Charles Ambrosino, on an extended visit from the other side of the Channel, traces the curve of the Creative City in metropolitan planning policy
“There is a friendly virus, in the beginning of the 21 century. This friendly virus has affected the community of planners and could help us to survive as a creative profession: the virus is called creativity, sometimes creative milieu and creative industries, or even creative city or creative class” (Kunzmann, 2004)
Nowadays, the barrier between culture and the economy is fading away. Public policy is being revisited so as to fund creative clusters in key areas with the hope that they will provide the foundation of a post-industrial economy. How has this worked out in reality?
Planning is a complex notion. Not surprisingly, planning theory has attempted to frame this complexity. Over the years, it has shown that planning is about trying to master the city and guide its spatial and social development. But how? One of the only movements that generated some degree of hegemony both in the intellectual world and amongst practitioners was modernism. Modernist planning theories encompassed a vision of society as well as a vision of the city. First they appeared to have been successful, later they were implemented in simplified form, more recently they have been rejected. During the 1960s, planning embarked upon one of its most unclear periods – the so-called post-modern era (Dear and Flusty, 1998). This period symbolises the end of the modern movement, but above all, the advent of what has been referred to as “reflexive modernity” – in other words, a new kind of modernity (Beck, 1992). Today, the quest for sustainability and the sense of uncertainty means that people and the institutions that represent them can no longer anticipate and plan ahead in the same ways as before. The environmental agenda has led policy makers and planners to consider their task in an integrated rather than sectoral manner. Thus decision-making – as an act that follows and concludes a process – has become ‘humble’.
Creativity has simultaneously emerged as a complementary agenda to that of sustainability. As Graeme Evans (2004) points out, cultural milieux and their historical impact have recently been celebrated in major exhibitions and publications such as La Ville: Art et Architecture en Europe 1870–1993 (Centre Pompidou, 1994); Century City, Arts & Culture in the Modern Metropolis (Tate Modern, 2000); Creative Quarters: the Art World in London 1700–2000 (Museum of London, 2001); Paris Capitale des Arts 1900–1968 (Royal Academy, 2002). The first international conference dealing with so-called “creative clusters” was held in Sheffield in 2002 and the next one will be hosted in London later this year. Books such as The Creative City, by planning consultant Charles Landry (2000), or The Rise of the Creative Class by academic and consultant Richard Florida, have contributed to the ramping up of creativity. Added to this, a plethora of governmental reports has specifically put creative industries and, more generally, urban culture, at the heart of urban policy and the Urban Renaissance (e.g. The draft guidance for local authorities for the preparation of multi-dimensional Local Cultural Srategies, and Culture at the heart of regeneration, Department of Culture Media and Sport, 1999 et 2004).
Today, as a result of this myriad of documents and events, creativity has become a major societal issue. A corpus has started to emerge from this trend, both in terms of theory and practice. Although it is still blurry, and has attracted criticism (Mirza, 2006 ; Heartfield, 2005) as well as support, it has become an important part of contemporary debates about the city. The “Creative City” has therefore become the latest in a line of paradigms. It has generated a great deal of interest amongst academics and seems to appeal to many locally elected members and planning practitioners.
Creativity and its urban dimension – the creative city – are more than models: they are a new philosophy put forward to underpin shifts in public policy. It is about producing a framework that seeks to extract best practice at the local level, i.e. what can be reproduced, and to focus on experimentation rather than ideology. Creative city professionals campaign for new planning methods which include democratic engagement and participation. The corollary of this approach is individuation – valuing each person’s capacity to get involved and laying down fair conditions that will allow everyone to live together. At the end of the day, the question is: how can we turn this into something that has an economic value?
The main issue here is to channel individuals’ creative energy in order to produce wealth at the local scale. And in order to achieve this, diversity becomes the main catalyst of change rather than what causes segregation; difference is a social asset, an endless potential that has been subject to ongoing celebration by those who promote the creative city (Landry, 2000). This intellectual and policy machinery is thus determined to praise individuals…but not any individual. To understand why, we need to look back at the British context of the 1990s.
In November 1996, Newsweek claimed London was the “coolest” capital on earth. The following year, the entire nation was celebrated: according to the Times, Rule Britannia had also become “cool”. Tony Blair’s election in 1997 confirmed the UK was a young, dynamic, creative and tolerant place, determined to revamp the modernity that the Old England had (supposedly) put on the back burner. By surpassing History – not rejecting it – or even by giving it a facelift, New Labour reversed the country’s image, based on Cool Britannia as the generic icon of a regenerated Britishness. Number 10 had suddenly become a trendy place where politicians and pop stars attend the same receptions. The “Department of Fun” (DCMS, Department of Culture, Media and Sport), set up to replace the old Department for National Heritage, drove the point home (Pratt, in press).
“Blair has meant a huge temperature shift in Britain. The people making large sums of money are the Wallpaper generation – they want new things. London has adapted to that taste […] Everyone feels the exuberance.” (Higgins, quoted in Basar, 2006)
In this context, art, and more specifically the economic and symbolic roles assigned to artists, have contributed widely to the renewal of identity: the opening of the Tate Modern* in spring 2000 reflected this; so does the Frieze Art Fair’s international success, only four years after it was launched, not to mention the many new art galleries that have opened throughout the capital.
