Branding cities or citizens? Virtue-based branding as a technology of subjectification in Louisville

City branding is increasingly understood as shaping not only how cities are seen but who their residents become. This paper contributes to the growing scholarship that conceptualizes place branding as a technology of subjectification, arguing that when a city is branded with a human attribute, it is in effect its citizens who are branded. Drawing on a qualitative case study of Compassionate Louisville, the research traces how compassion was institutionalized as a governing discourse following the city’s formal adoption of the brand identity. The study reveals how the brand narrative operates simultaneously as a moral ideal, a performative expectation, and a political resource used to legitimize policy and manage social contradictions. By framing compassion as an apolitical, universal virtue, the brand establishes a disciplinary framework that encourages self-regulation and moral conformity while depoliticizing systemic social suffering. The paper contributes to debates within political geography and urban studies by demonstrating how virtue-based branding acts as an affective technology of power, reshaping urban subjectivities.