ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the model of urban development known as the creative city. The platforming of culture as key to the successful integration and economic development of cities also holds an obvious appeal to the culture sector, including cultural policy makers. In drawing on the economic appeal of creativity, cultural policy makers or advocates provide a critical counterpoint to potentially obscure debates about culture's innate or intrinsic values and thus rebuff accusations of elitism. Though many believe that humans innately communicate through story-telling, the word story can suggest a degree of fabrication. While the suggestion of cynical reason may be too harsh, the inevitable compromise involved in government and policy-making can certainly slip into disingenuousness, or at least lead to arguments that rely on everyone else's terms and values and thus a culture of speculative claims. The economic value of culture are born out of the weary need to constantly legitimize culture to the public and the state.
