Abstract
Celebrated as “Montpellier the gifted” and “the most creative French city”, Montpellier is a paradoxical ordinary city. Ranked second in the country for population growth and first for attracting knowledge workers, Montpellier is also one of the French poorest cities in which unemployment and social inequalities reach high levels. Much more than a rhetorical device, the creative city relies on two embedded processes: the implementation of a political imaginary of a creative and a non-stop innovative city built since the 1980s on a narrative urbanism; and a process of “urbanization by its pieces” designed as the “neighbourhoods fabric strategy”: an institutionalized way of urban fragmentation and residential inequalities in the city.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Council of Europe and CEC 2008.
- 2.
It is 14 percent for cities with similar characteristics.
- 3.
The national average housing cost is about 2500 euros per square meter.
- 4.
“Maisons pour tous” are multipurpose institutions offering cultural, social, sports, and leisure services to adjacent neighborhoods.
- 5.
City as a product.
- 6.
“Montpellier, the city where architects never sleep”.
- 7.
“Bourgeois Bohème” (Marchal and Stébe 2014; Brooks, 2001).
- 8.
Bibliography
Bodirisky, Katarina. 2012. Culture for competitiveness: valuing diversity in EU-Europe and the ‘creative city’ of Berlin. International Journal of Cultural Policy 18(4): 455–473.
Boreen, Thomas, Young Craig. 2013. Getting creative with the ‘creative city’? Towards new perspective on creativity in urban policy. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37(3): 1799–1815.
Boudreau, Julie-Anne, R. Keil, and D. Young. 2009. Changing Toronto: governing urban neoliberalism. Toronto: UTP.
Brenner, Neil, and N. Theodore. 2002. Cities and the geographies of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’. Antipode 34(3): 349–379.
Brooks, David. 2001. Bobo in paradise: The new upper class and how they get there. Simon & Schulter, New York.
Deboulet, Agnes and Lelevrier, Christine, 2014, Rénovations urbaines en Europe. Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Rennes.
Giband, David. 2011. Les villes de la diversité. Territoires du vivre ensemble. Paris: Anthropos/Economica, Coll. Géographie 150 p.
———. 2016. Ecocity: the case of Montpellier. In Adventures in urban sustainable development: theoretical interventions and notes from the field, ed. T. Freytag, S. Mossner, and R. Krueger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (forthcoming).
Hackorth, Jason. 2006. ‘Neoliberalism, contingency and urban policy: the case of social housing in Ontario’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30(3): 510–517.
Hamman, Paul, and C. Blanc. 2010. Les négociations dans les projets urbains de tramway. Regards croisés sur les projets strasbourgeois et montpelliérains. In Des rails pour tisser des liens ? Les tramways à l’épreuve de la négociation dans les projets urbains, ed. P. Hamman. Paris: Research Report.
Hamman, Paul, and C. Blanc. 2010. Les négociations dans les projets urbains de tramway. Regards croisés sur les projets strasbourgeois et montpelliérains. In Des rails pour tisser des liens ? Les tramways à l’épreuve de la négociation dans les projets urbains, ed. P. Hamman. Paris: Research Report.
Hollard, Michel, and Guy Saez. 2012. Les nouveaux enjeux des politiques culturelles. Dynamiques européennes, 23–71. Paris: La Découverte.
Le Galès, Patrick, and N. Vézinat. 2015. L’État recompose. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Nay, Olivier. 1994. Les enjeux symboliques du développement local : l’exemple de la politique de communication de Montpellier. Politique et management public 12(4): 57–69.
Négrier, Emmanuel. 1993. Montpellier: international competition and community access. In Cultural policy and urban regeneration, ed. François Bianchini, and M. Parkinson, 135–154. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
———. 2008. La culture projet métropolitain? Le cas de Montpellier. In Intercommunalités, le temps de la culture, ed. E. Négrier, P. Teille, J. Préau, and A. Faure. Grenoble: Observatoire des politiques culturelles.
Peck, Jamie., 2005. Struggling with the creative class. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29 (4): 740–770
Ponzini, Davide, and C. Rossi. 2010. Becoming a creative city: the entrepreneurial mayor, network and policy and the promise of an urban renaissance. Urban Studies 47(5): 1037–1055.
PrisVivant, Elsa. 2009. Qu’est-ce que la ville créative ?, Presses universitaires de France, Paris.
Scott, Allen J. 2014. Beyond the creative city: cognitive–cultural capitalism and the new urbanism. Regional Studies 48(4): 565–578.
Volle, Jean-Paul, Viala, Laurent, Négrier Emmanuel, Crozat, Dominique. 2010, Montpellier, la ville inventée. Parenthèses Editions. Paris.
Wacquant, Loic. 2006. Parias urbains: Ghetto, banlieues, Etat. La Découverte.
Ward, Kevin. 2003. Entrepreneurial urbanism, state restructuring and civilizing East Manchester. Royal Geographical Society 35(2): 116–127.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Giband, D. (2017). “Creative Urbanism” in the French South: Constructing the (Unequal) Creative City in Montpellier. In: Gerhard, U., Hoelscher, M., Wilson, D. (eds) Inequalities in Creative Cities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95115-4_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95115-4_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95114-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95115-4
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)