ABSTRACT

The rise of cultural districts as mixed spaces of production, consumption and spectacle appears so ubiquitous as to suggest a generic feature of twenty-first-century urban development. A closer examination of experiences in cultural industry districts discloses multiple and often conflicting narratives of growth and change. This chapter offers a series of case studies and vignettes that demonstrate both basic developmental tendencies and localized contingency over space and time, drawn from global metropolises and medium-size cities situated in Europe, North America and Asia. Cases are drawn from quite different governance systems and planning traditions, in part to underscore contingency as well as the impression of structural change and influence of neo-liberalism and policy mobilities on the shape of cultural economies in cities. The chapter demonstrates aspects of urban-industrial ethnography, within which local impacts of capital relayering, industrial restructuring and succession processes configure local economic histories and development narratives, while demonstrating larger features of urban transformation.