Cities of Culture

A Global Perspective

Deborah Stevenson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134084425
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Städtische Soziologie

Culture now has a prominent place on the urban policy and re-profiling agendas of cities around the world. City-based cultural planning emphasising creativity in all its guises has emerged as a significant local policy initiative, while the notion of the 'creative city' has become an urban imaging cliché. The proliferation of local blueprints for cultural planning/creative cities has been remarkable, while supra-state bodies such as the European Union and UNESCO are also fostering the use of culture in strategies to revive cities and urban economies and to brand places as 'different'.

Cities of Culture highlights significant trends in cultural planning since its inception, revealing and analysing key discourses and influential (globally-circulating) manifestos and processes, as well as their interpretation and implementation in specific places. With reference to examples drawn from Europe, Australia, Asia and North America, Cities of Culture provides insights into the application of urban cultural strategies in different local, national and international contexts, highlighting regularities, tensions and intersections as well as core underpinning assumptions.

This book explores the now-pervasive expectation that cultural planning is capable of achieving a wide range of social, economic, urban and creative outcomes. It will be of interest for students and scholars of urban sociology, urban studies, cultural policy studies and human geography.

Part I

Creative cities

Themes and theories

1 Culture

Introduction

Culture and the experiences of everyday life are multiple and paradoxical, shaped through the contradictions and rhythms of particular places and societies as well as through the structures of class, gender, ethnicity and nation (to name but four). There is no one unambiguous definition of what is meant by culture. It is simultaneously artefact, object and process and each of these understandings in various and often-competing ways is implicated in the discourses and concerns of cultural planning. Frequently, cultural planning is undertaken on the assumption that it is possible to identify and intervene in culture in all its guises. In spite, however, of the centrality of the concept to cultural planning there is often considerable slippage in the way it is mobilized variously referring to art, everyday life, creativity and a capacity to ‘create’ with scant consideration of intersections, tensions or inconsistencies.

The aim of this chapter is to consider aspects and implications of the way in which culture is understood within cultural planning. To this end the chapter begins by considering the rationale for the discursive shift, which informs cultural planning, from understanding culture as ‘art’ and the expressive to focusing on the ‘ways of life’ of a population. In so doing, the chapter highlights both the role that the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies played in prompting the shift as well as suggesting that it was this definition that provided the justification for expanding the concerns of cultural planning to encompass a range of creative practices including those associated with popular culture and the commercial sector. Indeed, as is suggested in the chapter this changed focus has in part had the effect of pulling all forms of cultural practice, including the traditional arts, into the realm of the cultural and creative industries with the assertion of the economic importance of the sector having considerable currency within cultural planning. Finally, the chapter probes the notion of urban culture which is important to cultural planning because not only do most people on the planet now live in cities, but cultural planning is overwhelmingly a strategy focused on cities and, in particular, city centres.

Art and culture

The development of cultural planning in the United Kingdom was underpinned by Raymond Williams’ influential view that culture should be conceptualized as a way of life and not simply as artefacts or creative activities. ‘Culture’, according to Williams (1989: 90), refers to ‘a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development; … the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity’ as well as a ‘particular way of life’. The anthropological view of culture as a way of life came to inform and legitimate the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies to the exclusion of the other two understandings (Bennett 1998) and, subsequently, it was this definition that gained currency in cultural planning and informed the associated understanding of urban culture. The Left embraced the anthropological view of culture because it provided a language for talking about new sites of struggle and emerging forms of inequality that, increasingly, were cultural rather than economic (see contributions to Hall and Jacques 1989). The anthropological view also connected with a democratic urge to move away from narrowly conceived (elitist) ideas of culture as ‘Art’ to embrace and value a range of creative practices and forms from the popular to the multicultural (Hawkins 1993). Significantly, too, this definitional shift also made it possible to reconceptualize cultural activity as encompassing dynamic and pervasive processes rather than as a static range of artistic objects and products. By mobilizing this understanding of culture, exponents were able to argue for cultural diversity and the legitimacy of all forms of cultural activity. Tony Bennett (1998: 90–91) points out that the anthropological understanding

provided a definitional means of negotiating an enlargement of the fields of cultural activity which it is thought relevant to bring together and address as parts of the same policy fields. Its role, in effect, has been that of discursively managing the transition from an arts to a cultural policy.

