3 - Critiquing the Neoliberal Creative City: But Long Live Alternative Creative Spaces!

Summary

In Chapter 2 it was argued that Harvey's (1989a) analyses of urban entrepreneurialism provides a sound basis for explaining the emergence of the neoliberal cultural economy. His critique of the entrepreneurial city also prefigures many of the shortcomings of the dominant creative paradigm. Follow on from Harvey, Peck (2005: 764) takes particular aim at the ideas of Richard Florida (2004) when he argues that ‘[c] reative-city strategies are predicated on, and designed for this neoliberalised terrain’. More recently, Mould (2018) also suggests that Florida's creative city model is conceived within a neoliberal framework producing gentrification and social inequalities. In an earlier work, he offers up an alternative version of creative practice in cities through his notion of ‘urban subversion’ (Mould, 2015).

Following these arguments, this chapter is organized into two main parts. The first part focuses on a critique of the neoliberal creative city, defined here as the state-facilitated marketization of the creative economy. It concentrates on the work of Florida for two reasons. First, although his approach has been heavily criticized previously it best represents the dominant neoliberal creative city approach. Second, Florida's schema has been highly influential worldwide both in its conceptual reach as well as in terms of urban policy. Rather than rescuing cities, Florida's creative paradigm has contributed to a new neoliberal ‘urban crisis’ and growing inequalities (Dorling, 2017). Should we ditch the idea of creativity altogether or are there existing alternative artistic practices that might inform a new urban vision? The second part of the chapter contributes to the urban creativity debate through my own research on ‘alternative creative spaces’ defined here as art and cultural spaces which are oppositional to the neoliberal creativity paradigm (Hollands, 2019).

The popularity and origins of the creative city

The popularity of the creative city idea is beyond debate. It is one of the most pervasive global paradigms of urban regeneration of the last 20 years. As Miles (2013) says, ‘[c] ulturally-led urban redevelopment became the norm throughout Europe during the 1990s’, while Malanga (2004: 36) talked about the creativity paradigm ‘sweeping urban America’. Mould (2015: 2) suggests the term creative city is ‘now firmly entrenched in the parlance of urban politics’.