Creative Regions in Europe


Book Description

Creative and cultural industries, broadly defined, are now considered by many policy makers across Europe at the heart of their national innovation and economic development agenda. Similarly, many European cities and regions have adopted policies to support and develop these industries and their local support infrastructures. However this policy-making agenda implicitly incorporates (and indeed often conflates) elements of cultural and creative industries, the creative class and so on, which are typically employed without due consideration of context. Thus a better understanding is required. To this end, this book features eight research papers, split evenly with regard to geographical focus between the UK and continental Europe (the latter covering Spain, Germany, France, Luxemburg and Belgium individually and in combination). There is also a similar division in terms of those focusing primarily on the policy level (the chapters of Clifton and Macaulay, Mould and Comunian, Pareja-Eastaway and Pradel i Miquel, Perrin) and those of the individual creative actor (the chapters of Alfken et al, Bennett et al, Wedemeier and Brown). This book was previously published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.




Creative Economies, Creative Cities


Book Description

Justin O’Connor and Lily Kong The cultural and creative industries have become increasingly prominent in many policy agendas in recent years. Not only have governments identified the growing consumer potential for cultural/creative industry products in the home market, they have also seen the creative industry agenda as central to the growth of external m- kets. This agenda stresses creativity, innovation, small business growth, and access to global markets – all central to a wider agenda of moving from cheap manufacture towards high value-added products and services. The increasing importance of cultural and creative industries in national and city policy agendas is evident in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Australia, and New Zealand, and in more nascent ways in cities such as Chongqing and Wuhan. Much of the thinking in these cities/ countries has derived from the European and North American policy landscape. Policy debate in Europe and North America has been marked by ambiguities and tensions around the connections between cultural and economic policy which the creative industry agenda posits. These become more marked because the key dr- ers of the creative economy are the larger metropolitan areas, so that cultural and economic policy also then intersect with urban planning, policy and governance.




Rethinking Creative Cities Policy


Book Description

In recent years, there has been high level of interest amongst policy-makers in the ‘creative city’ concept, due to the anticipation of economic and social benefits from a growing cultural and creative economy. However, a lack of understanding of local social and economic contexts, as well as the complexities and challenges of cultural production, has resulted in formulaic, ineffective misguided policies. This book is concerned, in various ways, with developing an understanding of the complex dimensions of cultural production, and with tackling the often weak and implied links between research, policy and urban planning. In particular, contributors are concerned with agents, protagonists and practices that appear to be somehow invisible to, hidden from, or indeed ignored in much contemporary creative cities policy. Drawing on case studies from the UK and the Netherlands, chapters consider creative industries and policy across a range of scales, from provincial cities and regional economies, to the global cities of London and Amsterdam. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.




Creative Regions


Book Description

This unique book focuses on regional creativity, analysing the different factors that can affect creativity and innovation process within regions in the knowledge economy. Approaching creativity from technological, organizational and regional viewpoints, it attempts to break down the influence of oppositional approaches and take account of multi-level interactions in economy and policy. The variety of papers presented looks at: how regions can be creative and competitive how research and development is outsourced and the scientific knowledge and technology transferred what types of technology based cultural activities can operate the relevant financing and development of knowledge entrepreneurship. Whilst many of these aspects are driven by market forces Creative Regions demonstrates that the regional and national public sectors have a significant role to play and is essential reading on how to generate a competitive advantage for regions in the knowledge economy in the global market.




Creative Industries in Europe


Book Description

This book demonstrates how the creative industries are driving new sectoral and spatial dynamics in European cities, regions, and countries, and how these may be influenced by international and global dynamics. It takes a purposeful geographical approach to the study of the creative industries across various Western, Central and Eastern European contexts since the 2008-2009 recession. Despite the growing research looking at the development of the creative industries in the last 15 years, there are still gaps in the coverage of what is happening in Central and Eastern Europe compared to Western Europe. This book addresses these gaps in two parts focusing on particular geographical scales and creative processes: local interplay between sector and space and the role of the creative industries in regional and national economies after the crisis. The book presents original analyses of the post-crisis environment, and novel data on topics such as the role of institutions in the regulation of the fashion industry in global cities, the impact of clustering on film innovation, location patterns of art galleries, regional specialisations and paths of professional carriers in creative industries.




