Urbanism: Creating urban futures

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Dinardi, Cecilia. 2021. Urbanism: Creating urban futures. In: Carlos Lopez Galviz and Emily Spiers, eds. Routledge Handbook of Social Futures. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9781138340336 [Book Section]

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In the last decades contemporary cities have witnessed the rise of creativity as a resource for economic and urban development, mobilising both advocates and critics. This chapter examines the emergence of creative urbanism as a way of planning the city by using culture and the arts and/or adopting creative strategies. It approaches creative urbanism from a sociological angle but also draws on urban studies and cultural policy in order to trace its origin, conceptual developments, policy applications and academic criticism. The creativity underpinning this type of urban planning has a variety of sources – from the activities shaping and revitalising urban space, to the process of design and implementation, and the ways in which social groups are included in the process. The focus is on both top-down and bottom-up practices – on the one hand, official governmental policies for culture-led urban regeneration and creative industry-based strategies, such as creative hubs or incubators for small and medium creative enterprises; on the other, grassroots-led projects using culture and the arts for urban transformation. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first outlines the key features of creative urbanism in order to identify a paradigm shift. The second considers scholarship that has sought to move the ‘creative city’ debate forward in view of solid critiques to Richard Florida’s controversial ‘creative class’ proposition. The final section considers the social futures of creative urbanism in the light of its neoliberal uses and potential for alternative applications.

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