文化导向的城市复兴.pdf

Urban Studies DOI 10 1080 00420980500107508 2005 42 833 Urban Stud Steven Miles and Ronan Paddison Introduction The Rise and Rise of Culture led Urban Regeneration The online version of this article can be found at Published by On behalf of Urban Studies Journal Limited can be found at Urban Studies Additional services and information for Email Alerts Subscriptions 2005 Urban Studies Journal Limited All rights reserved Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution by on March 2 2008 Downloaded from Introduction The Rise and Rise of Culture led Urban Regeneration Steven Miles and Ronan Paddison Paper received in fi nal form February 2005 As a marker of its salience to the city under deepeningglobalisation themostrecent report in the UN Habitat series The State of the World s Cities UNCHS 2004 focuses on the cultural impacts of globalisation Pre vious reports had singled out the problems of and opportunities for urban economic growth UNCHS 1996 and the need for improved systems of governance UNCHS 2001 while the 2003 study focused on slumsandtheupgradingofhousing UNCHS 2003 Againstthisunfolding agenda the turn to exploring the cultural dimension seems unexceptional not least because of the self evident linkages between globalisation cities and cultural diversity Further where the report was timed to coincide with the Universal Forum of Cultures held in Barcelona in 2004 the study refl ects broader concerns with multiculturalism and exclusion While the report is concerned largely with the implications globalisation processes have on urban cultural diversity andtheproblems particularlythoseof inequality and governance to which this gives rise its concern is also to show how culture has been and can be co opted to address such problems of the city Culture it would seem can be viewed not just as a chal lenge to the ability of cities to combine social justice with economic growth but also the source ground around which the amelioration of such problems can be sought The idea that culture can be employed as a driver for urban economic growth has become part of the new orthodoxy by which cities seek toenhancetheircompetitiveposition Although as the UNCHS report illustrates its practice has become globalised it is in cities in the economically advanced nations thattheuseofculture drivenstrategies largely originated and at least judged by the roll call of cities that are commonly cited that its adoption has had the most dramatic consequences both physically in transforming the urban landscape and in building their economic performance What is remarkable here is not just the speed with which culture driven strategies have become advocated by governments and local development agencies as a means of bolstering the urban economy but also how their diffusion has globalised Within the space of little more than two decades theinitiationofculture driven urban re generation has come to occupy a pivotal position in the new urban entrepre neurialism Equally as Yeoh demonstrates in this Review the language of place market ing has become as integral to the Asian city as it has the European or North American city that more specifi cally the invocation of culture has become central to the ambitions Urban Studies Vol 42 Nos 5 6 833 839 May 2005 Steven Miles is in the Department of Sociology Social Policy and Social Work Studies University of Liverpool Eleanor Rathbone Building Bedford Street South Liverpool L69 72A UK Fax 0151 794 2997 E mail s miles liverpool ac uk Ronan Paddison is in the Department of Geography and Geomatics University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QQ UK Fax 0141 330 4894 E mail rpaddison geog gla ac uk 0042 0980 Print 1360 063X Online 05 05 60833 07 2005 The Editors of Urban Studies DOI 10 1080 00420980500107508 2005 Urban Studies Journal Limited All rights reserved Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution by on March 2 2008 Downloaded from of Singapore to maintain and enhance its regional position as a world city Such developments refl ect not only the rise to prominence of the cultural sphere in the contemporary urban economy but how the meaning of culture has been redefi ned to include new uses to which it can be put to meet social economic and political objec tives How culture has been defi ned and appropriated has not of course been static As Bocock 1992 has argued the defi nition of culture has evolved referring succes sively over time to the cultivation of the land of the mind to social development to the meanings values and ways of life and mostrecently tothepracticeswhich produce meanings In more strident vein Yudice 2003 argues that in the global era the role of culture has assumed unprecedented signifi cance and that its redefi nition as a resource has enabled it to be used as the means for resolving political as well as socio economic problems including those of the city Integraltothis andgivenclear expression in the city through the spread of processes of gentrifi cation and the develop ment of cultural forms of urban tourism is the commodifi cationofcultureandthe spreadofculturalcapitalism Whatthe relationships are between such new uses of culture and previous meanings given to the term particularly to its part in defi ning established values and ways of life within the city remain a moot point generating con tradictionsaroundwhichoppositionfre quently gels The development of urban and regional policy making is peppered with policy inno vations that have progressed through a Down sian issue attention cycle Initial enthusiasm leading to widespread adoption with the promise of being able to resolve an urban problem is followed by a growing apprecia tion of the limitations of the paradigm and its ability to tackle complex urban and regional problems Growth centre theory high rise living as a solution to the housing problems of the post war city New Towns neighbourhoods evenwheresomesuch policies have lingered or been resurrected in new guises