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International audience; “Cultural/Creative Quarters/Clusters/Districts” (CCC) have become very popular local development strategies across the World in the last 30 years. This popularity has been reflected within the academic literature in Urban Planning, Geography, Economics and Cultural Studies. However, each discipline and/or authors define these concepts in their own way or borrow from one another without necessarily clearly delimiting or explaining their approaches. As such, the CCC academic field of research is quite fuzzy. In order to address this issue, this paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of the peer-reviewed academic literature included in the Scopus database using the concepts of creative or cultural clusters, districts or quarters (the most popular combination of terms found in the literature). In doing so, the paper addresses the following questions: What are cultural/creative district, cluster and quarter? When did these concepts appear? Are these concepts overlapping? Who has been writing about these? In which disciplines and in which countries? What has been the evolution in terms of conceptual understanding? What are the themes and dimensions associated with these concepts? How have they been studied and researched (methodologies)? What issues and research gap are present within this literature? How can we move the research forward?

In the past fifteen years there has been an increasing focus on the importance of creativity in fostering economic development with the emergence of concepts such as creative industries, creative e...

Andres L. and Chapain C. The integration of cultural and creative industries into local and regional development strategies in Birmingham and Marseille: towards an inclusive and collaborative governance?, Regional Studies. This paper explores the nature of the integration mechanisms of cultural and creative industries (CCI) into local and regional strategies and policies in Birmingham (UK) and Marseille (France) over the last thirty years. Using the typology developed by Smith and Warfield in 2008 with regard to CCI local policies and drawing on the collaborative governance model of Ansell and Gash in 2007, the paper compares the private CCI actors involved in local policies based on culture-centric versus econo-centric approaches. It demonstrates that the culture-centric approach is more exclusive than the econo-centric approach, and tends to lead to restrictive governance arrangements. Andres L. and Chapain C. 伯明翰和马赛地区文化与创意产业与地方及区域发展战略的相互整合：迈向包容与协作性的管治？区域研究。本文探讨了过去三十多年在伯明翰（英国）和马赛（法国）地区文化创意产业（CCI）与地方及区域战...

The shift towards neo-liberal policy-making as orthodoxy has been well documented within the field of regional development and beyond (Brenner, Peck, & Theodore, 2012; Boland, 2014; Haughton, Allme...

This paper examines how the loss of 6300 jobs from the closure of MG Rover (MGR) in the city of Birmingham (UK) in April 2005 affected the employment trajectories of ex-workers, in the context of wider structural change and efforts at urban renewal. The paper presents an analysis of a longitudinal survey of 300 ex-MGR workers, and examines to what extent the state of local labour markets and workers’ geographical mobility—as well as the effectiveness of the immediate policy response and longer-term local economic strategies—may have helped to balance the impacts of personal attributes associated with workers’ employability and their reabsorption into the labour markets. It is found that the relative buoyancy of the local economy, the success of longer-run efforts at diversification and a strong policy response and retraining initiative helped many disadvantaged workers to find new jobs in the medium term. However, the paper also highlights the unequal employment outcomes and trajectories that many lesser-skilled workers faced. It explores the policy issues arising from such closures and their aftermath, such as the need to co-ordinate responses, to retain institutional capacity, to offer high-quality training and education resources to workers and, where possible, to slow down such closure processes to enable skills to be retained and reused within the local economy.

What makes a ‘Creative City’? The literature suggests that there are often conflicting accounts as to what the reality of the cultural and creative production is in cities, what their images are in terms of their cultural consumption and how they stimulate the cultural and creative capital of their citizens. This paper, inspired by Hall (2004), highlights how so far our understanding of the ‘Creative City’ has been fragmented and problematic in England by looking at data and measures of both creative production and consumption in two English cities – Birmingham and Newcastle-Gateshead. The authors call for a more holistic approach which takes into account not only the presence of creative industries and creative workers but also the level of cultural consumption and participation occurring in cities and the relationship between the two.

Chapain C. and Comunian R. Enabling and inhibiting the creative economy: the role of the local and regional dimensions in England, Regional Studies. Integrating findings from two separate research projects in Birmingham and Newcastle–Gateshead in England, this paper explores factors that enable or inhibit the development of creative and cultural industries in English regions outside London. The findings question current creative and cultural industries policies and their understanding of the local and regional dimensions as being limited to the idea of geographical clusters. Instead, the paper calls for a wider approach that also takes into account the importance of the regional infrastructure and the ‘knowledge pool’ necessary to the development of creative and cultural industries, but also personal and operational connections of the creative and cultural industries within and outside their region. Chapain C. et Comunian R. Promouvoir ou inhiber l'economie creative: le role de la dynamique locale et regi...

Pour les grandes villes nord-américaines, de nombreuses études confirment le déplacement des activités économiques vers la banlieue. Devons-nous pour autant sonner le glas des centres-villes et de la centralité? Après avoir effectué une revue des travaux sur le sujet, nous analysons 32 régions métropolitaines pour la période 1980-1995, en postulant que la force du centre-ville se révélera dans les rapports de prix centre/banlieue pour les espaces à bureau. Nous n'observons pas de tendance généralisée de déclin des centres villes. Les prix demeurent, en règle générale, plus élevés au centre, même s'il existe des pôles secondaires forts. Nous observons des différences importantes d'une ville et d'une région à l'autre, notamment entre villes canadiennes et américaines., The movement of economic activity to the suburbs is well documented for North American cities. However, does this necessarily mean the death of downtowns and of centrality? After reviewing relevant literature, we carry out an analysis for 32 metropolitan areas for the period 1980-1995, based on the postulate that the ratio (downtown/suburbs) of prices for comparable office space is a good indicator of centrality. We do not observe a generalized tendency towards downtown decline. Prices in downtown generally remain higher, even where important secondary centers are present. We observe major differences between cities and regions, specifically between Canadian and U.S. cities.