ABSTRACT
In Gothenburg, Sweden, the urban development project Gothenburg Development North East (GDNE), started in 2011. The project assumed that Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) could serve as an instrument for the city’s integration and economic development policies. The project was founded upon a mix of ideas that ranged from contradictory ambitions of the Swedish national cultural policies of 1974 and 2009, to national as well as international strategies for growth through CCIs. Although in many parts successful, the project encountered structural obstacles that hindered CCIs to play such a role in peri-urban Gothenburg, affected by steadily increasing economic, social, and ethnic segregation. After briefly situating the project in the context of a shift in Swedish cultural policy from a generalized welfare state system towards an entrepreneurial neo-liberal approach, the chapter discusses, first, the GDNE project in terms of objectives, measures, and results, and, second, relates this to ongoing discussions of creative placemaking. The conclusion draws attention to how the GDNE project illustrates the difficulty of using CCI-based alliances initiated by the public sector to solve problems in vulnerable, economically weak and socially segregated areas.
