Getting Creative with the ‘Creative City’? Towards New Perspectives on Creativity in Urban Policy

Abstract

This article explores new avenues for academic research on the ‘creative city’. Creativity offers opportunities for urban development and the personal development of urban inhabitants, but its adoption in urban policy is frequently criticized for being welded to economic imperatives and a neoliberal agenda. Urban policymakers worldwide continue to adopt narrow conceptualizations of ‘creativity’ while largely ignoring extensive academic criticism of the concept, suggesting that academic concerns with creativity in urban policy need to be reoriented more effectively. This article develops four key theoretical points on the ‘creative city’ and creative urban policy. It argues that the focus of enquiry should shift towards a more in‐depth understanding of how ‘creativity’ is constructed, contested and performed in specific urban contexts, understanding the ‘creative policy gap’ between policymakers and those engaged in all kinds of creative practice, and developing forms of artistic intervention to attempt to make creative policymaking more inclusive and ‘creative’. These points are developed through a critique of the literature and some illustrative examples of people in creative occupations interacting with urban planners and policymakers in creative interventions. Résumé De nouveaux axes de recherches s’ouvrent à la ‘ville créative’. La créativité offre des possibilités d’aménagement urbain et d’épanouissement personnel des citadins, mais son intégration aux politiques urbaines est souvent critiquée pour être indissociable d’impératifs économiques et d’objectifs néolibéraux. À travers le monde, les décideurs des politiques urbaines adoptent encore des notions étriquées de la ‘créativité’, négligeant les fréquentes remises en question du concept dans les études académiques, et prétextant que l’intérêt des chercheurs pour la créativité dans ce domaine devrait être réorienté plus efficacement. Quatre points théoriques sur ‘la ville créative’ et sur une politique urbaine créative sont présentés: les études devraient tenter de mieux comprendre les manières d’élaborer, de contester et de concrétiser la ‘créativité’ dans des contextes urbains particuliers, appréhender le ‘déficit de politique créative’ entre les décideurs politiques et les personnes qui exercent toutes sortes de pratiques créatives, et développer des formes d’intervention artistique afin de susciter des approches des politiques urbaines plus inclusives et plus ‘créatives’. Ces points sont examinés en analysant les publications existantes, ainsi que plusieurs exemples de personnes exerçant des professions créatives en interaction avec les urbanistes et les décideurs politiques dans le cadre d’interventions créatives.

Obliterating creative capital? Urban governance of creative industries in post-socialist Budapest

“…Secondly, the creativity term is also to be used for positive alternatives, not only for criticism. Borén and Young (2013) emphasise the strength of the creativity thesis in opening up 'new conceptual spaces' where artists, citizens and academics may contest elite and urban planners' visions of creativity. How these spaces and places function in contemporary Budapest (as some examples do exist) might be a highly-needed empowering and emancipatory project for the future.…”

Creative planning and social sustainability

“…Nas últimas décadas, entretanto, diversos pesquisadores acadêmicos (LANDRY, BIANCHINI, 1995;LANDRY;2000;MICHALKO, 2001;HEALEY, 2004;ALBRECHTS, 2005;SORENSEN, TORFING, 2010;BORÉN, YOUNG, 2013) se interessaram por alcançar uma compreensão mais profunda de como "criatividade" pode ser gerada e de como, sendo parte da formulação de políticas, ela pode contribuir para um desenvolvimento urbano mais inclusivo e equilibrado.…”

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

“…It showed that creative city policies have been quite mobile and performative since the 1990s (Borén and Young, 2013;Dzudzek and Lindner, 2015;Lange et al, 2009;Peck, 2012;Prince, 2010;Sailer and Papenheim, 2007). A multiplicity of translocal and transscalar policy assemblages has emerged emphasizing different elements of "the creative-economy script as a point of reference for new policy practices", as Dzudzek and Lindner put it (2015:389-390).…”

“…Therefore, we need to go beyond policy and marketing documents and linear methodologies. Furthermore, we need to go beyond the focus on Anglophone and European capitals or "world cities" to discover the variations and contingencies in urban policymaking in other countries and smaller cities or regions like the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg (Borén and Young, 2013:1801-1806.…”