By Lindsey Fair – Vice President, Marketing and Bayview Impact – Invest Ottawa

The announcement that the Ottawa Senators and the NCC have finalized the sale agreement for 11 acres at LeBreton Flats marks a defining moment in our city’s future (National Capital Commission, 2025). While the spotlight is understandably on the new downtown arena, the deeper story is one of connection, creativity, and community-led placemaking.

This development isn’t just about hockey, it could be the anchor that bridges Ottawa’s urban core with Bayview Yards and sparks the next phase of regeneration for the area.

From City-Building to City-Blogging: The Rise of the User-Generated City

In an era where neighbourhoods are shaped as much by Instagram as by infrastructure, we are witnessing the rise of the user-generated city (Kenney and Zysman, 2016). Everyday residents, students, founders, artists and fans all contribute to the evolving identity of place, not through formal channels but through photos, reviews, hashtags, and everyday stories shared online (Briciu, Rezeanu and Briciu, 2020; Luca, 2016).

This shift, which I coined platform placemaking, repositions the city as both a physical and digital landscape. It’s not the skyline that defines perception anymore; it’s the storylines (Fair, 2022). Places like LeBreton Flats are not just branded by developers or civic agencies, they’re co-authored by the people who live, play, create and connect there (Boisen et al., 2018; Masuda and Bookman, 2018).

The Arena as Anchor and Platform

What makes this arena project unique is its placement within a broader ecosystem of innovation and regeneration. Located just steps from Bayview Yards, the new arena can act as a physical and symbolic bridge connecting downtown Ottawa with a cluster of creative, tech, research and civic assets that already form the backbone of the city’s emerging urban economy (Florida, 2002; Vanolo, 2015).

But here’s the twist. Success won’t come from glossy campaigns or isolated development plans. It will come from activating this place as a living system, one that embraces the voices, content and contributions of everyday users (Anholt, 2010; Peck, 2014; Zukin, 2011).

Where Infrastructure Meets Identity

Cities often think of transformation zones as clusters of buildings. But the most impactful places are clusters of stories. They are urban interfaces where economic development meets emotional connection, places that feel alive because people are engaged in shaping them (Cleave and Arku, 2015).

That’s where user-generated content becomes strategic. When fans leave the new arena and post a video of their walk to the LRT or a hidden café nearby, they’re doing more than sharing a moment. They are shaping the district’s identity and extending its digital reach (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011; Zukin, 2020). In a user-generated city, the most compelling place brands aren’t created in boardrooms; they’re earned on sidewalks (Anholt, 2010; Fair, 2022).

The LeBreton arena isn’t just a new destination. It’s a connector, a spark, a platform. It could become the social and cultural heart of a dynamic corridor that stretches from Parliament Hill to Bayview Yards. A place where economic ambition meets grassroots creativity, and where place branding is not something we say, but something we live.

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References

• Anholt, S., 2010. Definitions of place branding – Working towards a resolution. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 6(1), pp.1–10.
• Boisen, M., Terlouw, K., Groote, P. and Couwenberg, O., 2018. Reframing place promotion, place marketing, and place branding – moving beyond conceptual confusion. Cities, 80, pp.4–11.
• Briciu, V., Rezeanu, C. and Briciu, A., 2020. Online place branding: Is geography destiny in a ‘space of flows’ world? Sustainability, 12(10), pp.1–20.
• Cleave, E. and Arku, G., 2015. Place branding, embeddedness and endogenous rural development: A case study of southern Ontario, Canada. Journal of Rural Studies, 39, pp.78–89.
• Fair, L.R., 2022. Platform placemaking machines: Neighbourhood place-branding in Kingston Ontario. Queen’s University.
• Florida, R., 2002. The rise of the creative class. New York: Basic Books.
• Kenney, M. and Zysman, J., 2016. The rise of the platform economy. Issues in Science and Technology, 32(3), pp.61–69.
• Kitchin, R. and Dodge, M., 2011. Code/space: Software and everyday life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Luca, M., 2016. Reviews, reputation, and revenue: The case of Yelp.com. Harvard Business School Working Paper, 12-016. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1928601.
• Masuda, J. and Bookman, S., 2018. Neighbourhood branding and the right to the city. Progress in Human Geography, 42(2), pp.165–182.
• National Capital Commission, 2025. Ottawa Senators and NCC complete sale agreement for 11 acres at LeBreton Flats. [online] Ottawa Citizen. Available at: https://ottawacitizen.com/sports/ottawa-senators-ncc-complete-sale-agreement-for-11-acres-at-lebreton-flats [Accessed 24 Aug. 2025].
• Peck, J., 2014. Entrepreneurial city redux. Urban Geography, 35(5), pp.652–681.
• Vanolo, A., 2015. The image of the creative city, eight years later: Turin, urban branding and the economic crisis taboo. Cities, 46, pp.1–7.
• Zukin, S., 2011. Naked city: The death and life of authentic urban places. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Zukin, S., 2020. The innovation complex: Cities, tech, and the new economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.