Essay

Planning Creative Cities: Reflections on a Trend

Deborah Stevenson

2020

Creative Cities off the Beaten Path
Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy 2020 (1)

P. 23-33

DOI: doi 10.14361/zkmm-2020-0102

Language: English

Abstract

The proliferation, internationally, of local cultural plans focused on the development of a ‘creative city’ has been remarkable with even intergovernmental bodies, such as UNESCO, fostering the use of creativity in strategies to revive cities and urban economies. This essay reflects on some of the contradictory and uneven conceptual and political foundations that have shaped cultural planning, suggesting that inherent tensions are being played out in the friction between cultural planning as promise and cultural planning as strategic action by local governments. What is evident is that there is a need to rethink urban cultural planning and its implicit agenda to enable it to emerge as a truly innovative approach to supporting the diverse cultures of every day urban life.

Keywords

2020 (1)
Creative Cities off the Beaten Path

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