The Self-Culturalisation of the City: On the Transformation of Modern Urbanity in the 'Creative City'

Abstract

The expression creative city is on everyone's lips. If there has been talk of a 'Renaissance in cities' since the 1990s, then at the interface of political, media and social science debates, this is regularly linked with the concept of the 'creative city.' From the widely discussed revitalisation of Berlin's new Mitte district, through the marked interest in western European medium-sized cities such as Barcelona, Amsterdam and Copenhagen with their new urban districts, their focus points of cultural industrial and city tourism, and the cultural-economic rebirth of New York after 2001, through to the phenomenon – widely publicised by the media – of Dubai's development into a cultural city in the desert: everywhere, the urbanism of a European cast, which had been called extinct under the influence of suburbanisation, appears to be re-establishing itself, and everywhere 'creativity' and 'culture' appear to play a leading role here.