ABSTRACT
This chapter explains a growing body of literature on the cultural economy of smaller cities. A fundamental feature of the post-industrial cultural economy is its reliance on networks to sustain it. The chapter concerns formal and informal cultural networks in post-industrial smaller cities their relative access, usage, and the kind of creativity they support. Formal cultural planning networks, as exemplified by the Municipal Cultural Planning Forum and the Creative City Network of Canada, with their overt economic imperative and cultural planning policy focus, often mistakenly treat creativity as if it were a precious, excludable and rivalrous human resource. Both Peterborough and Thunder Bay have relied primarily on the knowledge and relationships generated through the formal networks of the Municipal Cultural Planning Forum and the Creative City Network of Canada to develop their cultural economies. Grassroots cultural networks in Peterborough and Thunder Bay are more visibly democratic and horizontally integrated than formal cultural planning networks.
