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This is a brief review of recent developments in funding culture in world cities. This review is based on findings of the World Cities Culture Finance Report (WCCF), published by BOP Consulting in 2017, which compared and contrasted the financing of culture in 16 global cities. Based on WCCF data, this review for JOCIS, first and foremost, defines city culture and its revenue streams, secondly, provides statistics and figures on the financing of culture, and thirdly, elaborates on how these findings can be used for further research into the economics of culture and urban sustainability. Funding for culture is unquestionably well-reasoned, but why does it matter how things are going in cities? Two-thirds of the world population will live in cities by 2030 (AP, 2016). Governments all over the globe face increasingly complex challenges brought by rapid urbanisation, ranging from environmental issues to social inequality. Culture is believed to be able to ease some of those tensions and creating striving urban centres as places of collaboration between various social groups. In fact, “many of the great policy issues of our age […] are [now] being led at a city, rather than national, level” (WCCF, 2017a). Before one moves on to question how to make city culture more robust in solving some of those tensions, it’s important to understand what is a city culture, which kinds of funding are already present, and how do they differ depending on various geographies?

This report aimed at summarizing an important and innovative study (especially in the Portuguese context) about tourism communication on social media in an ever growing international destination: Porto and the Northern Region of Portugal. In a time marked by the overwhelming cultural, social and political importance of social networks, their study becomes of a paramount importance. The recent economic rise of the tourism sector in Portugal grants further relevance to this study, which intended to contribute to the analysis of the new dynamics in promoting tourism on social media and institutional websites.

Creativity is a vast academic field studied from the perspective of political economy, policy research, business and management, economic geography, regional science, behavioural psychology, and other areas of inquiry. This report takes a media studies perspective on creativity and underlines that creativity is a process. Creative production is a response to “common economic and organisational challenges” (Dwyer, 2015, p. 990). This report also looks at recent data on creative clusters in the UK, the US and Canada by NESTA, a UK innovation foundation, with a special emphasis on the ‘creative city model’. This model is based on a combination of organisational management and urban studies and can be used to unveil cluster developments in urban and suburban areas.

This article is double aimed —it addresses the relevance of connections among the participants of the Lisbon creative ecosystem and presents a distinct model of a platform which creates and facilitates connection within this network. This research project is part of a strategy set up by the creative economy sector of the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa [Lisbon City Council], the CML, whose ambition is to position Lisbon as one of the most creative cities in Europe. Lisbon is currently the most creative city in Portugal. However, the professionals and institutions connected to the city’s creative ecosystem still lack a significant grasp of the rich infrastructure available in the city, as well as the existing knowledge, skills, and tools that can facilitate establishing of new creative partnerships and sharing of experiences and equipment. Considering this situation, we decided to carry multiple research projects aimed at finding the most appropriate model of an online platform which could fulfil these needs. The platform which was created as a result of these research projects is called Lisboa Criativa [—Creative Lisbon]. Its primary goals are to connect participants of the city’s creative ecosystem; foster partnerships; generate national and international visibility; and support local projects. These goals ultimately concur with positioning Lisbon as a creative city. The focus on its Cultural and Creative Industries (the CCIs) would allow Lisbon to combine the aforementioned strategies with the development of a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem and foster further economic activity.

The article focuses on startups within creative industries and the high-tech sector (the so-called TIME sector) and the relevance of the factors affecting the location choice of startups within these newly emerging industries. In terms of building a prospering startup ecosystem, results of this empirical research provide recommendations for representatives and designers in charge of destination management and regional development. For founders and entrepreneurs, the research will define which factors are relevant for their location choice. The article argues that the perspectives of stakeholders (entrepreneurs / startups and external experts) differ in some ways on the relevance of certain location factors. It also argues that the main challenge for destination management and regional development will be the dilemma between a generally positive economic situation and the development of a prosperous startup ecosystem.

The concept of creative industries is now well established in both academic and policy discourse. Historically, it had its roots in the policies of Tony Blair’s “New Labour” governments of the United Kingdom during the late 1990s and 2000s. Its creative industries policies were in turn influenced by culture-led urban renewal strategies in major UK cities such as Manchester, Sheffield and Glasgow, as well as by economically oriented cultural policy strategies such as the Australian government’s 1994 Creative Nation program. In the 2000s, there was a significant process of international diffusion of creative industries policies. Tafel-Viia et. al. identified such policies being developed in 11 leading European cities: Helsinki, Oslo, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Birmingham, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius and Warsaw. There have also been important regional and national policies developed in European nations including the UK, the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Russia, and creative industries have been at the forefront of the European Union’s Creative Europe strategies as part of the Horizon 2020 program.