“Creative city” policy mobilities as transformation of dispositives – arrangements of “networking” in the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg

Abstract

Abstract.Following the calls for context-sensitive policy mobility research, I propose to analyze policy mobilities as transformation of dispositives. Michel Foucault's context-sensitive notion of dispositive stresses the context-specific, heterogeneous relations between linguistic and non-linguistic practices, subjectivities and materialities as well as the influence of power/knowledge and sedimented features in policymaking. These sensitivities are valuable contributions to policy mobility research.I draw on empirical research on "creative city" policies, which are re-embedded in the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg, to illustrate that line of argumentation. I reconstruct and compare related (sub-)dispositives: the mobile creative city policies, the historical and current contexts of the policies' reembedding. Consequently, I use arrangements of networking as an empirical lens to understand the differing logics that shape the re-embedding of creative city policies in the European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg and the mutual transformation of policies and their contexts.

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

“….. These kinds of intra-urban co-operation are concrete examples of the creative economy as a common local project, and also demonstrate how relations within the city between different types of actors have been transformed and deepened over time (Dzudzek and Lindner, 2015;Ortegel, 2017). This also means that the local performance of the creative economy script is never complete or finished -it is (re-)written as it is enacted and performed over time.…”

“…When the top political figure in the city exhibits such personal commitment, it is an important part of the institutional 'fix' (Temenos and McCann, 2012) around culture and creativity, and is important in the long-term development of new networks (Ortegel, 2017) supporting intra-connectedness in this policy area.…”

“…Thus, it is timely to attend more closely to the role of place and context in understanding policy mobilities (Andersson, 2014; Dzudzek and Lindner, 2015; Nkula-Wenz, 2019; Ortegel, 2017; Temenos and McCann, 2012; Ward, 2018a, 2018b). Places have to be institutionally prepared for policy to ‘land’ there (Temenos and McCann, 2012) and policies from ‘outside’ cannot be adopted in a place unless it is open to them and ideologically and institutionally ready (Temenos and McCann, 2012; cf.…”

“…This common ground is not a fixed phenomenon but is ‘the result of an ongoing collective (re-)writing and performing endeavor, to which not only “partners in mind” contribute but also sometimes fierce opponents’ (Dzudzek and Lindner, 2015: 392–393). It is, thus, a kind of local ‘fix’ (Temenos and McCann, 2012) or performance often developed as the result of a prolonged and gradual process of policy learning (Wood, 2015), resulting in long-term transformation of the relations and networks (Ortegel, 2017) between actors, which prepares them to accept new ideas and ways of working together. As Ortegel (2017: 167) highlights, policy mobilities occur because of more than new institutional arrangements but are assisted or hindered by how ‘different co-existing arrange-ments of histories, discourses, practices, subjectivi-ties and materialities co-construct different and complex processes of re-embedding creative city policies.’…”

“…Thus, the ECoC bid was an important process in developing and deepening the already emerging ‘fix’ (Temenos and McCann, 2012) that made it possible for mobile policy ideas to land in the institutional setting of the city and enabled long-term and gradual learning and transformation (Ortegel, 2017; Wood, 2015). These different processes, activities, influences, plans, strategies and institutions meet each other in partial and sometimes unintended ways on different time-scales.…”