Creative Cities and Public Cultures ─ Art, Democracy and Urban Lives

Around the world city policy makers, planners and strategists are finding ways of using culture in urban and economic development. From Birmingham to Shanghai we find a ‘new economy’ of creative industries, public arts, multicultural festivities, civic brands and new heritage spaces. The city has been redefined as a place and space for imagination and creativity. This book assesses many examples, and investigates the politics of this change. What has happened to the ‘public’, public goods, and public culture? Do the new creative economies of our global cities cultivate, or suppress, democratic citizenship, participation, justice and access?

The volume considers the theoretical discourse of the Creative City (and its critics), with reference to outstanding examples of Creative City urban policy (such as Toronto, Chicago, and Berlin). The global ‘Creative City’ movement is explained in terms of policy, strategy, planning and implementation in the context of global political concerns for democracy, equality, cultural autonomy and social self-determination. It assesses the use of culture in developing public spaces and cultural infrastructures, heritage and urban memory, public art and civic identity, creative class networks, professional and sub-cultural communities. It aims to create a new political agenda for a ‘public city’.

Creative Cities and Public Cultures will recover and advance the agenda of urban cultural policy studies – the original Creative City framework pioneered by Landry, Bianchini and Comedia. It will recover the political thrust of this original framework, and argue for a ‘public’ Creative City. In its exploration of urban policy, cultural production and urban space in key cities across the world, the research will therefore develop a methodology for assessing the ‘public’ content of Creative City urban-economic development. This will, in turn, provide evidence for the urban significance of overlooked creative enterprises – micro-business, self-managed public art and artist-run galleries, and new urban sub-cultures, like faith communities.