PUSHING THE URBAN FRONTIER: TEMPORARY USES OF SPACE,CITY MARKETING,AND THE CREATIVE CITY DISCOURSE IN 2000s BERLIN

ABSTRACT: In spite of the amount of urban development that followed the Fall of the Wall, Berlin's urban landscape has remained filled with a large amount of “voids” and disused sites, which have gradually been occupied by various individuals, groups, or entrepreneurs for “temporary” or “interim” uses (such as urban beach bars). This paper analyzes how, and why, such temporary uses of space have been harnessed in recent economic and urban development policies and in the official city marketing discourse in Berlin post‐2000, in the context of the discursive and policy shift toward the promotion of Berlin as a “creative city.” The gradual process of enlistment of new forms of cultural and social expression by policy‐makers and real estate developers for urban development and place marketing purposes has put pressure on the very existence and experimental nature of “temporary uses” and “interim spaces.” These have consequently been going through various trajectories of displacement, transformation, commodification, resistance, or disappearance, and in particular cases have become the focus of intense local conflicts.     

Do “creative” and “non-creative” workers exhibit similar preferences for urban amenities? An exploratory case study of Omaha,Nebraska

Research into the locational decisions of creative class or knowledge workers has indicated that “classic” or “hard” factors, particularly employment opportunity and social connections, generally take precedence over “soft”, “quality of place” amenities such as art and cultural venues, historical assets, and tolerance/diversity. However, “soft” amenities are expected to shape where creative class/knowledge workers live within cities, and potentially whether they remain in the community long-term, or seek opportunities elsewhere. In this study, an online survey and questionnaire were employed to explore whether residents living in downtown Omaha, Nebraska with “creative” occupations exhibit stronger preferences for urban amenities relative to those with “non-creative” occupations. Generally in support of Richard Florida’s creative class thesis, the results suggest that creative workers may exhibit a stronger affinity for certain, primarily “soft,” urban amenities and characteristics, such as dining establishments, “third places”, arts/cultural venues, unique sense of place, and the hip, trendy, and youthful feel of Omaha’s downtown neighborhoods.     

THE “ENTREPRENEURIAL STATE” IN “CREATIVE INDUSTRY CLUSTER” DEVELOPMENT IN SHANGHAI

ABSTRACT: Literature on China's urban development discusses the nature and role of the local state. A set of concepts have been proposed, such as the “entrepreneurial state” (ES) and “local developmental state,” and an ongoing debate attempts to ascertain whether the state is “entrepreneurial” in nature. This article uses a newly emerged urban phenomenon, chuangyi chanye jiju qu (CCJQs) or “creative industry clusters,” in which the central government is not involved, to explore the nature of local governments, their role in urban development, and the ways in which they perform this role. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods are used. The findings of this research reveal a strong revenue‐oriented nature of local governments, highlighting the “entrepreneurial state” as an important dimension in their character: they transform spontaneously emerged urban cultural spaces into a new mechanism generating revenues for both urban growth and their own economic benefit. Local governments promote CCJQ development with place promotion strategies, and they are directly involved in CCJQ‐related businesses as market players rather than as independent bodies that effectively control and regulate the CCJQ market through policies and regulations. Further, this article reveals a “public–public” coalition as an important mechanism for local state participation.     

IN BETWEEN SOCIAL ENGINEERING AND GENTRIFICATION: URBAN RESTRUCTURING,SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,AND THE PLACE POLITICS OF OPEN SPACE

ABSTRACT: The article examines the emergence of urban countercultures and social movements in Christiania, Copenhagen, and Haga, Gothenburg in the context of the Scandinavian welfare state, from the 1970s to the present. Specifically, it investigates the relations between urban governance, gentrification processes, and social movements in the urban restructuring of Scandinavian cities. While Christiania today remains a space for counterculture, the struggle to save Haga contributed to a gentrification of the district, as it became officially “re‐evaluated” and upgraded. The article examines the similarities and differences in the urban movement trajectories in these two cases, highlighting their “place politics of open space.”     

GRAFFITI OR STREET ART? NEGOTIATING THE MORAL GEOGRAPHIES OF THE CREATIVE CITY

ABSTRACT: In cities such as Sydney, a succession of wars on graffiti has produced a moral geography of artistic practice. At the same time, the rise to prominence of creative cities discourses and the subsequent revaluation of creativity as a postindustrial salve unsettles the dominance of the normative criminalization of graffiti. The profusion of cultural plans and public art policies, along with metropolitan initiatives promoting the creative city, provide opportunities to resignify graffiti as productive creative practice. Set in a discursive world of murals, street art, and “legal graffiti,” some graffiti writers are grasping these opportunities, deploying multiple subjectivities in order to negotiate the moral geographies of the creative city. This article looks at contemporary state responses to graffiti in Sydney and the ways graffiti writers and street artists work within and beyond the various attempts to capture, enclose, and engage graffiti and graffiti writers.     

