Grodach - Urban cultural policy and creative city making
Grodach, C. (2017) Urban cultural policy and creative city making. Cities, 68: 82-91.
The purpose of this paper is to revisit the history behind the creative city and critically engage with these emerging movements. In so doing, the aim of the author is to provide a deeper understanding of creative city policy formation and determine if these new movements represent a more progressive direction for policy. In the following section, he draws on academic literature and archival research to discuss the formative narratives and public discourse that positioned cultural policy as an instrument of urban development underpinning the rise of creative city policies. Next, he delineates the key modes of urban cultural policy and the subsequent formation of the creative city policy field. Author demonstrates that while discourse has evolved, creative city policy is largely a selective repackaging of 1980s policies with an expanded set of actors and interests. The result is a fragmented and contested policy field. Reflecting on this context, the following section explores two emerging movements around the concept of “making” - creative placemaking and the urban manufacturing/maker movement. The author attempts to show how these “making” movements reshape prior creative city concepts to produce a more progressive policy discourse around cultural production and community development. However, proponents must address significant challenges if they are to achieve the outcomes they aspire to.
Carl Grodach “Urban cultural policy and creative city making”