Creative industries (creative economies) and the creative city. Here are two interesting work concepts that we will encounter in the near future. The text bellow is part of the notes and information I gathered last year at a seminar called “Creative City” held in Dubrovnik (based on Zaklina Gligorijevici papers who presented there a piece of her more complex work, published in a booklet largely circulated within inner academic circles). So it happened that I was the only architect attending the conference. The funniest reply I got at my wonder on the missing fellow professionals was of course that architects erect buildings that have nothing to do with the city, a thing worth considering while speaking it.
The concepts taken from the recent works published in cultural management and policies by the Western theoreticians have influenced a great deal and are still being seriously considered for all the current urban tactics put to practice in both Western Europe and The United States. This in fact represents an attempt to adapt the forms of urban development to a new context with a new social and economical content.
The post-industrial city emphases the fourth sector of economy along with concepts such as networking, fluxes of people, capital, information, ideas or goods. First appeared in the early 90-s, the expression “creative industries” has already been accepted as a significant economical factor to the extent that, in 1997, the Unity of Creative Industries was formed within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in the United Kingdom.
What are these creative industries all about anyway? When we are talking about something achieved through talent, personal aptitudes and individual creativity, and this “something” has the potential to develop physical, moral and social values, create jobs and explore intellectual domains, we are dealing with creative industries. A short list would encompass of course architecture, design, fashion, computer games, software, publishing, artisan artifacts and antiques, film and video making, performing arts, music, television and radio. Since the social evolution and work relationships have been recently moving towards personal contractual responsibility, and since free time has become valuable time, the attitude towards work has changed a lot within these domains giving birth to a new type of self-development and social class – the creative class.
Within this new society the family or work relations have thus been modified in terms of belonging. The main process consists of individualization, reinterpretation of the database following personal judgment and not up-coming orders. The economy based on a creative working class speculates high training but also extreme mobility, thus transforming the individual capital in production resources. This happens while transitional societies in South-East Europe are still paying tribute to concepts such as national state, collective living, fully employed society, industrialization etc.
A city that develops on an economy and society as described above will be called creative city. The defining elements for the creative city could be the following: culture as leading urban leader, culture as strong local economy, a diverse cultural offer, advanced or alternative technologies, symbolic production, learning environment, continuously nurturing creativity, high quality built urban space, a living environment favoring groups.
One of the most spread ideas is that only significant public investments in culture can stimulate the self-sustaining, competitive and thus healthy creative industries. For example London (one of the cities that has earned the name creative) invests 50 million pounds in developing this type of industries while awaiting a profit 60 times larger that is 32 billion pounds from the creative industries and 200,000 new jobs. In 2002 there were 1.9 million people employed in these industries, from which 800,000 in architecture and design. Even more, Financial Times shows that creative industries have been during 2004 more active and more productive than the financial sector for example, and the whole creative sector is effectively important and even constitutes a priority for the English economy.
The cities in general are being regarded as decisive factors for the new economy, being the place that can sustain the individual intellectual production, creativity and inspiration, also offering a market and the infrastructure for this kind of production. Architecture plays a main part in these issues and the people that erect buildings of course know more answers than which color should go on which wall.
Another illustration of a creative city is Manchester that has been reborn by giving up industry and becoming the scene for underground music (Sex Pistols, The Smiths) or Bilbao with its Gehry museum, an investment that transformed the city in a destination favored by millions of tourists.
Let us hope that the erupting optimism of Sibiu will also pay off. The actions undertaken to transform certain cities in cultural capitals could also be considered for a strategy to use the creative value of a city. A year of expectation thus follows and since awaiting joy is joy in itself, the end of this text is near. So much theory to express such a simple a thing.
