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How do arts institutions and cultural districts deal with diversity and inclusion, and what actions can they take to actively represent the different cultures within a city? Moreover, will these actions be enough? These are some of the challenges that practitioners in the arts are facing in the US and beyond, ever since the Black Lives Matter movement brought them into the spotlight of public debate again. In this paper, we try to answer these questions by focusing on cultural districts, as they are sites where different cultural institutions, possibly representing different values, traditions, and segments of the community, coalesce. As forms of loosely coupled public networks, the actions and behavior of a cultural district in terms of diversity and inclusion are a matter of concern. This paper builds on insights from five anonymous interviews with some of the practitioners involved in a specific cultural district--the Dallas Arts District. Drawing on the practitioners' perspectives, we propose a conceptual framework that might be conceived as a guide for cultural districts (and cultural institutions) willing to transform themselves into more plural and diverse organizations. The paper will also provide insights for researchers willing to fill the gaps in the arts management literature regarding triggers for diversity and inclusion in the arts ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Art clusters in cities are welcomed by planners, residents and business. In respect to an urban economy, art clusters are viewed as beneficial because of their contribution to neighbourhood ambience in ways likely to attract young professionals who possess, it is said, higher propensity for innovation and creativity. Clusters of art activity are also seen as place-makers that enhance liveability, an important asset in the contemporary spatial economy. Yet there is little empirical work which examines the forces that drive the location of these places of art and their connection to the urban economy. This paper takes art galleries in Sydney, Australia, as a case study. Using data from a comprehensive survey, interviews and direct observation, the study finds a peculiar story of art clustering. Sydney's galleries are found to be concentrated in exclusive locations. The study finds powerful agglomeration forces, including opportunities for stable property tenure, adjacency to the city's cultural institutions, input of government funding and the presence of wealthy buyers among local residents. Certainly, the agglomerations identified meet criteria for recognition as cultural districts, yet in ways different to the images of edgy neighbourhoods presented in the literature as the substance of art in a post-industrial city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last twenty years, cities around the world have seen the multiplication of cultural district projects, which aim to concentrate cultural organisations in a circumscribed urban space, or to label a neighbourhood's cultural scene. This paper examines the adoption and adaptation of a globally circulating cultural policy model as an instrument of urban governance. Moving away from the notion of policy transfer, understood as a neutral and unidirectional process through which successful culture-led development models spread to other contexts, I show how local actors mobilise external references to position themselves in a transnational cultural policymaking field, and construct their city as a model. I compare the multi-scalar politics of urban modelling in Doha and Singapore, where globally circulating culture-led development models have been introduced not only as instruments of economic growth, but also as diversity management tools. On the one hand, cultural districts serve as discursive nation building/branding instruments to project an imagined identity locally and internationally. On the other hand, urban elites can mobilise cultural districts to make strategic shifts in the diversity management discourse, through an engagement with the urban environment, and the co-optation civil society actors at multiple scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural/Creative Quarters/Clusters/Districts' (CCC) have become very popular local development strategies in the last 30 years as reflected within the Urban Planning, Geography, Economics and Cultural Studies literature. However, this multi-disciplinarity has rendered the CCC academic field of research quite fuzzy as authors offers their own definition or borrow from each other without clear explanations. In order to address this issue, this paper presents a systematic literature review and analyses the ways these concepts have evolved, what have been the themes and dimensions associated with them, how they have been studied and researched, and then suggest a renewed research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Dubai's urban scene is dominated by planned and pre-designed developments, grassroots initiatives have always been present and have helped shape the trajectory of the city's evolution. In one case, an industrial area, Al Quoz, has seen the clustering of art businesses over a relatively short period turning it into a cultural destination. Accounting for most of such clustering, Alserkal Avenue became Dubai's art hot-spot that changed the cultural map of the city. This article describes the rise of Alserkal Avenue, not only as the result of the entrepreneurial action of the proprietors but also as a product of a complex melange of economic, cultural, and urban evolutionary