the lessons of each have been to demonstratetheshortfallbetweeninitial expectations and reality Against this history the rise and rise of culture led urban regene ration within contemporary policy leads to questioning whether a similar pattern may not befall it while recognising that if it is to follow a similar cycle we are currently at the beginnings of it Clearly as the next sectiondemonstrates theabilityofthe policy to deliver beyond the rhetoric is already being questioned Some Key Questions As we have argued the rapidity with which culturehasascendedtheurbanpolicy agenda has been little short of extraordinary perhaps nowhere more so than in Britain But the key questions remain do we really understand the complex nature of the impact of cultural investment on our cities and how far are such decisions based on an informed analysis of how investment might change a city More pointedly perhaps what do such developments actually mean in terms of the lives of those people who live in that city In short to what extent is culture led regene ration more about rhetoric than it is about reality There is no doubt that the British govern ment has come to recognise and arguably overestimate the value of cultural investment to urban regeneration This is particularly evident in Chris Smith s 2000 vision of a Creative Britain in which he discusses the impact of culture led regeneration as high lighted in the work of Comedia In this context Smith sees such regeneration as an effective route for personal growth a valuable contribution to social cohesion of benefi t to environmental renewal and health promotion a producer of social change and a fl exible responsive and cost effective element of a community development stra tegy that strengthensratherthan dilutes Britain s cultural life and forms a vital factor of success rather than a soft optioninsocialpolicy Smith 2000 p 135 834STEVEN MILES AND RONAN PADDISON 2005 Urban Studies Journal Limited All rights reserved Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution by on March 2 2008 Downloaded from But perhaps the clearest illustration of the seriousness with which the British govern ment has sought to promote a culture led agenda for cities is the Core Cities initiative set up to work in partnership with government and other key stakeholders to promote the role of the cities as the drivers of regional and national economic growth and to create inter nationally competitive regions The sugges tion here is that cities are the key drivers of economic change and that culture should play a key role in this process Culture is a source of prosperityand cosmo politanism in the process of international urbancompetitivenessthroughhosting international events and centres of excel lence inspiring creativity and innovation driving high growth business sectors such as creative industries commercial leisure and tourism and increasing profi le and name recognition Culture is a means of spreading the benefi ts of prosperity to all citizens through its capacity to engender social and human capital improve life skills and transform the organisational capacitytohandleandrespondto change Culture is a means of defi ning a rich shared identity and thus engenders pride of place and inter communal under standing contributing to people s sense of anchoring and confi dence Comedia 2003 This emphasis on culture owes much to recent debates on the relationship between culture creativity and the city and not least the work of Richard Florida 2002 which has had a signifi cant role in underpinning the assertion that cultural inputs translate into social and economic outputs Florida s work resonates deeply with the regeneration agenda and although it might be argued that Florida s work is more concerned with developing an understanding of the indicative conditions favourable to the creation of urban economic growth than it is in providing a critical appreciation of them there is no doubt that his work has had a signifi cant impact insofar as it has captured the imagination of policy makers Floridaarguesthatcitiesand regions should focus on promoting creativity and on attracting creative people not least through their creative offer In short for Florida the clustering of human capital is thecriticalfactorinregionaleconomic growth and is the key to the successful regene ration of cities In Britain such an understanding has been taken up enthusiastically at regional and national levels and not least by the Depart ment of Media Culture and Sport DCMS In the document Culture at the heart of regeneration the DCMS argues that the cul tural element can become the driving force forregeneration asintheexampleof NewcastleGateshead discussed by Miles in this Review Issue However there is undoubt edly a danger of exaggerating the potential impact of cultural investment The evidential grounds for arguing for example that Liver pool sculturalsectorwillseearapidexpansion with investment of 2 billion from public and privatesourcesandthatemploymentinthecul turalsectorwillgrowbyatleast14 000jobsas a result of the award of the Capital of Culture 2008 title remains at best limited DCMS 2004 Indeed Jones and Wilks Heeg argue that the model of regeneration promoted by this sort of approach is inherently misleading to the extent that Current trends suggest precisely the scena rio of a rapidly regenerating and gentrifying urbancore surrounded by aring of intensely disadvantaged residential areas Jones and Wilks Heeg 2004 p 357 Despite acknowledging that they have a limitedevidentialbasisforprovingthe benefi tsofculture ledregeneration the DCMS continue to make claims as to its potential This is an issue that will be raised throughout the Review Issue How do we go about understanding the impact of culture led regeneration in a way that provides a more balanced understanding of its pros and cons The nature and role of cultural policy have in recent years been transformed notably through the ideological delegitimisa tion of