1. Cities of Russia 2030: Crossroads of Opportunities
Plenary 15th November 2017
Cities and Creative Industries

2. Cultural and Creative Industries

3. Why Cultural/ Creative Industries in Cities?
Historically sites of innovation and transformation.
Centres of power, knowledge
Nodes for exchange and flows

4. Why Cities?
Global economy about networks and flows – of capital, information, goods and services, people, ideas, images
Cities key nodes and command centres in global networks.

5. Why Cities? Produce and process knowledge and information;
Harness R&D to new business opportunities;
Generate new skills and entrepreneurial energy;
Provide complex division of labour and institutional mix of dynamic post-industrial city.

6. Why CCI in Cities?
CCIs held possibilities for de-industrialising cities – where innovation, entrepreneurialism, and local vision were key.
They could contribute to:
Employment and wealth
Regeneration effects (property)
Image/ Brand effects – ‘buzz’
Sense of vibrancy and cultural richness
Catalyse wider creativity and innovation
New role for subsidised art and culture

7. Cultural/ Creative Industries
Creativity, innovation, competitiveness
Flexible, responsive, user-driven
Complex mix of large and small companies;
Clusters and networks– ideas, information, support, trust

8. ‘Commodified Cultural Production’ (Alan Scott)
High levels of human input:
Clusters of small companies operating on a project basis;
Dense flows of information, goods and services;
Benefits from economies of scale in skills sourcing and know-how;
Complex divisions of labour (driven especially by new ICT developments) tying people to places

9. Why Some Cities and Not Others?
We do not live in a “flat world” but one of multiple spikes
Global Cultural Cities much bigger than their smaller neighbours
“Winner Takes all”

10. Why Cities?: Traded Interdependencies
Reduce costs through proximity by supporting networks that provide access to key supplies and skilled labour. (Externalities – Theories of the firm)

11. Untraded Interdependencies
The circulation of knowhow, and the rules, norms, and institutional practices that define an industrial field.
These conditions enable cultural production by bringing together complementary firms and people to provide opportunities for information and resource exchange and exposure to alternative ideas and practices, which propel product innovations and new production processes.

12. Untraded Interdependencies
Michael Storper (1997) “externalities” which "take the form of conventions, informal rules, and habits that coordinate economic actors under conditions of uncertainty. These relations constitute region-specific assets in production", "a central form of scarcity in contemporary capitalism", ... and "of geographical differentiation in what is done, how it is done, and in the resulting wealth levels and growth rates of regions.”
The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy.

13. Why some cities not others?
Embeddedness
Tacit knowledge
Traditions
Institutions
‘Atmosphere’
Local identity
Urbanity

14. Specifics of Place
Path dependency and institutional/ evolutionary economics
Histories:
of governance;
industries and skills;
families, colleagues and friends;
beliefs and cultures;
‘structures of feeling’.

15. Creative/ cultural Industries: Challenges
Definition – what is not creative: software/ design?
Economic rationale crowds out the cultural
Failure to take care of socio-cultural milieu
Winner takes all accelerating (FAANG/ Alibaba, Tencent)
Financialisation accelerates Gentrification
Innovation capture by management/ investors
Challenges to Transnational Working
Creative work: Conditions and wages - squeezed

16. Culture and Cities
Culture is distinct sphere of public policy – it should not be asked to justify itself primarily or exclusively in terms of its contribution to economic development. In addition to new cultural/ cultural industry policy settings, need new robust language of cultural value for cities and their citizens.