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This paper addresses the transformations of local cultural governance following the popularisation of the creative city thesis. While the economic impact of the arts in urban settings has been a topic of great interest in recent years and an amply documented theme, little is known about the consequence of such development knowledge and practice on the local cultural policy arena where it takes roots. Moreover, given the popularity and the enthusiasm for such strategies within municipal governments, we have seen a growing tendency to implement the creative city strategy and to formulate cultural policies that follow it in rural and smaller communities which are quite different from the more extensively documented urban and metropolitan cases. Through case studies of three cities in Northern Ontario (Canada), we can identify a number of changes in cultural governance and policy logics. Overall, the creative city narrative appears to be detrimental to typical arts advocacy in smaller communities since it leads to the domestication of the arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from the 1996 Canadian census to examine and measure the spatial structure and intensity of urban deprivation in Montreal. Urban deprivation emerged as an important theme in urban studies and urban geography during the 1990s. Since the early 1980s, the Montreal urban area, particularly the Island of Montreal, has experienced an increase in urban social problems, brought on largely by economic restructuring, recessions and the out-migration of residents and businesses to suburban communities. Twenty indicators of urban deprivation are drawn from the census and analysed by way of a principal components analysis first to identify the main types of deprivation in the city and then to measure its intensity. In the process, a general deprivation index (GDI) is devised which can be applied to study the spatial aspects of this phenomenon in other Canadian cities. The study identified six main types of deprivation in the city and found that they were most visible on the Island of Montreal, especially in the central and eastern parts. Additionally, it found that urban deprivation in not confined to the inner city, as several of the most severely deprived neighbourhoods are located outside the central city and even in the off-Island suburbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]