The Creative Economy Through the Lens of Urban Resilience. An Analysis of Romanian Cities

Abstract

The creative economy has attracted increasing attention from academia and policymakers for more than two decades. However, despite the fl ourishing literature on this topic, its complex connection with development and its role in strengthening resilience are yet to be properly examined. The paper addresses this issue by investigating how different cities in Romania, with a different intensity of creative industries, have managed to resist and to recover from the aftermath of the Great Recession. Our fi ndings reveal that, as a whole, creative industries strengthen urban resistance against a recession, but do not necessarily fasten urban recovery. As our results suggest, this might be due to the asymmetrical impact across different groups of creative industries. Besides a creative economy proliferation, other factors are also identifi ed as signifi cant resilience drivers. Whilst a better access to healthcare services, higher local investments and a higher decentralization of local budgets appear to enhance the cities' resistance, higher shares of agriculture and fi nance, as well as a higher income per capita appear to correlate with a faster urban recovery.

Theoretical and Methodological Aspects for the Development of a Creative Economy in the Context of the Formation of an Innovative Business Ecosystem

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Urban or Rural: Does It Make A Difference for Economic Resilience? A Modelling Study on Economic and Cultural Geography in Romania

“…Studies focusing on the Romanian case identify the factors that affect the resilience capacity of communities: migration, aging, and a decrease in the number of employees are the factors that reduce resilience capacities and enhance urban decline [10]. Other studies on resilience approach the issue from a different perspective, either examining the capacity of creative industries to act as a bulwark against economic crises or to boost recovery [11], pointing out different regional reactions to the global economic shocks [12,13], or testing if either diversification or specialization in local economies is the key in coping with the hardships triggered by the recent recession [14].…”

Efficiency Measurement and Heterogeneity Analysis of Chinese Cultural and Creative Industries: Based on Three-Stage Data Envelopment Analysis Modified by Stochastic Frontier Analysis

“…The Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) in the 21st century have attracted global attention with their unique qualities and astonishing growth (BOP, 2010;Puchta et al, 2010;Johnson et al, 2019;Mazilu et al, 2020). The cultural industries with creativity as the crux of the world occupy a pivotal position connected to gross domestic products (GDP) contribution, production scale, and international trade cooperation (Skavronska, 2017;Li, 2018;Wang and Liu, 2021).…”