City branding today goes beyond merely a slogan. Cities present themselves as a brand in order to attract people, investors and companies. It is crucial for a city to distinguish itself from other cities through its architecture, social policies, public facilities or fiscal arrangements. Intercity competition is, however, something that goes back further in time: the earliest cities tried to create an attractive environment for migrants and merchants to settle in, which in turn contributed to the development of durable urban networks.

Cities and urban networks

Approximately one thousand years ago, the European continent entered a new phase in urbanisation. A complex interplay of demographic, economic and political factors led to the emergence of new cities that gradually grew in size and developed into regional and international nodes for flows of people, goods and information. The centre of gravity of these networks lay first in the middle and northern part of the Italian peninsula, where maritime cities such as Amalfi, Genoa, Pisa and Venice were the first to profit from the revival of trade contacts in the Mediterranean world in the 11th century, after which cities such as Milan and Florence blossomed into important commercial and industrial centres. A second centre of gravity emerged in the 12th century in Northern France and the southern Netherlands, where trade flows from the Rhine, the Mediterranean, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea came together. Itinerant merchants initially met each other at annual fairs that were always held in the same order, but from the end of the 13th century, Bruges emerged as a trade metropolis where foreign merchants settled more permanently, after which Antwerp took over this role some two hundred years later.

During the Middle Ages, polycentric networks of larger cities and smaller urban centres emerged in certain regions that performed regional and local administrative, economic and service-related functions. This was the case in Flanders for example, where in addition to the three large cities of Bruges, Ghent and Ypres, dozens of smaller towns gave shape to the urban network. This network reinforced the economic integration and geographical interdependence of the smaller units, as a result of which cities became increasingly connected to each other and to their hinterland.