© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Mihalis Kavaratzis, Massimo Giovanardi and Maria Lichrou; individual chapters, the contributors. Places are of vital significance for all of us. And yet, do we understand them well? Do we attempt to examine them in adequate detail before we engage in projects that influence the identity of a place, its history and heritage, its population, their attachment to their place and their future prospects in it? Significant tensions arise when, for the sake of branding, authorities, politicians or consultants interfere with the processes of place development, place attachment, place identity and so on. A series of significant risks are taken, often without consideration of the consequences. In the Foreword that precedes this Introduction, Anne Marie Broudehoux gives an account of everything that is wrong with current understandings and misunderstandings, uses and misuses of place branding. Her typology of interventions for the production of a place¿s image (i.e. the conceived, the physical and the social) allows her to critically comment on both theory and practice across the world. In doing so, she highlights the existing and potential tensions created by the `who¿, the `what for¿ and the `how¿ of place branding projects. Who, what for and how conceives, designs and implements place branding projects? What are the intended and unintended, planned and unplanned, explicit and implicit aims and consequences? How do they fit in the political and ideological agenda? Place branding is not as innocent as some like to think of it and observations on the current state of the discipline make any critical researcher engage in serious wonderings around place brands and their effects on places and the people that live in them. As Vanolo (2017, 1) puts it, `the construction and manipulation of urban images triggers a complex politics of representation, modifying the visibility and the invisibility of spaces, subjects, problems and discourses¿. Place branding produces, reproduces, circulates and, perhaps, imposes place imaginaries that affect the lives of real people, reconstructing and reinforcing narratives of power. Such wonderings have provided the motivation and inspiration for this edited volume. It is the intention of both editors and contributors to consider the evident tensions around place branding in an attempt to shed light on them and make them more approachable as political phenomena. And, thus, perhaps identify ways to resolve them. It is for the readers to judge whether this intention is achieved or remains a pretention.