Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
In
The Rise of the Creative Class
, Florida (
2002a
) ranked San Francisco as the most
creative city in the USA, followed by Austin (Texas), with Boston (Massachusetts)
and San Diego (California) tied at third place.
104
'Business-As-Usual' in the Creative City?
Perhaps one of the most interesting things about the Creative City debate is the
manner in which the ideas have become so quickly part of planning and economic
development goals without much definitive evidence to back the theories. As Pratt
has argued:
Those peddling culture or creativity follow a long line of previous potions: environment,
safety, liveability, hi-tech, bio-, or nano-industry. To be clear, it is not the moniker that mat-
ters for the exercise but what it is suggestive of: growth. (Pratt
2008
, p. 5)
The rankings that have been produced seem to provide a statistical basis for general
policy prescriptions, but these have been subject to a range of methodological and
normative criticisms that have been largely ignored by policymakers, issues which
will be discussed later in this chapter,. It seems reasonable to suggest that what the
translation of Florida's ideas into practice actually represents is the latest phase of
what has more typically been referred to as 'city boosterism' or 'place marketing'.
Miles and Paddison (
2005
, p. 833) have suggested that culture-driven urban regen-
eration now has “a pivotal position in the new urban entrepreneurialism” and the
Creative Cities debate is just one part of that. Some argue that the same principles
and philosophies that underlay the property-led urban regeneration in the 1980s
have been brought back into play through Creative City strategies. Now, rather
than fiscal or other incentives to attract capital, cities are focused on implementing
strategies to attract talent in order to entice growth industries. These strategies are
founded on the same discourses of interurban competition, gentrification, consump-
tion and place-marketing, as earlier rounds of regeneration but they now have a
'softer' spin. Ponzini and Rossi (
2010
, p. 1039) have described this
urban policy
culturalization
as:
a new stage of entrepreneurial urbanism centred on the dynamic of the immaterial (atmo-
sphere, vibrancy, creativity) and material factors (regeneration areas, monuments etc.).
This is seen as the latest attempt for urban areas to push for a stake in the new
economy. The more fine-grained locational decision-making processes now ad-
opted by both the creative and high-technology industries means that cities have
had to go beyond offering what became the standard international package of flag-
ship projects, stadia and conference centres to gain a competitive advantage. The
development of the creativity and other indices by academics such as Florida have
provided a tool to identify those cities who have successfully achieved this goal
and given other cities something to emulate. However, Landry (
2006
) disagrees
with this 'business as usual' approach and argues that creativity should be about a
journey
to creating a 'better' city, rather than a strategy to become a 'winning' city.