Similarly, Tom O’Regan (2002: 11) states:

The ‘anthropological’ definition of culture justified both the retention and extension of the high arts system and its limited pluralising to include ‘new’ forms … But it also immediately gave rise to ‘community’-based innovations based on logics of ‘cultural democracy’, such as the community cultural development and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts frameworks of the Australia Council.

According to Bennett (1998: 95), for Williams, the three understandings of culture coexisted, with each having ‘a role to play in the analysis of culture as a whole’. Within cultural planning, however, the anthropological definition is not conceived as sitting alongside the other two understandings of culture in a productive dialogue. Rather, it has largely subsumed the creative and the processual (Stevenson 2004). This is an important point because it means that there is no developed language within cultural planning for uncoupling these definitions or for tracing their parameters, interconnections and political implications. Culture as ‘art’ and culture as ‘process’ frequently are embedded as silences. It is hardly surprising, then, that the mobilization of the anthropological definition within cultural planning has resulted in some significant tensions. One such tension is between the goal of continuing to support traditional arts activities and organizations at the same time as arguing against the privileging of these forms and objects of creative practice. Other tensions relate to the understanding of culture as a civilizing process which is invoked implicitly in relation to many of the goals of cultural planning (Stevenson 2004). A key concept here, as argued in Chapter 2, is social inclusion. Many municipal governments have resolved such tensions largely by ignoring them; but as contemporary cultural planning is conceived as a holistic strategy that is capable of addressing (reconciling) the disparate elements of local cultures within a single coherent framework, it really is no longer possible to continue to ignore the tensions emanating from its competing elements.

Cultural planning perhaps more than any other example of cultural policy is where the contradictions inherent in operationalizing the anthropological definition of culture are most evident. For instance, at a national level cultural policy continues largely to be concerned with elite art forms (including supporting many high-profile arts institutions and organizations) and with film and media policy (Stevenson 2000). Although the ‘charter’ of national cultural policy is to ensure that the nation is able to represent itself to itself and to the world, it has never been responsible for nurturing (regulating) everyday life to the same extent as local government, and it has a relatively small part to play in dealing with cultural activity as it is lived. In addition, cultural policy studies is also primarily concerned with the national (see, for example, Miller and Yudice 2002). Cultural planning, however, is focused on the local; therefore, prescriptions that may have been developed in terms of the nation take on very different and quite idiosyncratic complexions when applied to the city or, indeed, the neighbourhood, given that cultural planning is fundamentally about cities, towns, neighbourhoods and local ‘communities’. In other words, it is about place (see Chapter 3).

In addition to these limitations, the Williams anthropological definition of culture is an unwieldy basis for strategic policy because, in order to plan, authorities cannot avoid making a range of judgements (aesthetic, social, economic) about what is and is not ‘legitimate’ cultural activity and thus the object of policy/planning. With regard to cultural planning, however, the expansive definition of culture that is mobilized has frequently justified casting the local cultural policy net so wide that everything and everyone conceivably can (or should) be its object/subject. Implicitly, therefore, the result is a reworking of the ‘this is art this is not art’ dilemma (Goodall 1995), the privileging of certain forms of cultural practice and the needs and priorities of some ‘marginal’ (or not so marginal) groups over others. Inevitably some formal or ad hoc basis for discriminating between fields of governance and forms of culture will develop. Bennett (1998: 92) suggests that there will be a

hierarchical ordering of the relations between different spheres of culture that results in a strategic normativity in which one component of the cultural field is strategically mobilized in relation to another as offering the means of overcoming whatever shortcomings (moral, political or aesthetic) are attributed to the latter.