ASSESSING QUALITY OF PLACE: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF AMSTERDAM AND ROTTERDAM

ABSTRACT: In the wake of the success of Richard Florida in particular, concepts such as the “creative class” and “quality of place” have become growing topics of debate in urban economics and urban geography. Originally developed to assess the competitiveness of U.S. cities, quality of place was applied to a group of European countries. However, analyses of quality of place at the national level can produce only an indicative picture. The objective of this article is therefore to gain a more detailed insight into the meaning and applicability of quality of place in a context different from the one in which Florida developed his ideas. First, it focuses on what quality of place actually entails, how far it can be measured in various contexts, and the main criticisms that can be leveled against Florida's ideas. Second, it draws a comparison between competitiveness and quality of place in the two largest cities in the Netherlands, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and discusses some of the main complications that arise from the analysis.     

DO WE REALLY WISH TO LIVE IN A COMMUNITARIAN CITY?: Communitarian Thinking and the Redevelopment of Chicago's Cabrini-Green Public Housing Complex

ABSTRACT: Communitarianism is a movement of academic intellectuals, policy experts, and public figures seeking to redefine the relations among individuals, communities, and governments. This article examines two important communitarian texts, Amitai Etzioni's The Spirit of Community and Alan Ehrenhalt's The Lost City, and further links communitarian principles to particular features of William Julius Wilson's “ghetto underclass” analysis. The article concludes with a discussion of current proposals to redevelop the Cabrini-Green complex, a large public housing site on Chicago's Near North Side—noting the communitarian rationales that have animated the redevelopment proposals and questioning whether or not a truly “communitarian city” will result from the public-private partnership seeking to rebuild Cabrini-Green.     

ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: SHIFTING PATTERNS OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES IN RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOODS IN FIVE DUTCH CITIES

Cities are oftentimes seen as undergoing a process of “emergence” in the “new economy.” However, this process has largely remained empirically underdetermined. This article examines the intra‐city geography of emerging businesses in newly dominant sectors of the urban economy. The change in dominant sectors coincides with a shift towards small‐ and medium‐sized businesses, creating new economic opportunities for urban residential areas. The residential neighborhood is introduced as a place where supply and demand side drivers operate to attract or limit such new economic activity. Allen Scott's perspective of the cognitive‐cultural economy is used to analyze which neighborhoods are flourishing sites of the cognitive‐cultural sectors. His perspective on industries that are on the rise in urban environments and their growth potential proves very valuable. Social demographic characteristics on the level of the neighborhood are used as predictors of the composition of the local economy. The analyses show that in particular wealthy, gentrified neighborhoods are more prone than others to becoming “hubs” of the cognitive‐cultural economy. However, disadvantaged neighborhoods may under certain conditions serve as incubators for business start‐ups as they offer low‐rent office spaces. This has important consequences for their future economic growth potential as well as the distribution of successful businesses in the city.     

The “Underclass” Revisited: A Social Problem in Decline

Abstract: In the early 1980s, widespread concern over the social conditions of inner‐city neighborhoods gave rise to a literature on the “underclass.” A team of researchers led by Isabelle Sawhill, then of the Urban Institute, crafted a controversial operational definition of the underclass and found a rapid rise in the number of neighborhoods classifying as underclass in the 1970s and, to a lesser extent, in the 1980s ( Mincy and Wiener 1993 ; Ricketts and Mincy 1990 ; Ricketts and Sawhill 1988 ). The increasing prevalence of the underclass was linked to the increasing spatial concentration of poverty ( Wilson 1987 ). However, the concentration of poverty decreased in the 1990s ( Jargowsky 2003 ; Kingsley and Pettit 2003 ). This article reexamines the underclass measure in light of the change in concentrated poverty and finds a dramatic decline in the number of underclass neighborhoods in the 1990s.     

WHAT ABOUT CULTURE FOR THE ORDINARY WORKFORCE? A STUDY ON THE LOCATIONAL PREFERENCES OF THE CREATIVE CLASS IN PRENZLAUER BERG,BERLIN

Richard Florida's creative class concept hardly needs introduction, neither in academic nor in urban and regional policy circles. The essence in a nutshell: the economic future of cities depends on their ability to attract creative people; and these creatives are attracted most to places that are tolerant, diverse, lively, and amenity‐rich. Florida assigns these locational preferences specifically to the creative class, implying that they are of less importance to the “ordinary” workforce. With the help of a survey we compare the reasons why people moved to or stayed in Berlin's most bohemian neighborhood, Prenzlauer Berg. We make a distinction between those who are categorized as “creative class” and others. Our results indicate that despite its unique character the creative class is not predominantly driven by the locational preferences Florida specifically assigned to them. Remarkably, these locational preferences appear more important drivers of residential choices for the ordinary workforce.     

