Transcript Culture-led Urban Development Processes: Theory and Policy

Culture-led Urban Development Processes:
Theory and Policy
Pier Luigi Sacco
Department of Arts and Industrial Design
IUAV University, Venice
The role of culture
in post-industrial economies
• In pre-industrial economies, culture is mostly an activity
ruled by the gift economy of mecenatism rather than by
market transactions
• In industrial economies, culture increasingly organizes into
cultural industries developing their respective consumer
markets
• In post-industrial economies, culture tends to become the
basic platform for the construction of individual and
collective identity models and tends to assume the
character of a public good
Clustering in the industrial economy
• Clusters are characterized by vertical integration: spatial
concentration is ruled by the belonging to a common value
chain/industry
• Traditional cultural clusters (cultural districts) are just one
example among many.
• More generally, industrial districts (Marshall): locations
characterized by a shared ‘industrial atmosphere’ (ie an
intangible knowledge-based asset related to the specific
type of production) which gives comparative advantage
The limitations of vertical integration
• Considerable economies of scale, scope, transportation, etc
• But at the same time ‘mental lock-in’: product orientation
takes over the whole social and economic organization and
limits innovation
• Innovation tends to be incremental rather than radical
• When competitive pressure forces relocation, the social
structure ‘collapses’
• The increasing demands posed by social and economic
development make this organizational model unsustainable
(increased demand for novelty and variety both on the
supply and demand side)
Clustering in the post-industrial economy
• Competition drives toward products/experiences with high
intangible value added that require radical, knowledgeintensive innovation
• Increasing tendence toward horizontal integration
(strategic complementarity between different
industries/value chains which share a common
need/orientation toward radical innovation)
• The industrial atmosphere is no longer characterized by a
common product orientation but by a common orientation
toward the production and circulation of knowledge
Clustering in the post-industrial
economy(II)
• In this new context, culture is not just a bundle of
sectors/industries among others but becomes the platform
for individual and societal capability building for the
production and circulation of knowledge
• Individual and collective cognitive competences as the
basic intangible infrastructure of the post-industrial
economy
• Activation costs and the virtuous circle of competence:
capability building  qualified demand  willingness to
pay  qualified supply  menu enlargement and social
salience  capability building…
Progressive/advanced cultural clusters
• The increasing confluence of cultural and non-cultural
productive activities and their relation to social
sustainability
• Culture as an activator of innovation: the strategic
importance of cultural access
• Culture as a social integrator: experiencing the unusual,
bargaining over differences
• Culture as a networking platform: de-instrumentalizing
interaction
• Culture and well-being: an answer to the EasterlinInglehart puzzle
The distortions of the standard approaches
• Florida: attraction of talent/creativity 
instrumentalization (the key is looking for coolness…)
• Porter: competitive restructuring  over-engineering,
technocracy (the key is building technology/science
parks…)
• Sen: capability building  parochialism (the key is
focusing on our community…)
Building a general framework
• Looking at the places where advanced cultural clustering is
successfully taking over, it becomes apparent that the
attraction/restructuring/capability building dimensions
need to be integrated in a wider framework encompassing
all them: ‘wide spectrum’ local development models.
• Examples of relatively ‘wide spectrum’ cities: Lille,
Newcastle/Gateshead, Tampere, Lund, Linz, Valencia,
Turin, Rome, Montreal, Austin, Denver…plus a quantity of
emergent ones.