processes that intertwine with the rise of the city itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural diplomacy has traditionally been a strategic instrument of national governments to achieve foreign policy objectives. Nation states have supported the international missions of museums to promote national cultural ideas and values abroad to pursue strategic geopolitical interests. However, in the twenty-first century the complex process of neoliberal globalisation and political decentralisation have transformed traditional cultural diplomacy based on exclusively national projections. There are new forms, channels and narratives of cultural diplomacy that emerge with the appearance of new types of cultural institutions, such as franchise museums, like Guggenheim Bilbao, Hermitage Amsterdam or Louvre Abu Dhabi. This article explores the case of Louvre Abu Dhabi to exemplify the phenomenon of 'glocal' museum diplomacy that rests on global ambitions of the local Abu Dhabi government and at the same time draws on national aspirations of France to strengthen its geopolitical presence and influence in the Middle East. The article identifies multiple museum narratives that transform museum diplomacy from a bilateral, state-initiated strategic activity into a multilateral and multidirectional endeavour engaging stakeholders and audiences on local, national and global levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is culture a strategic tool for local development? Do cultural resources foster physical, economic and social renewal? We have attempted to answer yes throughout our analysis of the Matera 2019 cultural capital project, using some fundamental drivers like: quality of cultural supply, quality of production knowledge, development of local talent and attraction of external talent, capability building, education of the local community and internal or external networking. The Matera case study configures an extremely thorough ag- gregation of Universities, Research Centres, Associations and Enterprise and, more importantly, a strong social mobilisation in the field of cultural production. This aspect occur in the wide use of open data and in the networking of cultural circles, film archives as well as history archives with the aim to invent and re-invent forms of collaborative memory. Above all in Matera, culture is a system of coordination among local actors within a social learning activity focused on innovation process.

Copyright of International Journal of Arts Management is the property of International Journal of Arts Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of International Journal of Arts Management is the property of International Journal of Arts Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study argues for the significance of the network governance model in bottom-up cultural district development aimed at neighborhood revitalization. This study, employing a multi-level policy design framework in a case study of the Gordon Square Arts District in Cleveland, Ohio, found that having a formalized governance structure and ongoing technical assistance empowered local arts organizations to succeed in advocating and bargaining for their organizational interests and needs as well as the broader needs of their community. Both network governance and technical assistance created more opportunities to achieve a relatively balanced power of cultural and non-cultural actors in decision-making on policy objectives, mechanisms, implementation tools, and solutions against the issue of marginalization caused by displacement via market-driven overdevelopment. • Cultural district development is a common urban revitalization strategy. • Cultural district development requires diverse policy decisions from governance arrangement to implementation tool selection. • The Gordon Square Arts District development governance evolved from a voluntary collaboration into a formalized mechanism. • The local arts organizations catalyzed this formality of governance, ensuring relatively balanced power dynamics. • This governance arrangment enabled the local arts organizations to maintain their equal roles in the development process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to broaden knowledge on policy governance of cultural districts, particularly those utilizing artist communities for urban revitalization. With the rise of the cultural economy in post-industrial cities in South Korea, cultural strategies have become key components in almost every urban regeneration project. The tactic of encouraging groups of community artists to work and live in distressed neighborhoods has been regarded as a low-budget and easy-to-implement tool for urban revitalization. Over the past few years, however, these strategies have failed to meet expectations and have often resulted in conflicts between artists and the government. To understand the factors behind the strategies' positive and negative consequences, this paper examines three projects with different degrees of government intervention: the Totatoga project in Busan City, the Daein Art Market project in Gwangju City, and the Changdong Art Village project in Changwon City. The analysis focuses on the mode of government intervention in the relationships among the government, artists, intermediary agencies, and local citizens. By putting the mode of government intervention in the context of social relations of related players in the cultural districts, this paper tries to understand how similar policy schemes created different consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural districts are becoming