BEFORE AND AFTER THE CREATIVE CITY: THE POLITICS OF URBAN CULTURAL POLICY IN AUSTIN,TEXAS

ABSTRACT: This article examines the politics and practice of urban cultural policy in Austin, Texas. I demonstrate how aspects of the local context frame how local government and cultural sector interests strive to initiate the direction of policy. While larger trends—such as Richard Florida's creative city thesis—influence cultural policy and planning, specific contextual factors including prior economic development and growth management policy, departmental organization, the forum for interaction between municipal actors and non‐governmental coalitions, and the character of the city's cultural economy mediate such trends to produce policy outcomes. As this case shows, contemporary urban cultural policy is not simply due to the rise of the creative city discourse, but is an evolving product of past policy structures and shaped by local institutions and actors.     

Study on semantic structure of cultural and creative industry park based on internet literature

According to the information of 231 cultural and creative industry parks on the Internet literature, this research classified and studied the park elements from the text using the method of semantic Ontology analysis. The paper analyzes the cultural and creative industry park in the performance of type, constitution elements of geographical attributes, characteristics, etc. Through analysis, we found that “location”, “form” and “rhetoric” are frequently mentioned in the park names. As the parks prefer to combine cultural relics with their own characters for highlighting influence and specialties, the park locations also have certain restrictions (e.g., “historic sites”, “ancient cities”). Furthermore, cultural and creative industry parks cover a wide range of contents (e.g., “digital industry”, “ecological landscape”). The boundaries of the park type and content are not very clear in present China. And, the parks lack of overall planning and often have an imperfect industrial chain and other issues. Therefore, on developing cultural and creative industry parks, the overall planning and perfect industrial chain need to be focused on.     

PLACE‐BASED AND RACE‐BASED EXCLUSION FROM MORTGAGE LOANS: EVIDENCE FROM THREE CITIES IN THE NETHERLANDS

ABSTRACT: Do place and race matter in mortgage loan applications? This article presents evidence from mortgage markets in the Dutch cities of Arnhem, The Hague, and Rotterdam, suggesting that place, and to a lesser extent also race, do matter. In general, race and place are not factors of direct exclusion, but (1) zip codes are included in credit scoring systems, and (2) both place and race are significant factors in the assessments by loan officers because applicants who do not meet all formal criteria are more often accepted (“overrides”) for indigenous Dutch and low‐risk neighborhoods than for ethnic minorities and high‐risk neighborhoods. In addition, a “national mortgage guarantee” is compulsory for loan applications in high‐risk neighborhoods and thereby used as a substitute for redlining, comparable to the compulsoriness of private mortgage insurance in the United States. Some lenders also engage in direct redlining by rejecting low‐risk “national mortgage guarantee” loans in high‐risk neighborhoods, a practice potentially explained by transaction cost economizing. Since the high‐risk neighborhoods in all three cities accommodate relatively large shares of ethnic minority groups, they are hit twice: through place‐based and through race‐based exclusion. In other words, place‐based disparate treatment results in race‐based disparate impact. The neighborhood does matter; place‐based exclusion in the mortgage market has a neighborhood effect.     

冲突与反思--转型期我国历史街区保护的几点思考

保护理念于近几十年间的复兴与拓深,几近形成一股可以称之为全球性的“社会历史文化思潮”。当然,就目前而言,这种保护运动并不是以同一的保护理念为前提的,本文的出发点就是借“中立”的视角,重新审视我国历史街区保护中的诸多现象,启发性的反思我国现阶段历史街区保护规划过程中的一些问题。     

“亚运城”带动下的广州新城规划

亚运召开,亚运城建设为广州新城的启动和持续发展提供了难得机遇,在区域和城市两个层面,剖析广州新城的发展动力,确定广州新城的功能定位为广州南部都会中心,珠三角服务之芯,国际亚运游旅休闲地,创意水都,生态宜居新城。规划遵循效法自然、承袭传统、精明增长等理念,提出用地、交通、开发建设等策略,构建未来广州新城。     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF URBAN SERVICE DISTRIBUTION: A TEST OF THE UNDERCLASS HYPOTHESIS

Both political scientists and urban economists have neglected the relationship between the distribution of the tax incidence of properly tax supported municipal services and the distribution of service benefits among neighborhoods. This article directs inquiry into the “underclass hypothesis” by identifying the distribution of service benefits and tax burdens for elementary education services in a medium size city and relating service benefits and burdens to neighborhood socio-economic status. The analysis demonstrates that while service benefits (especially expenditures) are likely to be distributed uniformly among sub-areas of a city, the distribution of tax benefits is regressive. The result is an overall regressive distribution of service benefits/burdens. In conclusion, two explanations for this regressive distribution are explored.     

“THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE NEW ORLEANS”: SENSE OF PLACE AND COMMUNITY RECOVERY IN THE NINTH WARD AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA

ABSTRACT: This study contributes to the literature on the strength of place attachment, identity, and dependence in low‐ and moderate‐income neighborhoods. It also engages the literature concerning the role of sense of place in community engagement and the disruption in place attachment, identity, and dependence that natural disasters can cause. By drawing on interview data collected from residents who returned to New Orleans after the storm and from former New Orleanians who evacuated to Houston but did not return, this article investigates the “sense of place” that residents in Ninth Ward New Orleans neighborhoods identify in their narratives about their pre‐ and post‐Hurricane Katrina experiences. The data considered here suggest that returning residents believe that New Orleans in general (and their Ninth Ward neighborhoods in particular) possess a unique bundle of characteristics that, when taken together, cannot be found or replicated elsewhere. While sense of place is an important motivator for returning residents, the data also suggest that complementary factors must be in place if the full potential of this social resource is to be realized.     

URBAN RENEWAL AND THE CREATIVE UNDERCLASS: ABORIGINAL YOUTH SUBCULTURES IN SYDNEY'S REDFERN‐WATERLOO

ABSTRACT: Redfern‐Waterloo, on the edge of Sydney's CBD, has long been an important center for the city's Aboriginal population, as a place to live, socialize, work, and/or access services provided by the area's numerous Aboriginal organizations. State plans to regenerate Redfern‐Waterloo, to realize its latent potential, far from seeking to displace the socially disadvantaged Aboriginal community and erase its cultural legacy, stress the importance of a continuing indigenous presence. Planning and policy documents generally suggest that Aboriginal people can contribute to, and reap the benefits of, the area's renaissance. This article will explore construction of minority cultures in planning discourse in Sydney and in particular the way indigenous culture and citizenship is delineated in the discourses of urban renewal. The vision of Aboriginal culture (and residual communal presence) is narrow and circumscribed by conventional “touristic” representations (fine art, dance, and other performance) around national heritage and consumption. This excludes many of the area's youth who, like their counterparts throughout the world, identify more with street culture—hip‐hop, graffiti art, skateboarding, etc.—than with traditional arts/high culture. These activities have little place in the vision for urban renewal. This article will argue that civic booster strategies that fail to recognize the complex and ambiguous character of public spaces and their importance as sites of resistant/underground/avant‐garde/youth subcultures will inevitably generate sterile landscapes; their vision of local communal heritage is little more than tokenistic.     

The flagship concept of the ‘4th urban environment’. Branding and visioning in Malmö, Sweden

In the process of turning the post-industrial city of Malmö, Sweden, into a knowledge-based, creative city, new urban planning strategies and visions are being developed. An important component of developing the “knowledge city” is the spatial conceptualization for renewal of urban life. One such concept introduced in Malmö is “the 4th urban environment” (det 4.e stadsrummet). In this article, based on critical urban studies, the development, branding, and practice of the 4th urban environment as a strategy to generate a creative economy and knowledge city is critically analyzed as part of a neoliberal planning discourse. The article raises the question, what kind of vision is “the 4th urban environment”? What is it an expression of; what does it mean for planning practice and to urban development? Contextualizing and investigating trends of neoliberal planning ideas are important to an understanding of the social and economic consequences of unequal power relations. The 4th urban environment and its application in Malmö is illustrative of existing neoliberal planning practices in a Nordic context, and in other similar economies with legacies of redistribution policies and long-standing leadership of the Social Democratic Party. This article focuses on what is articulated within discourses that re-present particular notions of space and place, to gain a better understanding of what neoliberal planning does to space.     

工业遗产再利用背景下的文化创意产业园规划研究

工业遗产是一种非常独特的文化资源,其再利用和保护有着同等重要的意义。工业遗产的再利用有多种形式,而规划建设成为文化创意产业园是近年来最常见的做法。文化创意产业园的建设,有利于工业遗产的集中保护、统一规划和管理,有利于文化创意产业集群的形成发展。通过对广州红专厂文化创意产业园规划的剖析,探讨工业遗产再利用背景下文化创意产业园的再利用及规划设计等问题,并提出相关思考与建议。