Branding of Russian Cities: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Implementation

In the context of increasing global and domestic competition for resources, territorial branding is becoming one of the key tools that helps attract resources for urban development. The relevance of the study is due to the accumulation of successful practices in the application of territorial branding of Russian cities, which require their generalization and theoretical understanding. The purpose of the study is to characterize the currently established theory of geobranding and the Russian practice of its application. The work uses the methods of scientometric and bibliographic analysis of publications, secondary statistical analysis. The main results of the study confirm the growing interest in territorial branding, which is reflected in the annual increase in the number of city brands in Russia, as well as the preservation of scientific publication activity on this topic for the period 2014-2024. The scientific novelty of the study lies in conducting a comprehensive bibliographic and scientometric analysis of Russian scientific publications on urban branding for the period 2014–2024 with ranking of cities – administrative capitals of Russia by their mentions in scientific publications on the topic of city branding, followed by a description of the context of research of the 10 most mentioned cities. The conclusions from the article can be used by local governments, business representatives in developing strategies for positioning and promoting city brands, as well as by the scientific community for future research on the topic of territorial branding. Further research involves bibliographic and scientometric analysis of foreign scientific literature on promising areas of studying urban branding practices, assessing their effectiveness and analyzing the impact on urban development in the long term.