The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy: Global Perspectives

The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy brings together a range of international experts to critically analyze the ways that governmental actors and non-governmental entities attempt to influence the production and implementation of urban policies directed at the arts, culture, and creative activity. Presenting a global set of case studies that span five continents and nineteen cities, the essays in this book advance our understanding of how the dynamic interplay between economic and political context, institutional arrangements, and social networks affect urban cultural policy-making and the ways that these policies impact urban development and influence urban governance. By documenting and comparing variations found in cities around the world, the book will be the most comprehensive and in-depth engagement with the political process of urban cultural policy-making to date. The volume contains a preface by Richard Florida and is organized around four themes: institutional dynamics, coalition networks, and the evolution of urban cultural policy; inter-urban competition, perceptions of place, and cultural policy-making; contesting urban cultural policies, and urban cultural policy agendas and impacts on creative production. The book comparatively studies urban cultural policy-making in a diverse set of contexts, analyzes the positive and negative outcomes of policy for different constituencies, and identifies the most effective policy directions, emerging political challenges, and most promising opportunities for building effective cultural policy coalitions.