Urban Social Processes

New Culture-Oriented Economic Development Trajectories: The Case Study of Four Dutch Cities


Introduction
Cities spend more and more in cultural programmes and large infrastructure projects, seeking competitive and sustainable growth: urban landmarks influencing the image and the attractiveness of the city for private investments, but also platforms for the “new creative class” and stimuli to social integration through self-reflection and cultural inclusion. However, there is uncertainty about the returns of such investments. Moreover, seed-funding creativity and cultural dynamism is a complex issue, as traditional institutions and policy approaches are hardly able to come to terms with fuzzy, anarchist social structures.
Description
Culture is a key ingredient of post-industrial, information-intensive economic activity. Cultureoriented economic development (COED) is emerging as a dominant paradigm, integrating the symbolic and creative elements into any aspect of the urban economy, pursuing distinction, innovativeness, and a higher level of interaction between localised individual and collective knowledge and globalising markets.
This article presents a dynamic analysis of the effects of culture on the economic development trajectories of European cities. It may contribute to shed more light on the relevance of cultural industries for spatial development, addressing issues such as: cultural endowment, identity and urban competitiveness; dispersed vs. concentration; cultural participation and social inclusion.
The analysis uses data collected within the ESPON project 1.3.3 and other information of qualitative and quantitative nature collected by EURICUR in occasion of a study of a sample of European cities. In this paper we present the investigation conducted in the three largest Dutch cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague, which are part of the city-region of the Randstand, and the fifth largest Dutch city, Eindhoven, one the most important economic and educational centres in the Netherlands.
Background information
The Working Paper Series is available online only. For editorial correspondence, please contact: wp.dse@unive.it.
Knowledge dissemination
This article is published as a Working Paper of the Department of Economics of the Ca ’ Foscari University of Venice (No. 35/WP/2006).
Conclusions
This study set out to propose a theoretical framework to interpret and possibly steer culture-oriented urban development: the COED model.
The comparative analysis of the four cities confirms some of the intuitions of the COED model. In cities where a certain number of “cultural clusters” have emerged, the urban economy has been structurally modified towards the symbolic. Cultural clusters have become – to varying extents, according to the characteristics, location and governance structures of such clusters – catalysts of a wholesome creative economy, involving a higher attractiveness for tourists, skilled talents, and ultimately for knowledge- intensive enterprises in search of an innovative climate and high levels of quality of life.
However, culture-oriented economic development is subject to strong endogeneity, modifying continuously the original conditions that make places culturally rich and viable as creative hubs. COED is potentially short-lived and may bring to irreversible changes in the urban environment: the erosion of social capital, the dispersion in space of cultural activities and the consequent decreasing of clustering effects, and ultimately the fading of local cultural identity and “uniqueness”. Urban policy should be careful to accompany the COED process making sure that these limits are never reached. Physical and cultural planning, social and educational policies, infrastructure projects and the implementation of innovative forms of governance and networking may achieve these objectives, but the policy context is made fuzzier and more complex by the unconventional nature of economic and social processes underlying cultural activities and creative production. The development of a cultural industry may follow fast cyclic patterns and be “erratic” in space, but as long as creative talents are attracted to the city, and the spatialeconomic conditions (possibly supported by targeted area policies or entrepreneurial support) allow the sedimentation of a critical mass of organisations and businesses characterised by the typical traits of the “cluster economy”, cultural production will emerge and stay as a driver for urban economic development.
The four cities have been assessed and benchmarked against the development of this model. We find that some cities have progressed more than others to develop their cultural sectors into full catalysts for economic growth, in the case of Amsterdam the limits which would modify the conditions for sustainable development are close: gentrification and changes in social mix, loss of spatial centrality in creative production sectors, lack of alternative development locations, erosion of cultural identity and character. In the other cities (Rotterdam, Eindhoven, The Hague), COED is limited to internal growth of a limited number of cultural sectors and clusters, missing to affect substantially the development opportunities for other economic sectors by influencing their innovativeness and location potentials. A number of policy recommendations for a sustained COED leading to increased urban competitiveness as well as plenty of illustrations from best practices and common mistakes are given. Funding schemes for cultural activity were taken into consideration as well as programs of social inclusion through cultural education, cultural infrastructure policy, and innovative governance models, looking at interesting initiatives taken in the four cities in our study.
Contact info
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice - Department of Economics
Cannaregio 873, Fondamenta S.Giobbe
30121 Venice
Italy
Phone: +39 041 2349135
Fax: +39 041 2349176
Jan van der Borg

Publication date

/06/2006
Researcher
Antonio Russo and Jan van der Borg
Article info
ISSN: 1827-336X