Creative Cities - Theme Cities: Solutions for Urban Problems - page 357

Creative and Knowledge Cities are often used interchangeably; indeed Musterd
et al. ( 2007 , 2010 ) have provided research and a policy guide combining the Cre-
ative and Knowledge City ideas into the concept of Creative-Knowledge Cities. But
as the next chapter will illustrate, the Knowledge City literature is much broader in
its conception of creativity, placing major emphasis on the whole learning or knowl-
edge acquisition process, not simply individual sectors, such as patent-based innova-
tion, as the basis for new economic growth. So this chapter adopts a very specific
focus only on the cultural sector of creativity.
While it is undisputed that creativity plays a key role in urban and regional de-
velopment generally (Hall 2000 ) and is a key requisite for any city that aspires to
be successful. What creativity constitutes, how it is measured and how it relates to
urban life more broadly has been, and continues to be, the subject of intense debate.
The roots of the current debate on creative cities can be traced to the cultural econ-
omy work of various authors writing on urban affairs since the late 1980s, such as
Bianchini and Parkinson ( 1993 ), Garnham ( 2005 ) and Landry ( 1995 , 2000 , 2006 ).
Each of these recognised the potential for one form of creativity to promote urban
employment and vitality, especially in what has been called the cultural industries
(Scott 2000 ). In a European context, much of the research on creative cities has
been undertaken within the context of a response to economic decline and the need
for urban revitalisation. Cultural resources were seen as a key to the diversification
of local economic bases and the promotion of growth in new economic sectors such
as leisure, tourism, the arts and media (Bianchini and Parkinson 1993 ). Central to
the economic restructuring of many cities and the development of more vibrant ur-
ban environments, the cultural industries became critical elements of regeneration
strategies across North American, British and Australian cities. Scott ( 1997 , p. 335)
explains this shift by suggesting that at this particular moment:
in contemporary capitalism, the culture-generating capabilities of cities are being harnessed
to productive purposes, creating new kinds of localized competitive advantages with major
employment and income-enhancing effects.
This finding emphasises the way in which arts and culture are no longer primarily
regarded as being consumption activities in the contemporary city. The productive
capacity of cultural activities has become one of the defining characteristics of the
post-industrial age. In terms of the new post-modernist style they support what has
been described as:
the architecture of festival and spectacle, with its sense of the ephemeral, of display, and
of transitory but participatory pleasure…whole built environments become centrepieces of
urban spectacle and display. (Harvey 1989 , p. 270)
This cultural underpinning of Creative Cities is behind major initiatives such as the
UNESCO Creative Cities Network which evolved out of the Global Alliance for
Cultural Diversity initiative , set up in 2002. The network is a way for cities to pro-
mote their local cultural scene and is a mechanism for cities to share experiences,
ideas and best practices for cultural, social and economic development. The promo-
tion of 'creative tourism', was defined as tourism that