Marketing and branding-oriented goals for the development of Functional Urban Areas: evidence from Poland

The European Union currently uses Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) as basic units for planning local development activities under its financial support. An important issue in terms of managing such areas is branding. FUAs are made of at least several territorial units (covering a dense urban area and a functionally related urbanised zone). Such composition poses a particular challenge in terms of developing a brand that covers all of the units. Therefore, it is essential to select the core around which the target image will be created. This publication aims to identify marketing and branding goals for the development of FUAs and determine activities facilitating the achievement of these goals by entities that manage the functional areas. The research method used in the article was a content analysis of documents outlined as Strategies for Integrated Territorial Investments developed for FUAs in Poland. The authors of the article undertook preliminary exploratory research. The obtained results show that most of the marketing and branding goals for the development of FUAs correspond with the objectives specific to city marketing and branding. Moreover, “integration” and “strengthening the metropolitan area function” were recognised as goals specific to FUAs.