Geographies of cultural industries across the global urban system

Abstract

This paper reviews the research literature analysing the uneven geographical distribution of cultural industries across the global urban system. We begin by discussing the two major conceptual links between cultural industries and urban economies: (1) production processes becoming more flexible and specialised, and (2) the symbolic-oriented and place-rooted identities of cultural products. This has provided the backcloth for a wide-ranging urban-geographical research agenda exploring cultural industries, and here the focus is on how these industries are unevenly distributed, implemented and shaped across the global urban system. Cultural industries' dependence on a large pool of creative labour, extensive local networks of suppliers, access to tacit knowledge, and synergies based on spatial proximity all strengthen their agglomeration in a limited number of major metropolitan areas. However, the cultural economy also increasingly thrives in a range of smaller and remote cities as these have succeeded integrating into global cultural production networks and/or carved out a niche in increasingly differentiated consumer markets. In addition, because the economic importance of cultural production is expanding rapidly across the globe, we are seeing an increasingly polycentric urban geography with new global cultural centres emerging on the map.