In spite of its framing rhetoric, however, it is now patently obvious that, in practice, cultural planning emphasizes the ‘arts’ end of the local creative spectrum far more than it does the popular or the lived (O’Regan 2002), even though it does this at the same time as it mobilizes a legitimizing discourse of culture as a way of life. In other words, and as argued further in Chapter 4, it is common for cultural planning to focus on ‘art’ rather than ‘culture’ and galleries and artists rather than nightclubs, shopping centres and street life, even though the cultural plans themselves are often framed and legitimated in terms of the everyday and the inclusive. Furthermore, many of the most significant urban cultural programmes actually sit outside the jurisdiction of the local cultural planning portfolio. Examples here include government-supported mega-events such as the Olympic Games and the Formula One Grand Prix, and the enduring fad for government-sponsored cultural precinct developments, including high-profile waterfront redevelopments and film production complexes. These are the ‘big ticket’ items of placemaking and place marketing that, because they also have profound effects on cities and local communities, should be absolutely central to a cultural planning strategy conceived in terms of culture as a way of life. The fact that they rarely are points not only to the limits of cultural planning but also raises questions about whether cultural planning can (or should) in practice be anything other than a policy framework for the arts.

In addition to the manifestations of the ‘creative products/everyday life’ dualism embedded within cultural planning, other troubling tensions can be discerned that relate to an emerging trend to mobilize an understanding of culture (as a process) in relation to a range of social, political and economic ends, including addressing social exclusion and fostering local citizenship (see Chapter 2). Indeed, cultural planning is increasingly concerned with intervening in, and achieving, outcomes that relate to a conception of culture as being civilizing. Also important in this context is the positioning of culture as an industry that can (and should) be developed for economic gain. This approach is played out most starkly in relation to debates over the ‘cultural’ or ‘creative’ industries and in terms of what is another significant fault-line with cultural planning – culture and the creative.

Industries of creativity

Creativity within cultural planning is described variously as a type of energy or vitality that develops in places with high concentrations of particular social groups or types, an interdisciplinary approach to planning and a holistic way of thinking about cities and city life (Landry and Bianchini 1995). Of course, similar claims have also been made for the anthropological definition of culture. Indeed, like culture, creativity is often deployed as an all-encompassing concept with an amazing breadth of meaning and applicability and, as each of these meanings is often embedded within cultural planning, the same tensions can also be discerned there. The pivotal discursive shift though is not so much away from talking about ‘culture’ to talking about ‘creativity’ as it is about mobilizing the two discourses either simultaneously and/or interchangeably. The apparent move from (or slippage between) the cultural to the creative in policy and planning rhetoric may well be more strategic than substantive with creativity frequently being a synonym for culture while culture, as discussed above, is more often than not a synonym for art. In much the same way as the shift from art to culture provided a language and justification for broadening the focus of the arts portfolio, the rhetoric of creativity also seems to be intended to facilitate a broader discourse of relevance. This objective is certainly true in relation to mobilizations of the idea of the cultural and/or creative industries.

It was the Marxist theorists and members of the influential Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1979 reprint), who in 1944 coined the term the ‘culture industry’ to refer to the products and associated processes of mass culture and, in so doing, drew critical attention to what they regarded as the industrialization, commodification and depoliticization of culture/art. As David Hesmondhalgh (2002: 15) explains, for Adorno and Horkheimer, ‘Culture and Industry were supposed … to be opposites but in modern capitalist democracy, the two had collapsed together’. Adorno and Horkheimer bemoaned what they saw as the result of this merging – the ‘negation of “true” art and culture, and the artificial differentiation of cultural commodities in the context of overall standardization and mass production’ (Flew 2002: 9). According to Adorno and Horkheimer, unlike ‘art’ which they regarded as both being exceptional and having the capacity to provide a critique of the human condition, the products of the culture industry were predictable, uniform and consumed by an undiscriminating working class who, in consuming these products, also consumed the ideology of the capitalist system that had produced them – the worker was not only under the control of the capitalist system while at work but this control extended into everyday life (O’Connor 2013). Moreover, ‘[t]he message of culture industry was that everyone could achieve personal happiness through commodity consumption and by striving endlessly for individual success under capitalism’ (McGuigan 2004: 122).

