Intra-urban connectedness, policy mobilities and creative city-making: national conservatism vs. urban (neo)liberalism

Abstract

This article aims to advance the literature on policy mobility by decentring the primacy of mobility itself and focusing on understanding what cities do in order to ‘arrive at’ localized versions of urban policy in relation to globally circulating ideas around creativity. The paper explores the performance of a particular local ‘creative economy’ in terms of institutional and strategic adjustments, key drivers and individuals and events, and the role of long-term local, national and international influences on ‘creative cityness’. It does this through an analysis of cultural and creativity policy and local stakeholders in the cultural policy scene in Gdańsk, Poland, focusing on the local performative aspects of mobile policies and arguing the need to understand the formation of a ‘common local project’ as a form of intra-urban connectedness alongside inter-urban connectedness. The paper extends the range of contexts in which the ‘creative city’ has been analysed to include post-socialist, post-European Union accession Central and Eastern Europe, thus making an original contribution by studying these issues in the context of the complex multi-scalar relations between the city, national government and the supranational European Union and the ideological conflict between national authoritarian neoliberalism and urban and supranational scale (neo-)liberalism.