Fill in the spaces with prepositions where necessary

A recent effort, ___ a group ___ researchers ___ Israel and Italy, proposes an international rating scale ___ a city’s image to calculate perceptions. “The idea was that many cities use their image, or try to construct an image to attract various audiences - residents, potential residents, businessmen, entrepreneurs, tourists,” says Shaked Gilboa, the paper’s lead author.

Where once cities competed ___ a few wealthy adventurers, they now battle ___ savvy immigrants, fleet-footed companies, and a global international tourism industry that counts over a billion annual arrivals. What’s more, the paper reports that “people’s attitudes and actions ___ a city are highly conditioned ___ that city’s image, whether that image is part ___ an official branding campaign or disseminated ___ news items and music videos.

Is it possible, then, to get something as subjective as image down ___ a science?

To craft their surveys, Gilboa and Сo. crunched 39 previous studies ___ city image published between 2001 and 2013. Most ___ those metrics display the buzzy, irritating jargon ___ the branding industry - one 2006 study, ___ example, rates a city ___ six categories: Presence, Place, Potential, Pulse, People, and Prerequisites. Another reduces the great metropolis ___ Infrastructure, Attraction, Value and Enjoyment.

Sensing a divergence ___ the perceptions ___ residents and tourists, Gilboa’s team developed two separate surveys ___ Rome, Trieste and Jerusalem. ___ residents, Rome scored highest ___ the three ___ leisure opportunities. Trieste and Jerusalem were perceived as offering better municipal services. Often, residents and tourists wound up drawing the same conclusions ___ these subjects.

But their perceptions split ___ interesting ways. Regular visitors have higher opinions ___ city services, like public transportation, than first-time arrivals. ___ the other hand, tourists who stay ___ a week or more have a lower opinion ___ a city’s safety and security than those who come ___ only a few days. And while tourists had highly variable thoughts ___ the three cities’ security situations – “they perceived Rome as the least secure and Jerusalem as the most secure,” Gilboa said – residents ___ all three cities had similar opinions.

The lesson of this, ___ short, is that no component ___ branding is one-size-fits-all. What residents think ___ their city - and hence, what they want ___ it - might have nothing ___ common ___ tourist perceptions. Different types ___ tourists have different observations. And that’s to say nothing ___ corporate strategists pondering relocations, young entrepreneurs or high-skilled immigrants.

That different images ___ the city exist ___ different groups might seem obvious. But cities like New York still use the same brand identity ___ residents and tourists. Others, like Barcelona, employ one website to welcome both international students and medical tourists, two groups ___ vastly different priorities. “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” is an appealing slogan ___ vice-hunters. Less so for manufacturers.

Those are all internationally renowned, successful cities. The small Finnish city of Vaasa, ___ the other hand, recently decided it had an image problem and invited academics to troubleshoot. The researchers presented their findings, and Vaasa began what the scholars call “large-scale development ___ city image,” linking a new slogan, “Better Life,” ___ real-world developments like a renovation ___ the town square.

You may not have heard ___ it - yet. But researchers say Vaasa’s image has already improved.

Read the text below and decide which answer best fits each numbered space.

Can Cities Kick Ads?

Staring out of a hotel window in São Paulo, my eye was caught by an (1) ______ digital display crowning the top of an undersized skyscraper. Steadily flashing the time, then the temperature, the display was (2) ______ in a way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

It was only later, when a colleague mentioned that São Paulo had banned billboard advertising, that I realised what had felt so odd about my view. Those flashing numbers were the only visible signage actively making a play for my attention. Having come from New York, I was used to looking out at a landscape of logos and gargantuan product shots; a vista of advertisements all jostling for “eyeballs”, as the industry so charmingly (3) ______ it.

Left unchecked, the (4) ______ of outdoor advertising can consume a city. In the early 2000s, advertising grew exponentially in Brazil, and São Paulo began to suffocate under a smog of signage. Finding it difficult to control the number of ads through regulation, the city took the unprecedented (5) ______ of banning them altogether. In 2007, Mayor Gilberto Kassab implemented the Clean City Law, (6) ______ outdoor adverts a form of “visual pollution”. In a single year, the city removed 15,000 billboards and 300,000 oversized storefront signs.

It was a small glimpse of things to come. In the last decade, from Bristol to Tehran, there’s been a global (7) _______ to un-brand cities – to rid them, at least partially, of adverts. Citizen vigilantes, artists and activists are playing important roles. They have re-imagined what cities would look like if classical paintings replaced adverts; a team of (8) ______ in New York has created No Ad, an augmented-reality app that strips the New York City subway of ads, (9) ______them with art.

It’s not just about cleansing cities of “visual pollution” as if it were a sort of surface grime. Billboard advertising is far more intimately (10) ______ with the architecture of cities. While in other media we can, to some extent, choose to consume ads, out of home advertising has melded itself inextricably into our environment.

The ubiquity of outdoor advertising means that we have come to (11) ______ it for granted; accepting both its presence and its purpose as natural features of the (12) ______ environment.

It was also instructive: tearing down ads helped uncover previously hidden inequality within the city, (13) ______ favelasthat had previously been blocked by billboards. Without the perma-glow of advertising, people were forced to confront public space in a new light.

The latest and perhaps boldest attempt to un-brand public space (14) ______ from Grenoble, France, which became the first city in Europe to ban commercial street advertising. The mayor’s office replaced 326 advertising signs with community noticeboards and trees.

Advertising helps to (15) ______ some city and in (16) ______, it insinuates itself semi-permanently into the environment. Entirely ridding a city of its advertising and truly (17) ______ public space is a long process of untangling public infrastructure from private interests.

(The Guardian 11 August 2015)

1.  a) oversized            b) overlapped      c) heightened                  d) downsized

2.  a) ambiguous          b) outplayed        c) contradictory  d) incongruous

3.  a) puts                      b) says                  c) holds                d) treats

4.  a) proliferation       b) extent               c) projection        d) exuberance

5.  a) instance               b) pace                 c) step                              d) case

6.  a) nicknaming         b) labelling          c) monickering    d) stereotyping

7.  a) way of thinking  b) movement       c) inclination                  d) attachment

8.  a) city fathers          b) elaborators      c) city experts     d) developers

9.  a) replacing             b) decorating                   c) collaborating  d) overtaking

10. a) related                       b) appended                   c) contaminated  d) entwined

11. a) take                       b) set                     c) get                     d) view

12. a) urbanism              b) urbanite           c) urban                d)urbanization

13. a) exposing               b) spotlighting     c) exhibiting        d) expressing

14. a) goes                      b) initiates           c) comes               d) takes

15. a) fund                      b) focus                c) figure out         d) raise

16. a) contrast                b) return               c) profile              d) turn

17. a) recasting               b) devising           c) rebalancing     d) diverting