Multiculturalism and time in Trieste: Place-marketing images and residents' perceptions of a multicultural city

This paper discusses how people encounter marketed images of places in order to explore whether place-marketing images are always seen as misrepresentations. As part of this, I question whether people always 'read' into place-marketing images the meanings inscribed by marketers, and I attend to the various dimensions of time that people draw on when articulating their views of their place's marketed identity. Using Trieste as a case study, I consider how a group of thirty-one residents perceived their city's 'multicultural character' as it was advertised during the bid for the 2008 World Expo and show that while the respondents did not read into Trieste's marketed multicultural image the meanings that the marketers intended, the interviewees largely supported Trieste's advertised image. I discuss how the evocation of specific temporalities (historical past, present and 'timeless') affected how the respondents articulated their views about Trieste's multiculturalism. I also explain why Trieste's marketed multicultural image captured the imaginations of the majority of the respondents.