an important field of study to promote a growing number of initiatives for local development. Despite substantial research in this field, knowledge gaps remain, especially with regard to initiatives at supra-urban level. Many policy-makers, funding agencies, local administrators and managers still face important design issues. This paper contributes to the developing body of theory on cultural districts in two ways. Firstly, focusing on concepts from complexity theory, it expands the debate on the conception of cultural districts as complex adaptive systems. Secondly, it highlights the dysfunctional tensions that can arise from conflicting ways of conceiving organizations, organizing and designing among ‘promoters’ and designers. We have been involved for three years in a large project aimed at designing a wide supra-urban cultural district in Italy, financed by a major banking foundation. Adopting an organizational perspective and through participative action research, we develop an explorative case study. Our core argument is that a linear, predictable and deterministic approach to analysis and design presents many limitations for such complex projects, offering learning opportunities from the design experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cross-sectional nature of cultural policy has led to the proliferation of partnerships among the public, private, and societal sectors, particularly at the local level. Despite the increase in such collaborations, there is little academic research on how actor diversity is shaping local cultural governance. This study aims to understand how actor diversity affects governance dimensions in a Cultural District in Italy. Our findings suggest a number of challenges for local government, which render them vulnerable to political instability, perpetuate power and resource imbalances, and undermine leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Literature on cultural districts has repeatedly pointed out the role of place branding as a tool to upgrade the image of urban environment as an indicator of meaning and significance. Throughout the case of UNESCO’s mining heritage district in Sardinia (Italy), the purpose of this paper is to investigate on the role that Place Branding Organizations (PBOs) has and/or may have in the construction of coherent images for landscape and cultural heritage in the design of “sustainable” cultural districts in connection with local authorities’ agenda. At this purpose, the authors propose an operative definition of “partnership building strategy” and a new analytic framework to evaluate PBO’s activity within place branding theory. Design/methodology/approach – Considering what recently expressed by UNESCO about the integration between spatial and cultural planning, the authors focus the research on cultural heritage districts protected by this organization. Starting from the definition of strategy proposed by Anholt (2011) and the participation-based approach outlined by Hankinson (2010), the authors propose a new analytic framework to evaluate PBO’s activity and the authors try to apply it to the experience of mining heritage in Sardinia (Italy), comparing the activity of local PBOs (the Consortium for the UNESCO’s Sardinian Geo-mining Park and the Local Tourism System) with the Development Plan of the Carbonia-Iglesias Province. In the final part of the work, the authors discuss the outcomes of the comparative analysis in terms of partnership building strategy and its influence on cultural heritage district design. Findings – The experience of the Sardinia district proves that partnership building strategy has a relevant role both in place branding and cultural heritage district design but it is not sufficient to make this letter really functioning. It confirms also that a place brand can survive to political regime changes on a periodic basis only if the PBO establishes an appropriate institutional framework for the creation of a cooperative network that can take the branding process forward. The research finding about place branding of UNESCO’s mining heritage sites, outline the demand for a new and more integrated approach in the district design, inspired to the geographic studies on “cultural basin.” Research limitations/implications – The analytical framework which the authors provide on the basis of a new operative definition of partnership strategy building, has proved to be a useful tool to assess PBO’s activity but, despite this, it represents only a partial result because the theoretical model of the relationships between PBOs, local and supra-local actors requires further developments to describe the effective type and nature of this links. Practical implications – The research finding about place branding of UNESCO’s mining heritage sites, outline the demand for a new and more integrated approach in the district design, inspired to the geographic studies on “cultural basin.” To achieve a real sustainable development and a shared enhancement of identity and landscape, the authors propose as a possible solution the abandonment of administrative boundaries in cultural planning through a correspondence between cultural district and historic region, this latter defined according to the methods and tools developed by the geographical sciences for the “cultural basin.” At this scope the authors propose a new methodological framework which takes the participation-based place branding into the “cultural heritage chain” for the district design, setting a future research agenda. Originality/value – The authors propose an operative definition of “partnership building