Many, particularly those within cultural studies, came to regard the views of Adorno and Horkheimer as elitist, pessimistic and rigid, and thus the term ‘culture industry’ was either dismissed or disparaged. At the same time, culture industry became a shorthand term for talking about what were regarded as the ‘limitations of modern cultural life’ (Hesmondhalgh 2002: 15). It was not until the 1970s that scholars looked anew at the notion when a number of French sociologists rethought it in an attempt to recognize the depth and complexity of the products and processes of the culture industry as well as the links between business and culture. In other words, ‘they wanted to give a much more specific account of the cultural industries not so much as capitalist ideology but as capitalist industries engaged in the production of cultural commodities at a profit’ (O’Connor 2013). And it was in this context that the term the ‘cultural industries’ gained currency. By pluralizing the term the aim was to capture the multifarious and disjointed nature of the sector and to signal a move away from the view that a dominant ideology was being/had been imposed on an unsuspecting public through their consumption of mass cultural products. Instead, the production and consumption of culture were regarded as being sites of struggle and contestation and the outcomes of these struggles were not inevitable. The shift in terminology also flagged a rejection of any romanticizing of pre-industrial cultural forms (‘high art’) suggesting instead that the new technologies of cultural production were creating exciting opportunities for creative development and innovation (Hesmondhalgh 2002: 16).

In 1986, Geoff Mulgan and Ken Worpole published their pioneering work Saturday Night or Sunday Morning: From Arts to Industry – New Forms of Cultural Policy, which is a passionate call for (what the authors describe as) a ‘radical’ approach to arts and cultural policy and became a key text in establishing the framework of what later emerged as cultural planning. In focusing on the initiatives of a local administration – the Greater London Council – Mulgan and Worpole were keen to demonstrate that local governments are no longer (if they ever were) simply concerned with roads, rates and rubbish, but are deeply engaged in supporting, and providing for, the cultural life of local communities. Importantly, they canvassed the potential benefits to local communities of adopting a cultural industries approach to community arts advocating that the definition of what counts as culture should be expanded to include an ‘understanding [of] modern popular arts as commodities … produced, marketed and distributed by industries dependent on skills, investment and training’ (1986: 122). Many aspects of the cultural policy agenda that are now taken for granted within cultural planning, such as challenging artistic hierarchies and the idea that the arts and culture are industries, can be traced to the contribution of works such as this one.

The debate over what should and should not count as part of the cultural industries has been as long and as fraught as the debate over what counts as culture within the remit of cultural policy. For some, the wholehearted embrace of the cultural industries is a ‘sell out’. For others, however, it provides a language for asserting the economic importance of the cultural sector and has played an significant role in helping to shift the focus away from the entrenched subsidy model of cultural provision by highlighting the economic value of the sector – it gives culture a ‘space at the table’ (Throsby 2008: 230). In recent years though, this debate has become even more potent within cultural planning and cultural policy studies in part because of the way in which it is being played out in relation to the cultural versus the creative industries.

In 1997, in a move that firmly entrenched a ‘creative’ industries approach to cultural policy in the United Kingdom, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport established its Creative industry Task Force (CITF), which, in 1998, released the highly influential Creative industry Task Force Mapping Document (CITF 1998). This document is important because it marked a key shift if not away from the ‘cultural’ to the ‘creative’ industries within cultural policy and cultural planning then certainly the assertion of the importance of the creative sector. It also delineated what it understood as comprising the creative industries, which it defined as those ‘activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have the potential for wealth and job creation through generation and exploitation of intellectual property’. As with the cultural industries, however, questions of definition – what is in and what is out – linger. Included, for instance, in the CITF definition of the creative sector were such activities and forms as advertising, architecture, arts and crafts, television, radio, performing arts and digital technology. John Howkins’ (2001: xiii) influential work on the creative industry says that along with the creative economy, t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Creative cities: themes and theories
• Part II Cultural planning: cities, states and practices
• References
• Index