These facilities and events have pointed to the dynamism of a certain segment of London’s art scene. A new generation of artists emerged as early as the end of the 1980s, most of whom graduated from the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths College, including Damien Hirst, brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, Chris Offili, Rachel Whiteread, Gary Hume, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and others, known collectively as Young British Artists (yBa). Around this group and thanks to collector Charles Saatchi’s patronage and investment, BritArt was to make not only a sensational entrance into Britain’s lethargic art world, but also considerable impact across Britain and beyond.
These yBAs are recognised for their entrepreneurship and initiative**. Although they themselves might not see it in these terms, they can be said to personify the New Labour discourse in an appealing way. Above all, they represent the transition from the anti-commercial artist to the “culturepreuneur”, characterised as knowledgeable and polyvalent creative workers capable of wearing many different hats, whose formative years were Thatcherite but who came into their own during the Blair era.
“The term ‘Culturepreneur’ describes an urban protagonist who possesses the ability to mediate between and interpret the areas of culture and of service provision. […] there is as yet no professional category for the “curator”, “project manager”, “artist”, “website designer” who is transparently multi-skilled and ever willing to pick up new forms of expertise. He may then be characterised, first and foremost, as a creative entrepreneur, someone who runs clubs, record shops, fashion shops and other outlets, who closes gaps in the urban with new social, entrepreneurial and spatial practices. Such knowledge and information based intermediaries increasingly emerged in the gallery, art and multimedia scene in different European metropolises, foremost in London in the 1990s” (Lange, 2006)
This change has entered the urban sphere in subtle but effective ways. Possibly following Michael Porter’s theories, Tony Blair’s successive governments implemented a number of policies that aim at supporting clusters in various areas of activity. At the same time, and in the cultural field, the barrier between culture and the economy is fading away and has been superseded by an overhaul of cultural industries – the latter having become creative too. In the light of this new economic outlook, the content of these creative industries has to be precisely identified. This was done – or, at least, attempted – through two mapping documents that the Department of Culture, Media and Sport produced in 1998 and 2001. Creative agent clusters (artists, cultural entrepreneurs, places of production etc.) then had to be localised from a geographic point of view: this exercise was widely relayed by development agencies. The next step, which followed these forecasting tasks, was to make strategic choices.
By supporting the shaping of clusters, development agencies assumed that proximity can generate wealth. Embedding this innovative know-how means that economic gain and job creation are safeguarded. But a creative atmosphere (whether is has been fostered recently or whether it has existed for some time) needs to be sustained. In other words, and from a planning perspective, a choice needs to be made between on the one hand distinguishing production from consumption, as was typical of old-fashioned zoning, or on the other hand, combining them both in a creative milieu or cultural quarter. This is the core issue of the puzzle.
Is it possible to plan a creative milieu or cultural quarter? And if so, at what scale? With regards to this question, Charles Landry (2000) is right to comment on the mercurial character of the latter term:
“The ‘booming economy of bits and bytes’ has made the idea of production based cultural quarters or creative industries quarters fashionable the world over at the end of the 20th century: they range from Brick Lane in London’s Tower Hamlets, to Tilburg’s Pop Cluster, from Berlin’s Hackishe Höfe to Johannesburg’s Newtown, Silicon Alley in New York or Rundle Street East in Adelaide. The term is so popular that any coincidental proximity of cultural facilities are now being called ‘cultural quarters’ as a branding device form Amsterdam’s Museumsplein to Baltimore’s Inner Harbour, although here culture is consumed rather than produced.”
Developing cultural quarters was advocated in two strategic documents produced by the Greater London Authority (London plan and London Cultural Capital):
“Designation, development and management of cultural quarters can help address the need for affordable workspace for creative industries, provide flexible live/work space, encourage clusters of activity and provide a trigger for local regeneration. Cultural and creative activities are sometimes priced out of traditional areas. Where they contribute to wider regeneration and mixed-use policies, they should be sustained by the planning system and supported by wider economic and cultural development initiatives” (Mayor of London, 2004a)
“Cultural quarters must be developed as key contributors to London's creative capital and the development of the broader economy', in order that 'achieving a better balance between the cultural facilities of inner and outer London can go some way towards reducing the social and economic inequalities between different parts of the city'; to realise this the Mayor must 'support the development of cultural quarters and promote their role in regeneration, encouraging creative industry developments in the Thames Gateway region” (Mayor of London, 2004b)
How then to plan for these cultural quarters? Is it possible to deal with Hoxton, Brick Lane or Stratford in a similar way despite their differences?
It only takes a walk down Brick Lane to grasp the full “cultural complexity” of the place. To what extant do culturepreneurs of the Old Truman Brewery, artists of the Whitechapel art gallery or Asian shopkeepers produce a shared territorial identity that could be subject to a consensual planning policy?
In terms of consumption and production, are the stakes clear for this cultural quarter, crammed between a Banglatown – this supposedly dodgy and exotic area which is in fact an ethnoscape for tourists, a key landmark of urban heritage (the Fournier St area), and a lair for young creative people?
