesthetic appearance of the urban environment. According to the author’s point of view, the development and implementation of the Vereshchagino geocultural branding strategy is a progressive solution that allows creating creative industries in the city and ensuring sustainable socio-economic development. As a methodological basis, we used the conceptual ideas of the creative action of the British scientist Ch. Landry, as well as the postulates of the theory of geocultural branding of the city by the Russian researcher D. N. Zamyatin.