City of Care: A Community Public Art-based City Branding Strategy

City of Care is a practice-based, transcultural and interdisciplinary hybrid research project centered on Shunde, a third-tier city in China’s Greater Bay Area, which explores a community public art-based city branding strategy. The dissertation comprises four main chapters: Introduction, Discussion, Practice, and Conclusion. The introductory chapter outlines the research background, methodology, research questions, literature review, challenges, and practical orientation. Progressing to the Discussion chapter, it systematically examines three thematic pillars — city branding, community development, and public art — culminating in an integrated theoretical framework for the study. The Practice chapter details artistic interventions across three phases (preparation, community practice, and urban implementation), presenting diverse artistic formats and scales through a bottom-up, stepwise approach. This section demonstrates how art-based community development contributed to Shunde’s latest city branding initiative "Rejuvenate City with Water," highlighting its critical role and positive impact. Finally, the Conclusion chapter synthesizes responses to the research questions, presents key findings, and summarizes new knowledge — notably proposing the G-A-C-R (Government-Artist/Agency-Capital-Resident) public art mechanism and the 3A community development strategy, both validated as transferable to urban development and branding endeavors. Rather than offering a comprehensive A-Z solution derived from traditional marketing frameworks, this art-led approach investigates the conceptual foundations, implementation purposes, social significance, and humanistic values of urban branding through artistic and care-oriented lenses. It simultaneously fosters organic, authentic, and sustainable brand experiences rooted in grassroots community practice. This strategy is believed to enhance public perception, understanding, and identification with the city brand while informing municipal decision-making for urban development and branding through actionable case references, regional prototypes, and empirical insights.