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Creative--city scripts, economic development, and sustainability.

Article Excerpt
Since 2000, interest in the discourse of urban "creativity" has increased among researchers in a range of academic disciplines, urban planning and economic development professionals, and the media. "What is remarkable here is not just the speed with which culture-driven strategies have become advocated by governments and local development agencies as a means of bolstering the urban economy but also how their diffusion has globalised" (Miles and Paddison 2005, 833). Similarly, Peter Hall observed that "culture is now seen as the magic substitute for all the lost factories and warehouses, and as a device that will create a new urban image, [making] the city more attractive to mobile capital and mobile professional workers" (2000, 640).

Economists and policymakers, economic geographers, and urban theorists have taken up creative-city scripts in a variety of ways. Keith Sawyer has examined the concept of creativity across several disciplines, from cognitive psychology, to history, to sociology (2006). Other scholars have taken a more specific approach to creativity. Walter Santanaga, for example, utilizes the fashion industry to suggest that economic concepts of creativity should be understood as historical geographical notions (2004). Louis Albrechts examines the institutionalization of ideas by planners and planning policy to show how planning as a profession lacks the capacity for creative thinking: the ability to challenge how things are and how they ought to be (2005). Deborah Stevenson argues that cultural planning (planning for the arts) is a much broader activity than planning for art shows and festivals (2004). It is social planning, urban planning, and economic development planning. Stevenson wonders openly why, given the extent to which cultural planning has assumed such an expansive brief, such scant academic attention has been paid to the factors that frame it and the reasons why cultural planning has become a strategic approach to local arts development (p. 120).

Where creativity has seen less attention--though this is changing--is in the area of critical urban politics. Indeed, Betsy Donald and Alison Blay-Palmer argue that many geographers view creativity as uncritical, and overly empirical, failing to advance notions of what type of society we want rather than what we have (2006, 1901). Donald and Blay-Palmer go on to try to develop a bridge between critical urban studies and creativity. Through their analysis of the creative-food economy in Toronto they show how boutique food producers, which have emerged in response to increasingly diverse dietary choices and cultural requirements, utilize organic and fairly traded food that not only meets their own needs but those of Toronto's urban elite. This work unites a longer-standing notion of what is cultural with what is economic (see also Rantisi 2004). It is also one of the few publications to link an analysis of creativity with sustainability, although it is not its prime focus.

One of the interesting aspects of creativity "scripts" is their potential appeal to the tripartite goals of sustainability, which we discuss below. Like many sustainability studies, scholars developed more fully the economic aspects of creativity than issues of social inclusion and the environment (but see Donald and Morrow 2003; Peck 2005). This special issue seeks to begin to redress this grave oversight. The purpose of this special issue is to identify (empirically) and explain (conceptually) the failure of these scripts to engage with social inclusion and environmental sustainability, other than as strategies to fulfill economic objectives.

MODELS OF CREATIVE AND SUSTAINABLE URBANISM?

We propose that scholars and urban planners employ three models of creative-city scripts in North America and Europe following three models of creativity (although a number of other approaches examine, among other topics, cultural products, and creative industries; see Kong 2000). Although the models are conceptually uneven, they suggest, either implicitly or explicitly, some capacity for promoting the triple concerns of sustainability. Moreover, these approaches have been applied around the world as real economic development strategies.

THE CREATIVE ECONOMY

Cities from London, to Hong Kong, to Providence, Rhode Island, to Seattle, Washington have sought to harness the collective economic power of their artistic communities. Decades ago artistic communities began to be noticed for their contributions...

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