Reconstructing urban image through cultural flagship events: The case of Bat-Yam

•We review the role of culture-led strategies in urban regeneration.•We examine the use of urban festivals in the eradication of territorial stigma.•We present the case of Bat-Yam’s International Biennale of Landscape Urbanism.•We illuminate the social impact of using urban festivals within the framework of territorial stigma.

Recent years have seen a broad range of towns and cities investing major efforts in devising culture-led urban strategies. These strategies have often been explained against the backdrop of economic neoliberalization that forced municipal administrations to re-invent the local in order to stimulate urban development by attracting new residents, tourists and investors alike. In this context, scholarship has identified urban festivals and other flagship events as major drivers of urban regeneration. Considerably less attention has been paid to the role of festivals in the eradication of long-conceived territorial stigmas. Using the case of Bat-Yam, this paper examines how an international festival has sought to re-construct a defamed mid-sized city’s image. Specifically, we argue that the city-sponsored International Biennale of Landscape Urbanism, which was part of a broader culture-led urban strategy, deployed creative means to breathe new meanings into some of its most entrenched stigmatized attributes, including urban density and marginal(ized) cultural practices.