ABSTRACT
During the 1990s, culture and creativity have emerged as key concepts of the spatial development and planning agenda (Kunzmann, 2004: 383–4). This evolution has partly occurred in response to increasing budgetary uncertainty imposed by the dominant austerity doctrines, forcing a search for alternative policy realms. Culture and subsequently creativity have turned out to be inherent policy dimensions – if not objectives – of the urban development and planning processes. The cultural parameters of spatial development have thus become a main policy thread of the local-regional administrations, expressed with the promotion of mega-events, flagship cultural investment initiatives and the overall emphasis placed on the cultural sector as economic activity, the establishment of cultural clusters (Chapain et al., 2010) and the designation of cultural neighbourhoods in the context of city branding and redevelopment strategies. The cultural thread has also ‘internally’ influenced planning itself, stipulating a problematic around ‘planning cultures’ related to their adaptability and their efficacy in introducing change in policy-making (Knieling and Otengrasen, 2009; Reimer, 2013). The notion of planning culture inhibits a wider perception of the process, which involves institutional-governance structures, formal and informal patterns of action, collaborative-participatory structures and sustainable development considerations. The cultural approach formed the basis for the development of the complementary notion of creativity (Andersson, 1985), which was also introduced into spatial development with the adoption of various perceptions such as ‘creative industries’, ‘creative city’ (Landry, 2008), ‘creative capital’ and ‘creative classes’ (Florida, 2002, 2008; Florida et al., 2008). These perceptions have had effective repercussions at the policy level and thus many cities in Europe (and internationally) introduced strategies to support creative initiatives, fostering a boost to innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth. Cities today increasingly seek to be distinguished as ‘creative cities’ and to promote initiatives to sustain ‘creative classes’ as nested parts of a broader cultural policy domain. As to spatial planning, the influence of ‘creativity’ in theoretical evolution and practice is not yet highly pronounced – and here lies a central contribution of this book – although it has been expanding as a notion in various domains, sectors and at many distinct levels of the urban milieu. Obviously, creativity has been subject to different interpretations according to the specific scientific discipline, historical context or socio-economic cultural setting. A main trend on the research concerning creativity was based on individual behaviour vis-à-vis physiological approaches (Arieti, 1976). Based on the confluence theory of creativity (Lubart and Guignard, 2004), creativity has been approached as an outcome of both individual and societal potential. It has been argued, for instance, that in many cases, the creative potential of individuals is suppressed by a society that in principle stipulates intellectual conformity (Sternberg and Williams, 1996). Csikszentmihalyi (1999) added additional components (both cultural and social) to a systemic approach that gradually also included environmental considerations.