state intervention and public sector arts and media INTRODUCTION TO REVIEW ISSUE835 2005 Urban Studies Journal Limited All rights reserved Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution by on March 2 2008 Downloaded from In the fi eld of culture and cultural policy civil society and the public sphere of rational critical debate represent the possi bilities of challenge and resistance to cor porations that are only accountable to their shareholders and governments that submit too readily to corporate interest McGuigan 2004 p 60 Indeed it is worth refl ecting on the role of the DCMS in promoting the cultural case in the context of citizenship and more specifi cally cultural citizenship The impact of culture led regeneration is clearly closely tied up to a localised sense of place Govern mentdiscoursearoundculturecertainly acknowledges this fact but it remains doubt ful as to whether local issues are given full rein when broader economic ones appear to be so much more immediate This refl ects the concern recently expressed by Culture North West 2004 on their website that the primary focus on new landmark investment as the route to regeneration should not be sup ported as being the key driver for culture led regeneration Our work suggests that a fi ner grain moresubtleandlocally fi nessed approach is more appropriate for much of the region There are undoubtedly some signs that the government has been increas ingly willing to move in this direction in recent years The infl uential Urban Task Force chaired by the architect Lord Rogers said in its 1999 report that British cities were waybehind thoseinHolland Germany and Scandinavia in terms of the quality of urban life and the built environment and that in turn improvements in design were vital for an urban renaissance to reverse the abandonment of inner cities and to protect the countryside from sprawling development Urban Task Force 1999 The role of culture in the above process remains uncertain Ward 2002 goes as far as to describe the impact of an enduring myth the myth that culture has to be a good thing and that there may be money in it Wilks Heeg and North 2004 point out that local economic development strategies haveincreasingly identifi edculturaland creative industries as a key growth sector in urban and regional economies They go on to point out that the Tate Modern is estimated to be worth 100 million whilst supporting 3000 jobs in London But there is a danger here as Stevenson 2004 points out that cul tural planning has come more and more to be concerned with intervening and achieving outcomes that relate to a conception of culture as a civilising process that is not dynamic fl exible and situational but linear and linked to a set of clearly defi ned political and governmental objectives Stevenson 2004 p 125 Stevenson goes on to discuss the way in which cultural planning meshed with the Third Way objective of seeking to transcend the welfare consensus of the old Leftinfavourofasocialdemocratic schema characterised above all by the focus on social inclusion rather than social justice In the language of the Third Way the social of social inclusion has become synonymous with the economy to such an extent that participation in society full citi zenship can only be achieved through par ticipation in the economy There is no scope in the rhetoric of the Third Way to assess or address the causes of social exclu sionordisadvantage Tobemore specifi c there is no language for discussing the extent to which the ability of the top to splinter off from society actually depends on the structural exclusion of the bottom Stevenson 2004 p 126 From this point of view the degree to which culture itself is implicated in the repro duction of inequality is largely neglected as a result of the apparent fusion of the social the economic and the cultural Social inclusion therefore becomes determined by an individ ual or social group s relationship to the mar ketplace and by implication their role as consumers The problem with this is that all too often there appears to be an assumption that the rehabilitation of the urban will auto maticallyrevitalisethepublicsphere Stevenson s argument here is that cultural planning is premised on a kind of strategic pun that sees cultural activity and the creative 836STEVEN MILES AND RONAN PADDISON 2005 Urban Studies Journal Limited All rights reserved Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution by on March 2 2008 Downloaded from industries as the scaffolding upon which vibrant urban economies can be established whilst these very same strategies and out comes are touted as a means of developing the cultural capital of the local population in a way that addresses social exclusion These competing objectives have collapsed inonthemselvesasundifferentiated elementsofholisticculturalplanning They are explained and legitimated in terms of each other in ways that are not only tautological but also disguise signifi cant political motives and assumptions Stevenson 2004 p 128 The danger then as Stevenson expresses it is that if cultural planning is to be a success culture needs to mean something but it can andshouldnotbeexpectedtomean everything The rhetorical promotion of culture as a sort of an economic panacea is profoundly short sighted and indeed underestimates the value of culture for the people of a locality Several of the articles presented here touch on the potential of cultural investment to refresh the local soul as well as the local economy Ward 2002 p 7 The single most dangerous aspect of cultural investment is that it simply does not sit comfortably in the context for which it is intended This ten dency is discussed by Jayne 2004 who looks at misfi ring attempts to use the arts and cul tural reproduction for urban regeneration in Stoke on Trent Critiquingthesuggestion that cultural investment notably in the crea tive industries can attract post industrial jobs and encourage people back to living in city centres whilst g