Creative Cities: On Handling Contradictions in Contemporary Urban Planning

Abstract

Planning the so-called creative city has advanced to be one of the major objectives of postindustrial urban development (see, selectively, Florida 2005; Lange 2007; Landry 2008; Merkel 2009). Here, creativity as planning principle is used as framework for projects as diverse as waterfront and brownfield developments, the regeneration of housing districts, the promotion of start-up companies, the architectural redesign of cities, and the sponsorship and promotion of cultural events (for an overview see Atkinson and Easthope 2009). Consequently, empirical studies show that the phenomena subsumed under the supposedly integrative umbrella of creativity are not only diverse but also to a great extent contradictory: certain groups are explicitly addressed and integrated in the development process (artists, creative workers, tourists), other groups are explicitly addressed but not integrated (the socially excluded, the “average inhabitant”, the elderly), again others neither addressed nor integrated (the homeless). As a result, creative cities as socio-spatial environments have contradictions at their very core. Taking the example of artists and creative workers, I show 1) how these intrinsic contradictions bring about creative cities as a certain type of cities and 2) what theoretical and methodological consequences for the field of creative cities research this implies.