Search

This paper evaluates the success of the European Union City/Capital of Culture programme as a model for culture-led regeneration by assessing the long-term cultural impacts of Glasgow's experience in 1990. These cultural impacts, seen as distinct from economic, physical and even social impacts, are measured using soft indicators such as media and personal discourses. Assessment of cultural impacts is seldom undertaken and often dismissed as purely anecdotal in comparison with the hard evidence offered by established economic and physical impact evaluations. Here, this view is challenged and an alternative approach is offered in an exposition of the research design and main findings of a qualitative longitudinal study into the development of narratives around Glasgow's image and identity during the period 1986–2003. From this research, it emerges that the effect of regeneration on local images and identities is the strongest and best-sustained legacy of Glasgow's reign as City of Culture 15 years on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, it is shown how cultural policy, and in particular public art, intersects with the processes of urban restructuring and how it is a contributor, but also antidote, to the conflict that typically surrounds the restructuring of urban space. The particular focus of the paper is on investigating how public art can be inclusionary/exclusionary as part of the wider project of urban regeneration. The first part of the paper examines examples in which public art intervention has attempted to generate inclusion. Subsequently, attention focuses more on examples in which the public art has been perceived as an aspect of cultural domination and has thus provoked resistance. Throughout, it is argued that the processes through which artworks become installed into the urban fabric are critical to the successful development of inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores and discusses the fairly recent phenomenon of cultural clustering strategies in the Netherlands. Amongst other things based on ideologies of 'enterprise culture', the quest for urban imagery and positioning strategies, the changing spatial fabric of cities and a search for economic and cultural revitalisation, for the past 5-10 years, the formation of cultural clusters has turned into something of an urban cultural development hype. However, what at first glance appears as a common model, often accompanied by boldly expressed slogans concerning the new role of culture and creativity in the physical and economic revitalisation of cities, in more detail unfolds as an ambivalent and conflict-ridden mixture of cultural, economic, social and spatial interests and sentiments. From a short-term perspective, such an eclectic blending of interests and sentiments might be considered as a good opportunity for urban cultural developments within a ’post-modern’ urban development regime. However, from a long-term perspective, there is the danger that the divergent sentiments and interests start to undermine and constrain each other, in the end resulting in adverse effects, mutual distrust and a standstill of developments. Following a detailed investigation of five cultural clustering projects in the Netherlands, and based on Zukin's account of the exchange of cultural and economic values in the contemporary city, the paper argues that, in order to get out of this potentially self-defeating situation, and to enable a more sensitive but also strategic involvement of the cultural sector in the governance of cultural cluster projects, it is necessary to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the complex dynamics involved. Central to this is a locally specific appreciation of the changing interaction between culture (place) and commerce (market) in today's mixed economy of leisure, culture and creativity. This implies both a critique and advancement of existing theories concerning the role of culture in urban development and the development of a more detailed comparative perspective on urban cultural policy projects, thus moving beyond overgeneralised perceptions of the developments concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No longer just epicentres of capital transactions, cities are ‘going global’ on the basis of integrating economic and cultural activity as an urban regeneration strategy. Place-wars among cities to attract investors have intensified around the production and consumption of culture and the arts, often taking the form of the construction of mega-projects and hallmark events, the development of a cultural industries sector and an upsurge of urban image-making and branding activities. This paper first reviews the discursive underpinnings of the growing aestheticisation of the landscape as part of urban boosterism in the context of south-east Asia. As with other post-colonial cities which have embraced an entrepreneurial regime, spatial imagineering in south-east Asian cities draws on ‘local’ identity to gain a competitive edge in the global marketplace. This is followed by an examination of the emerging spatial politics, social polarisations and symbolic discontent accompanying cultural regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, the cultural industries have gained a key role in strategies to deal with urban problems, seen as able to provide a new economic base in post-industrial settings. Cases of flagship cultural institutions such as Tate Modern or the Guggenheim in Bilbao imply that a cultural turn in urban policy delivers urban revitalisation. Following the turn in Glasgow's fortunes after being European Capital of Culture in 1990, it is easy to understand how city authorities and developers alike are captivated by cultural projects. But there are questions: is advocacy for the creative industries to be trusted? To what extent can policies and strategies which are successful in one city be mapped onto others? And to what extent do cultural producers, such as artists, subscribe to the party line? An increasing number of voices of dissent in the arts suggest an alternative approach to urban regeneration. This paper questions the rhetoric of the cultural industries and investigates emerging alternative scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines results from an Australia-wide survey of multicultural policies at the level of local government. Multicultural policies have the potential to advance a local 'politics of difference', recasting governance, such that citizenship is expanded. Multicultural policies are described in terms of access and equity programmes, community relations policies and symbolic representations of cultural diversity and inclusive citizenship. The questionnaire survey of managers within local government revealed a broad array of good practices. However, there remained significant service gaps for residents of non-English-speaking backgrounds as well as a general reluctance to tackle instances of serious intercommunal tension. There was also some hesitancy to embrace the notion of a diverse local citizenry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift from government to governance in recent years has created significant new opportunities for people from disadvantaged communities to participate in the decisions that affect them. However, the weight of evidence over the years suggests that these communities have remained on the margins in partnerships and other initiatives. Governmentality theory helps to explain the ways in which state power persists even when governing is increasingly devolved; however, it also allows for the possibility of 'active subjects', who can shape and influence the new spaces into which they have been invited. This article draws on a range of evidence from the literature and from the author's own research in the UK to consider the challenges for communities of 'governing beyond the state'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a remarkable rise in the number of urban arts festivals in recent decades. The outcomes of cities' engagement with arts festivals, however, remain little understood, particularly in social and cultural terms. This article reviews existing literature on urban festivals and argues that city authorities tend to disregard the social value of festivals and to construe them simply as vehicles of economic generation or as ‘quick fix’ solutions to city image problems. While such an approach renders certain benefits, it is ultimately quite limiting. If arts festivals are to achieve their undoubted potential in animating communities, celebrating diversity and improving quality of life, then they must be conceived of in a more holistic way by urban managers. Currently, the tasks of conceptualising the problems at issue and devising appropriate policies are hampered by the scarcity of empirical research conducted in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the identity formation of urban centres and the use of aesthetic markers within that regeneration process largely fall into two camps that reflect their respective academic provenance. On the one hand, this effect is assessed by reference to urban planning and architectural processes. Here, the interest is firmly in the design hardware of buildings, streets and public spaces and how they are used to differentiate and communicate. On the other, this is reviewed by reference to the marketing strategies of place branding. Here the emotional software of brand identity programmes, as carried through literature, websites, the copywriting of slogans and other largely two-dimensional platforms comes into view. Within the remit of ‘culture-led regeneration’, the article considers a more extended version of the role of design in this process. Designers are implicated among networks of urban élites that decide strategies. But their involvement takes the process of design-led regeneration beyond buildings or leaflets to a loosely coherent, hegemonic network of signifiers to produce what I call ‘designscapes’. The article takes a critical approach to three designscapes: Barcelona, Manchester and Hull. In doing so, it evaluates contrasting approaches while keeping in view the interactions of design élites and their public, the flows between individual and collective consumption and their roles in forming an urban habitus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]