Creative cities: The role of culture

Abstract

During the recent years, many prescriptions have been mediatized for successful urban regeneration and growth based cultural dimensions and activities. Large cities may well harbor unprecedented creative capabilities, but they are also places where striking social, cultural, and economic inequalities prevail, and there can be no truly final achievement of the creative city where these stubborn problems remain. This is not simply a question of income distribution, but also involves basic issues of citizenship and democracy, and the full incorporation of all social strata into the active life of the city, not just for its own sake but also as a means of giving free rein to the creative powers of the citizenry at large. Creativity is not something that can be simply imported into the city on the backs of peripatetic computer hackers and assorted bohemians but must be organically developed through the complex interweaving of relations of production, work, and social life in specific urban contexts. In this perspective, cultural activities appear as a lever for developing new activities and new consumption spaces.