Creative Industries and Urban Development: Creative Cities in the 21st Century

The concept of creative industries has developed considerable academic and policy momentum since the early 2000s. There has long been a presumed connection between the rise of creative industries and the urbanisation of the world's population, particularly in relation to the significance of cultural activities as sites of production and consumption in post-industrial cities, but also in relation to the developmental opportunities of emergent economies. Much of the work on creative industries and cities, has, however drawn upon "imagined geographies" based around assumptions about the propensity of creative people to form dense inner urban clusters, or to seek out certain forms of lifestyle and urban cultural amenity. As some of these assumptions about creative cities and the so-called "creative class" have come to be questioned, this collection will draw together contributions that critically appraise recent urban cultural policy discourses as well as reflecting on the role of culture and creative industries in the future development of cities. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Information Society: An International Journal.