Seeking Talent for Creative Cities


Book Description

With the growth of knowledge-based economies, cities across the globe must compete to attract and retain the most talented workers. Seeking Talent for Creative Cities offers a comprehensive and insightful analysis of the diverse, dynamic factors that affect cities’ ability to achieve this goal. Based on a comparative national study of 16 Canadian cities, this volume systematically evaluates the concerns facing workers operating in a range of creative endeavours. It draws on interviews, surveys, and census data collected over a six-year research program conducted by experts in business, public policy, urban studies, and communications studies to identify the characteristics and features of particular city-regions that influence these workers’ mobility and satisfaction. Seeking Talent for Creative Cities represents a rigorously empirical test of popular wisdom on the true relationship between urban development and economic competitiveness.




Handbook of Creative Cities


Book Description

With the publication of The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida in 2002, the 'creative city' became the new hot topic among urban policymakers, planners and economists. Florida has developed one of three path-breaking theories about the relationship between creative individuals and urban environments. The economist Åke E. Andersson and the psychologist Dean Simonton are the other members of this 'creative troika'. In the Handbook of Creative Cities, Florida, Andersson and Simonton appear in the same volume for the first time. The expert contributors in this timely Handbook extend their insights with a varied set of theoretical and empirical tools. The diversity of the contributions reflect the multidisciplinary nature of creative city theorizing, which encompasses urban economics, economic geography, social psychology, urban sociology, and urban planning. The stated policy implications are equally diverse, ranging from libertarian to social democratic visions of our shared creative and urban future. Being truly international in its scope, this major Handbook will be particularly useful for policy makers that are involved in urban development, academics in urban economics, economic geography, urban sociology, social psychology, and urban planning, as well as graduate and advanced undergraduate students across the social sciences and in business.




Innovation and Creativity in Late Medieval and Early Modern European Cities


Book Description

Late medieval and early modern cities are often depicted as cradles of artistic creativity and hotbeds of new material culture. Cities in renaissance Italy and in seventeenth and eighteenth-century northwestern Europe are the most obvious cases in point. But, how did this come about? Why did cities rather than rural environments produce new artistic genres, new products and new techniques? How did pre-industrial cities evolve into centres of innovation and creativity? As the most urbanized regions of continental Europe in this period, Italy and the Low Countries provide a rich source of case studies, as the contributors to this volume demonstrate. They set out to examine the relationship between institutional arrangements and regulatory mechanisms such as citizenship and guild rules and innovation and creativity in late medieval and early modern cities. They analyze whether, in what context and why regulation or deregulation influenced innovation and creativity, and what the impact was of long-term changes in the political and economic sphere.




Drones and the Creative Industry


Book Description

This open access, interdisciplinary book presents innovative strategies in the use of civil drones in the cultural and creative industry. Specially aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the book offers valuable insights from the fields of marketing, engineering, arts and management. With contributions from experts representing varied interests throughout the creative industry, including academic researchers, software developers and engineers, it analyzes the needs of the creative industry when using civil drones both outdoors and indoors. The book also provides timely recommendations to the industry, as well as guidance for academics and policymakers.




Regional Economic Change in Europe


Book Description

"In this era of ongoing globalization a coherent vision on Europe's changing geo-economy is more important than ever before. Drawing on the work of Schumpeter, Fourasti'e and Perroux, the book at hand offers a new and policy-oriented perspective on regional economic change in Europe. Conceptually, it develops a middle-range theory by extending Schumpeter's vision with a sectoral and spatial dimension. This neo-Schumpeterian framework is concretized by exploring fifty years of structural change in Sardinia, the Ruhrgebiet and the Öresund. "