The psychological make-up of a city

I wonder what the best approach would be to determine the psychological make-up of a city. In Oslo and Warsaw I took the following approach. I asked some key cultural innovation drivers to describe their city to me as if it were a person. 'If Oslo is your friend, what would he/she be like?' This is a branding approach, making personae for a product. The problem is that cultural innovators are just one group to ask. Probably, immigrants would have a completely different picture of the city. Carol Coletta (CEOs for Cities) told me in Tilburg that she liked the idea that Manchester described itself as a collection of short stories, because the city (or any city) is too complex to make 1 single story. Is that the risk of all citybranding? That no single idea can capture something as organic and complex as a city?