Creative Cities: A Northern phenomenon

1
Creative Cities A Northern phenomenon?

• Questioning
• the internationalisation
• of a concept

2
The issue

• Some formulations, and their problems
• Floridas creative class
• Implies an instrumental notion of culture
• Focuses on consumption
• Is targeted at place marketing
• It ignores production, and the cultural
  industries
• Pecks critique based upon
• Neo-liberalism and consumption
• Markusens avocacy for ontology of
• Occupational classifications
• Responses
• Is it an exclusively Northern/ consumption
  phenomenon?
• Trans-local production?
• Conclusion
• We need an account of the new role of cultural
  production in and across cities

3
The City Ranking Business whats culture got to
do with it?

• 3 Ts (technology, talent, tolerance) are the
  basis of ranking cities
• Evidential base
• Conceptual account
• Neo-liberalism and place marketing
• Conceptual assumption about footloose industry
• Culture consumption
• Teleology and industrial development
• Industry, knowledge, creative.
• Cultural consumption as another Quality of Life
  indicator
• Causality
• Culture (production, consumption) as indirect
  impact

4
The concept of the creative class

• Antecedent of concept Bell and the (late)
  Castells
• not Marx, nor Goldthorpe
• More properly, a descriptive taxonomy
• Not based on causal properties
• Conflated with occupation
• Elided with cultural values
• Logically, cultural workers should be the new
  scientific class (this is still a problem)
• But, Floridas concern is with (simple) cultural
  consumption (economically reductive, and not
  based on occupation) of the new scientific class
• Problem of universalizing notions of class

5
Beyond the creative class?Or, the wider
political-economic sphere

• Florida - role of values
• Originating from.shared consumption?
• A-historical
• Need exploration of the processes that give rise
  to (rely upon a massive social infrastructure)
• A. Changes on production, valorizing taste
• Flexible specialization
• Culturalization of production
• Experience or Affective consumption
• B. Political changes
• stylized rebellion
• Non- autonomous consumers
• (Bounded) semi-institutionalisation of taste

6
Urban regeneration the creative class and its
antecedents

• The promotion of technology/knowledge
• The relocation game flagship/ property
  strategies
• c.f. science parks
• The new USP - culture
• In Floridas idea - still selling to high tech
  firms
• Human capital mobility theory (Glasser)
• A new twist on place marketing
• Delivering people to high-tech firms
• Both ideas are a consumption hook
• Not sustainable (c.f. cultural gentrification)
• Need to look at cultural production

7
The creative class and urban regeneration in LDCs?

• Issues
• Already a move to the city, but lack
• physical infrastructure
• institutions to mobilise local production and
  valourisation of IPRs
• consumption power
• Have creativity, but lack
• Control of production/ IPR
• Control of institutions and technologies within
  which to insert products
• Need to look at trans-local mobilisation

8
The fetishization of creativity

• Poor conceptualization of the cultural industries
  - morphed into creative industries
• Focus on creativity, not industry
• Recent responses to term this the creative
  economy
• Creativity and innovation are a process of
  production
• not isolated, but embedded
• What Florida should do (in his terms) is focus on
  the new creative class in production (e.g.
  design)
• But creativity is a process not only found in
  creative industries
• Markusens concern with creative occupations
• ignores the institutional structure of the
  cultural industries

9
Cultural production rediscovered

• Conceptualization of cultural production
• Production chain
• Cut across
• public-private
• formal/informal
• for and not for profit
• Attend to the role of cultural production in the
  urban and regional economy
• New producer services
• Role of
• Informal knowledge exchange
• Project networks
• Extreme localization
• From instrumental to industrial policy
• Intrinsic value creation

10
Whats next 1 ?

• More description and analysis of the creative
  economy in LDC and DC
• Institutional and network forms
• Embedding
• Appropriate information on trade of cultural
  goods/servcies
• Definitions that are inclusive
• Eg include craft production
• Informal economy
• Challenge Northern IPR protocols

11
What next 2?

• Focus on cultural production aspects of creative
  economy
• Relation of production and consumption
• Explore the role of institution and network
  building, not physical flagship buildings
• Understand sustainability in terms of region
• Re-investment
• Developing and protecting IPR
• Training
• Linked research and policy agenda
• Re-configure creative cities agenda to all
  cities
• Shift from consumption to production
• Greater international comparative/oversight/resear
  ch