What about the Stratford cultural quarter? Here, culture, or at least the existing critical infrastructure, appears to address a night economy that hitherto lacked amenity – in the context of the future Stratford City – rather than a pledge to nurture a real hub (despite the good will of Stratford Circus staff) that would be able to galvanise local creativity.
Last but not least, Hoxton. The relationship between planning agencies and this quarter is unclear: it is implicitly considered as a model of culture-led regeneration, although it is also referred to as an example that should not be followed:
“One of the key challenges facing many cultural quarters created in the last thirty years, however, is the process of ‘gentrification’. Run-down areas have provided cheap property on short term leases for artists and small cultural organisations and businesses. As a consequence, new life has been breathed into these areas. Over time, such areas become fashionable enclaves and attract larger and wealthy businesses and residents which in turn raise property prices. Ultimately, the result is that artists and local residents are priced out and forced to move out while the area becomes a hot spot for developers. In some cases, the lack of property at a suitable price could also drive creative businesses out of London
For example, Hoxton has grown during the last decade as a centre for London’s art market with a cluster of approximately 100 galleries in 2002. However, fashionable bars, clubs and restaurants combined with new residential developments have caused rents to go up. Many organisations can no longer afford to remain in the area and are moving eastwards. Creative activities are often forced out of an area because they have not had the capital to purchase their property and protect themselves from rent increases.” (Mayor of London, 2004b)
Hoxton is a creative milieu that has been subject to much debate. It lost its industrial activities as from the beginning of the 1980s, and was taken over by artists the following decade (Attfield, 1997; Green, 1999; Harris, 2006). This example is instructive in that it shows that production and consumption are not always antagonistic; rather, they can be complementary and are in fact two realities which should be dealt with simultaneously. But uncontrolled timescales have turned consumption into the number one enemy of localised cultural production systems. The short time during which Hoxton was a true creative milieu was when it generated cultural products and goods; the area was then a place of cultural production, where producers and consumers were one and the same. Such a buzz then attracted galleries and dealers, as Soho did previously (Pratt, in press). Similarly, the presence of a huge number of yBas – a flexible, creative, qualified and experienced workforce – explains how this area became a springboard, turning art into cultural industry, and a cluster of SMEs that specialised in NICTs – the result of a subtle fusion between art and new technologies (Pratt, in press).
In Hoxton, some artists successively exposed their works in galleries (or in their own studios), and used their experience to work for specialised companies whilst making the most of informal exchanges with other members of the artist community and culturalpreuneurs in the area’s many bars, clubs and restaurants that act as “social condensers”. But soon, Hoxton became “the place to be and to be seen” (Pratt, in press). The opening of the prestigious White Cube art gallery on Hoxton Square strengthened the reputation of this creative area, making it unaffordable for those at the heart of its initial success. With few exceptions, all the buildings around Hoxton Square have now been converted into apartments – the ground floors mostly being dedicated to restaurants. Lastly, as Andy Pratt (in press) points out “What is critical here is that some parts of the Hoxton area have improved economically, however there is a population deprived of work on its doorstep that has received little or no spread effects at all. […] Indeed, what jobs the ‘new’ Hoxton had provided were lost to the ‘old’ community as the new good jobs went to those who already had money and opportunity for the most part, and invariably came from outside the area”
So what can we learn from this experience in terms of urban regeneration? Planning with clear and informed objectives, to respect local needs rather than merely securing economic development, cannot be dissociated from efficiency and productivity. It is true that strengthening cultural industry seedbeds can be beneficial; but lasting character is based on artists’ capacity to remain anchored in an area, and to find their own place in the new cultural industry-based economic structure. The role of local authorities is to see through this fragile transition, from a precarious cultural economy to a permanent industrial system. This implies enhancing the status of the artist as a worker (Menger, 2002) and looking at real estate issues from a comprehensively.
Was there a revolution in planning policy leading to the formation of a Creative City paradigm? Going by the London example, this is another revolution about which it is too early to tell.
I would like to thank my fellow planner Stéphane Sadoux for translating this article from French to English.
Charles Ambrosino is a researcher based in Grenoble charlesambrosino@yahoo.fr
* The first exhibition hosted at the Tate Modern from February to March 2001 was Century City : Art and Culture in the modern metropolis.
** In 1988, Damien Hirst organised Freeze – an exhibition which presented the works of sixteen future yBas, most of whom were graduates of Goldsmith College. These students, who graduated in 1988, were taught by artists such as Michael Craig-Martin, who encouraged them to take their career in hand at an early stage. Freeze is often put forward as the outcome of this teaching – the original event that was then reproduced by an entire generation of artists.
© 2004·06
The [Thatcher] government banged the drum for design-led innovation like no other for 100 years
Welcome to this issue
Contents of this issue
Editor’s letter
Academic
Debate
Entertainment
Essays
Feedback
Interviews
Journalism
The Nearly-New Economy
London and the Creative City paradigm
Culture and Anomie
Speaking of Home: Bangladeshi women in London’s East End reflect on belonging
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