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This chapter examines the promotional image of the city of Porto, cre-ated and disseminated in the last decades, as a means through which core capi-talist values, objectives and operative logic are disseminated and naturalized in public space. Mirzoeff’s conceptualization of visuality, as the aesthetic means through which dominant systems seek to present their legitimacy as self-evident, informs our examination of branding, architecture, and its visual reproduction, as discursive practices employed in the deployment of what we will designate as a capitalist visuality. Local tradition and cosmopolitan modernity are identified as the two main con-cepts in the promotional strategy designed to enhance the city’s appeal, which representation relies to a large extent on architectural aesthetics, namely vernac-ular heritage, and international architectural icons. The chapter analyzes the re-currence of these concepts in branding, promotional imagery, and architectural management.
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