strategy” for the participation-based approach outlined by Hankinson (2010) and, on this base, the authors test a new analytic framework to evaluate PBOs’ activity which combines the traditional activities of promotion and marketing with PBOs’ partnership strategies. Finally, the authors propose a methodological frame which brings the participation-based place branding into the “cultural heritage chain” setting a future research agenda in cultural heritage district’s design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] The paper describes peculiar features of Italian approaches to Cultural Districts. [•] It discusses cultural mapping and policy making in Italian CD initiatives. [•] It analyses two Cultural District initiatives in Lombardy and Veneto since mid-2000s. [•] It shows why CD models are highly explicative, but to be reconsidered as policy tools. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Cities across the United States are experiencing a surge in urban residential development, particularly within the downtown core and other centrally located, historic, mixed-use urban neighbourhoods. Often situated in former warehouse districts or other 'marginal' areas, many of these neighbourhoods have been revalorized and reinvented as hubs of creative-cultural production and consumption. Through an examination of 102 US neighbourhoods in 70 mid-sized metropolitan areas, this article explores patterns in the physical form, geography, and recent demographic and socio-economic evolution of the 'creative--cultural district' (CCD). The results of this exploratory analysis suggest that over the previous decade (2000-10), the majority of CCDs attracted high-skill, high-wage creative--knowledge workers at a rate faster than their respective metropolitan areas. This 'creative gentrification' was also evident in rising residential populations, household income, education and rent. Rent increased faster than income in over half the surveyed neighbourhoods, suggesting that a widening deficit in affordable housing has accompanied growing consumer demand for vibrant urban neighbourhoods and associated arts/cultural/entertainment amenities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Il concetto di paesaggio culturale, al di là delle critiche giurisprudenziali che si possono muovere agli interventi normativi messi in atto negli ultimi anni, se accolto a livello territoriale può costituire un efficace strumento di valorizzazione del patrimonio culturale, inteso come l’insieme dei beni culturali ed ambientali. L’archeologia, in particolare, può beneficiare di un simile approccio e diventare uno dei tanti nodi della trama che si puó evidenziare su un territorio da valorizzare. Una proposta di gestione per il paesaggio culturale può essere rappresentato dal distretto culturale.The concept of cultural landscape, beyond jurisprudential criticisms that can be made to the regulatory intervention put in place in recent years, if accepted at local level can as an effective tool for enhancement of cultural heritage, intended as set of cultural and environmental objects. The archaeology, in particular, can benefit from this approach and become one of the many knots of the plot which can be point out on an area to be exploited. A proposal for management of the cultural landscape can be represented by the cultural district.

Twenty-five years on from the idea to open cultural institutions in Barcelona's Raval district, and ten years since they opened their doors, it is now time to take stock of the MACBA (Barcelona's Museum of Contemporary Art) and the CCCB (Barcelona's Contemporary Culture Centre).Why were two important cultural institutions, the MACBA and the CCCB, opened in the Raval, a district in the old town with serious social problems? How did a vague idea based on traditional models for art museums and multidisciplinary centres become two unique models and points of reference both locally and internationally? The explanation that we have is that it went from a project based on cultural regeneration to models for unique cultural institutions that are the launch pad for what we call cultural government.This article is the result of research into the cultural policy system in Catalonia and the transformation of the Raval district, which has led to the PhD thesis entitled "A new paradigm for cultural policy. The case study of Barcelona" under the supervision of Arturo Rodríguez Morató (UB) and Pierre-Michel Menger (EHESS).

Vint-i-cinc anys després del naixement de la idea de situar institucions culturals al Raval i quan fa deu anys que ja estan en funcionament és hora de fer balanç del Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) i el Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB).Per què es van instal·lar dues de les grans institucions culturals, el MACBA i el CCCB, al Raval, un antic barri amb greus problemes socials? Com una idea vaga basada en models tradicionals de museu d'art i de centre multidisciplinari es va convertir en dos models singulars i de referència tant en l'àmbit local com internacional? L'explicació que proposem és que s'ha passat d'un projecte basat en la regeneració cultural a uns models d'institucions culturals singulars que són la punta de llança del que anomenem governança cultural.L'article és el resultat de les investigacions portades a terme sobre el sistema de la política cultural a Catalunya i la transformació del barri del Raval, cosa que s'ha traduït en la tesi doctoral Un nou paradigma de la política cultural. Estudi del cas barceloní, sota la direcció d'Arturo Rodríguez Morató (UB) i Pierre-Michel Menger (EHESS).

