Check out the author's video to find out more about the book: https://vimeo.com/124247409 This book provides a comprehensive critique of the current Creative City paradigm, with a capital ‘C’, and argues for a creative city with a small ‘c’ via a theoretical exploration of urban subversion. The book argues that the Creative City (with a capital 'C') is a systemic requirement of neoliberal capitalist urban development and part of the wider policy framework of ‘creativity’ that includes the creative industries and the creative class, and also has inequalities and injustices in-built. The book argues that the Creative City does stimulate creativity, but through a reaction to it, not as part of it. Creative City policies speak of having mechanisms to stimulate individual, collective or civic creativity, yet through a theoretical exploration of urban subversion, the book argues that to be 'truly' creative is to be radically different from those creative practices that the Creative City caters for. Moreover, the book analyses the role that urban subversion and subcultures have in the contemporary city in challenging the dominant political economic hegemony of urban creativity. Creative activities of people from cities all over the world are discussed and critically analysed to highlight how urban creativity has become co-opted for political and economic goals, but through a radical reconceptualisation of what creativity is that includes urban subversion, we can begin to realise a creative city (with a small 'c').

From line managers, corporate CEOs, urban designers, teachers, politicians, mayors, advertisers and even our friends and family, the message is 'be creative'. Creativity is heralded as the driving force of our contemporary society; celebrated as agile, progressive and liberating. It is the spring of the knowledge economy and shapes the cities we inhabit. It even defines our politics. What could possibly be wrong with this? In this brilliant, counter intuitive blast Oli Mould demands that we rethink the story we are being sold. Behind the novelty, he shows that creativity is a barely hidden form of neoliberal appropriation. It is a regime that prioritizes individual success over collective flourishing. It refuses to recognise anything - job, place, person - that is not profitable. And it impacts on everything around us: the places where we work, the way we are managed, how we spend our leisure time.

A buoyant, creative economy can be seen as the saviour of many cities, but behind such ‘urban makeovers’ lie serious problems such as widening inequalities, job precarity, gentrification and environmental issues. In light of the pandemic and climate crisis, how well are city economies, based largely on culture, nightlife and tourism, meeting basic societal needs? Blending lively case studies of alternative cultural practices and spaces with broader theoretical debates, this book explores the opportunities for a more just and sustainable urban future.

In recent years, there has been high level of interest amongst policy-makers in the ‘creative city’ concept, due to the anticipation of economic and social benefits from a growing cultural and creative economy. However, a lack of understanding of local social and economic contexts, as well as the complexities and challenges of cultural production, has resulted in formulaic, ineffective misguided policies. This book is concerned, in various ways, with developing an understanding of the complex dimensions of cultural production, and with tackling the often weak and implied links between research, policy and urban planning. In particular, contributors are concerned with agents, protagonists and practices that appear to be somehow invisible to, hidden from, or indeed ignored in much contemporary creative cities policy. Drawing on case studies from the UK and the Netherlands, chapters consider creative industries and policy across a range of scales, from provincial cities and regional economies, to the global cities of London and Amsterdam. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.

Public space and performativity from the perspective of architecture In recent decades, architecture has been seen as a field of practice that contributes greatly to the performativity of public space. In spite of the explosion of virtual communities through social media and the limitations imposed by pandemics, architecture today still holds an active role in (literally) building our societies. Bearing in mind its acute politicisation in past years, Living Politics in the City looks at public space from the perspective of architecture and its effective contribution, not as a prop but as an actual catalyst for embodying politics. The essays gathered here span five continents, activating various disciplinary approaches to architecture and examining it in different contexts: from a Palestinian refugee camp to the most vibrant urban axis in Sao Paolo, from the numerous city squares around the world crowded with rebellious populations, to the proximal politics of housing in Australia. Contributors: Endriana Audisho (University of Technology Sydney), Maja Babic (Charles University ), Alexandra Biehler (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Marseille), Tracey Bowen (University of Toronto Mississauga), Etienne Delprat (Rennes 2 University), Claudia Faraone (IUAV Venice School of Architecture, ETICity), Caterina Frisone (Oxford Brookes University), Catherine Grout (ENSAPL Lille), Pavel Kunysz (University of Liège), Flavia Marcello (Swinburne University of Technology), Eric Le Coguiec (University of Liège), Tova Lubinsky (University of Technology Sydney), Giovanna Muzzi (IUAV Venice School of Architecture, ETICity), Can Onaner (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Bretagne), Shadi Saleh (KU Leuven), Frédéric Sotinel (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Bretagne), Karolina Wilczynska (Adam Mickiewicz University), Ian Woodcock (Swinburne University of Technology) This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

This book asks how thinking, governing, performing, and producing the urban differently can assist in enabling the creation of alternative urban futures. It is a timely response to the ongoing crises and pressing challenges that inhabitants of cities, towns, and villages worldwide are faced with in the midst of what has been widely dubbed as ‘an urban age’. Starting from the premise that current urban development patterns are unsustainable in every sense of the word, the book explores how alternative patterns can be pursued by the wide variety of actors – from governments and international institutions to slum-dwellers and social movements – involved in the on-going production of our shared urban condition. The challenges addressed include exclusion and segregation; persisting poverty and increasing inequality; urban sprawl and changing land use patterns; and the spatial frames of urban policy. As such the book appeals to urban scholars, policy makers, activists, and others concerned with shaping the future of our cities and of urban life in general. Additionally, it is of interest to students in urban planning, architecture and design, human geography, urban sociology, and related fields.

This volume critically challenges the current creative city debate from a historical perspective. In the last two decades, urban studies has been engulfed by a creative city narrative in which concepts like the creative economy, the creative class or creative industries proclaim the status of the city as the primary site of human creativity and innovation. So far, however, nobody has challenged the core premise underlying this narrative, asking why we automatically have to look at cities as being the agents of change and innovation. What processes have been at work historically before the predominance of cities in nurturing creativity and innovation was established? In order to tackle this question, the editors of this volume have collected case studies ranging from Renaissance Firenze and sixteenth-century Antwerp to early modern Naples, Amsterdam, Bologna, Paris, to industrializing Sheffield and nineteenth-and twentieth century cities covering Scandinavian port towns, Venice, and London, up to the French techno-industrial city Grenoble. Jointly, these case studies show that a creative city is not an objective or ontological reality, but rather a complex and heterogenic "assemblage," in which material, infrastructural and spatial elements become historically entangled with power-laden discourses, narratives and imaginaries about the city and urban actor groups.