Cities as Creative Hubs: From the Instrumental to the Functional Value of Culture-Led Development Processes

One of the trends that has characterized the recent (in historical time) turn of the century has been a massive increase of interest in culture2 as a major policy leverage for urban change (Miles and Paddison 2005). In face of the difficulties experienced by conventional approaches to strategic urban planning, culture has appeared to many as an attractive bypass in many different respects (Evans 2001, 2003): the construction of urban identity (Gimeno Martinez 2007), the involvement of the local community (Goldbard 2006), and the attraction of resources and talent (Florida 2002a) are just examples of issues where traditional tools seemed to fall short of credible recipes, and where instead culture sounded promising and was likely to introduce refreshing elements of novelty, both at the conceptual and at the policy practice levels (Landry 2000, 2006).