Beyond the Creative City: Cognitive-Cultural Capitalism and the New Urbanism

Scott A. J. Beyond the creative city: cognitive-cultural capitalism and the new urbanism, Regional Studies. Creativity is a concept whose time has come in economic and urban geography. It is also a concept that calls for enormous circumspection. An attempt is made to show that the interdependent processes of learning, creativity and innovation are situated within concrete fields of social relationships. Because much existing research on creative cities fails adequately to grasp this point, it tends to offer a flawed representation of urban dynamics and leads in many instances to essentially regressive policy advocacies. Cognitive-cultural capitalism is a more robust theoretical framework through which contemporary urbanization processes can be described. The framework of cognitive-cultural capitalism shapes the peculiar logic of learning, creativity and innovation that are observed in cities today but also has many wider and deeper impacts on urban outcomes. It has important policy implications so a critique of current policy stances derived from creative city ideas is also provided.