The twelve factors
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Quality of cultural supply (QCS)
Quality nof the production of knowledge (QPK)
Quality of local governance (QLG)
Development of local talent (DLT)
Development of local entrepreneurship (DLE)
Attraction of external talent (AET)
Attraction of external firms/investment (AEF)
Management of social criticialities (MSC)
Capability buidling of the local community (CBC)
Local community involvement (LCI)
Internal Networking (INW)
External Networking (ENW)
Local development and intangible assets
• Every euro of GIP that is generated by the local economy
may entail positive or negative intangible multipliers 
externality effects on human, social and symbolic capital
• Selling out the cultural identity of a city vs
consolidating/building up identity
• The viability of a local development model must be
evaluated against its impact on the twelve dimensions/the
five capital assets (tangible: natural and physical;
intangible: human, social, symbolic/cultural)
The Strategic Matrix
Quality of Cultural Supply (QCS)
Quality
Quality of Local Governance
(QLG)
Quality Production of Knowledge
(QPK)
Development Local
Entrepreneurship (DLE)
Development
Development of Local Talent
(DLT)
Attraction of External Firms
(AEF)
Attraction
Attraction of External Talent
(AET)
Networking
Internal Networking (IN)
External Networking (EN)
Management Social Criticalities
(MSC)
Sociality
Capability Building and
Education of the Local
Community (CBE)
Local community involvement
(LCI)
Natural Capital
Physical
Capital
Human
Capital
Social Capital
Symbolic/
Cultural
Capital
The process
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Initiator (public or private: town hall, bank, association
of entrepreneurs, group of non-profit organizations…)
Strategic plan
Building a coalition of actors
Meetings with stakeholders
City conferences
Creation of a development agency
Implementation of action plan
Periodic feedback conferences/meetings, revision of the
strategic plan…
Cultural planning as a strategic ‘spectrum
filling’ process: some cases
• Vancouver: excellence in QCS, QPK, AET, AEF, DLT, MSC
• But: basic gaps in QLG, LCI, CBC, INW, ENW
• As a consequence: ‘dual’ identity of the city  an economically
affluent ‘cultural ground zero’ (DTWS) and a culturally rich ‘economic
ground zero’ (DTES)
• Initiator: Vancity Capital (Bank), stage: 4
• A city that is an emerging capital of the movie industry but that almost
never ‘plays itself’
• Invisible culture: the Granville Island paradox
• The challenge: making cultural life ‘move to the surface’ and become
an intrinsic element of collective identity; communitarian strategies of
capability building and cooperation (symbolic capital)
Cultural planning as a strategic ‘spectrum
filling’ process: some cases
• Venice: excellence in AET, QPK, ENW
• But: basic gaps in QCS, QLG, AEF, DLT, MSC, LCI, INW
• As a consequence: dissolving identity of the city  a growing
stereotypization of the city that gradually transforms into a customeroriented entertainment park
• A city that ‘plays fake’
• Initiator: Regione Veneto (regional government), stage: 2
• The challenge: reinventing the city’s cultural life through a global
rethinking of the social use of space: a bottom-up creative rejuvenation
aimed at making of Venice the diamond head of a Veneto advanced
cultural clusters’ economy (social capital)
• From (impossible) preservation to production
• (Veneto: almost exclusive concentration on DLE now forcing QCS,
DLT, LCI, CBC)
Cultural planning as a strategic ‘spectrum
filling’ process: some cases
• Belo Horizonte: excellence in AEF, QPK
• But: basic gaps in QCS, DLT, DLF, MSC, LCI, INW, ENW, CBC
• As a consequence: weak identity of the city  one of the country’s
major concentrations of productive, human capital and cultural
heritage that fail to integrateinto a coherent picture
• A city that is a sum of disparate parts
• Initiator: a coalition of actors (Fondazione Torino, IEPHA, Instituto
Estrada Real with funding from Italian Ministries of Employment and
Foreign Affairs), stage: 2
• The challenge: creating a system of ‘cultural central places’ (starting
from the reinvention of Praca da Liberdade) that produces bridging
forms of social capital (social+symbolic capital)
• The parallel development of manufacturing and the knowledge
economy
Cultural planning as a strategic ‘spectrum
filling’ process: some cases
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The Faenza experiment: 3-years planning
Excellence in QPK, QLG, MSC, LCI, INW
But: basic gaps in QCS, AET, DLT, ENW, CBC
As a consequence: freezed identity of the city  Faenza, the city of
ceramics, a nice, friendly, ‘innocuous’ town( beware of the Impruneta
effect: preserving the city of terracotta)
A town that sees future as an extension of the past
Initiator: group of local non-profits (Laboratorio cultura), town hall,
stage: 6-7
The challenge: providing a ‘culture shock’ to the city and enlarging as
much as possible the local competence base (human+symbolic
capital)
Faenza Festival of Contemporary Art Futuro Presente/Present
Continuous, The Community Arts Hub, Torricelli 2008
Where are we going? Culture 2.0
• Culture-based local development processes entail the construction of a
knowledge-oriented society and economy in a much more radical
sense than originally expected
• We move away from an organization that functionally separates
cultural producers and audiences, and move toward the creatin of wide
communities of practice
• Web-based cultural arenas play a most significant role in this respect
• Cultural policies have to be strategically re-thought as policies for
competitiveness, strongly complementary to innovation policies
• Big problem: the tension from intrinsic motivation and instrumentality
in the production of cultural contents: the call for a new paradign of
economic rationality