Considering the growing importance acquired by the intangible elements coupled with the unprecedented prevalence of the intellectual component of goods over their physical production, this research investigates the capacity of culture to foster identities, strengthen communities, support businesses and propel sustainable territorial development. Following the introductory presentation of cultural districts and clusters in general with special attention to the Italian understanding of the concept, the paper focuses on the dedicated program promoted by Fundazione Cariplo together with the projects developed in this context. Two case studies are investigated in particular, namely il Distretto Culturale dell'Oltrepò Mantovano - DOMINUS and il Distretto culturale "Le Regge dei Gonzaga". Despite their close location and identical legislative / administrative framework, they started and evolved in very different ways, mainly because of their specific endogenous conditions, but somehow reached the same main objectives. Starting from these relevant examples evaluated from a broader international perspective and recalling the outputs of various researches done by Politecnico di Milano in this field, some pivotal conclusions are derived concerning the mechanism of culture-led development, its main pitfalls and achievements [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In the last decade, scholars and policymakers have paid greater attention to the role of famous designers’ pieces of architecture not only in regenerating urban areas but also in defining a positive and communicative image in the global economic competition among cities. Taking into account the general background of and socio-economic changes in Western countries, this rationale assumes that the use of a well-known architect’s name can give a competitive advantage to a city in many ways. Following this legitimizing narrative, cities now strive for signature architecture, sometimes with little regard to their urban context, their size and role in the global market, the democratic decision making process and the urban effects. Although moderate success in urban regeneration, tourist attraction and economic development may be achieved in some cases, the high expectations of policymakers are often not met. In this sense, a better understanding of this urban issue is relevant for the current debate on urban planning. The manuscript draws on an extensive case study of Abu Dhabi, describing the local institutional framework and planning system, analyzing the oligarchic network and key actors in urban development and providing an in-depth analysis of the Saadiyat Island mega-development project, which includes a cultural district, hotel, retail and residential areas, with spectacular architecture. The local economic and institutional conditions of Abu Dhabi are not common elsewhere, but the city is a significant case of the political, economic and urban criticalities of planning large scale development projects and of collecting pieces of branded architecture in a democratic vacuum. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The tourism literature has increasingly recognised the importance of integrating tourism and culture with other value chains. Though the value of such integration is uncontested, it does raise several questions relating to stakeholder collaboration. Despite substantial research in this field, there remain gaps in our knowledge of the micro-dynamics of stakeholder collaborations in building tourism/cultural systems. This paper contributes to this debate by investigating the micro-level interactions among stakeholders during the conceptualisation of a large collaborative project: a Cultural District. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) the research shows that, though rigid sequential planning is not viable, conceptualisation is facilitated by deploying three ANT rules: enrolling actors, fact-building and circulating translations. These rules are used to define a “conditional path” whereby specific actions are activated when controversies emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural districts have attracted increased attention as an urban economic development strategy. Yet for the most part, cities have focused on the agglomeration of cultural assets to increase tourism or lure wary suburbanites downtown. This article examines an alternative use of the arts for community development: cultivating neighborhood cultural clusters with modest concentrations of cultural providers (both nonprofit and commercial), resident artists, and cultural participants. The article presents innovative methods for integrating data on these indicators into a geographic information system to produce a Cultural Asset Index that can be used to identify census block groups with the highest density of these assets. The article then demonstrates the association between the concentration of cultural assets in Philadelphia in 1997 with improved housing market conditions between 2001 and 2006. The article concludes by exploring the implications of a neighborhood-based creative economy for urban policy, planning, and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors draw a strategic framework for cultural planning at the local level. The concepts of industrial district and cluster have strengthened the role of space—in terms of external economies of localization and agglomeration—in economic development. The recent debate concerning contemporary development processes has underlined the increasing role of the cultural dimension for local development and has focused on different paths of clustering around cultural investment. The authors review the latest literature on cultural districts and illustrate some key cases around the postindustrialized world in which culture played a critical role by acting as a catalyst for major economic and social renewal. The authors present a strategic model of a progressive cultural district based on an asset-action matrix that intersects cultural policy drivers with capital resources. The authors define a new model of cultural district—the system-wide cultural district—as an emergent, self-organized model of cultural supply that displays significant strategic complementaries with other production chains with a typical, postindustrial characterization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Internacional de Sociología is the property of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)