The international regulation of sustainable forest management : doctrinal concepts, governing institutions and implementation

The overarching objective of the research was to identify the existence and nature of international legal principles governing sustainable forest use and management. This research intended to uncover a set of forest legal considerations that are relevant for consideration across the globe. The purpose behind this, is to create a theoretical base of international forest law literature which be drawn upon to inform future international forestry research. This research will be of relevance to those undertaking examination of a particular forest issue or those focusing on forests in a particular region. The thesis explains the underlying legal issues in forest regulation, the dominant international regulatory approaches and makes suggestions as to how international and national forest policy could be improved.

Culture and creative industries in Australia

This paper draws upon the Australian case to argue that the case for support for cultural production and cultural infrastructure has been strengthened overall by its alignment to economic policy goals. In this respect, the rise of creative industries policy discourses is consistent with trends in thinking about cultural policy that have their roots in the Creative Nation strategies of the early 1990s. In terms of the earlier discussion, cultural policy is as much driven by Schumpeterian principals as it is by Keynesian ones. Such an approach is not without attendant risks, and two stand out. The first is the risk of marginalizing the arts, through a policy framework that gives priority to developing the digital content industries, and viewing the creative industries as primarily an innovation platform. The second is that other trends in the economy, such as the strong Australian dollar resulting from the mining boom, undercuts the development of cultural production in the sections of the creative industries where international trade and investment is most significant, such as the film industry and computer games. Nonetheless, after over a decade of vibrant debate, this focus on linking the cultural and economic policy goals of the creative industries has come to be consistent with broader international trends in the field.

Four models of the creative industries

Les activités et industries culturelles sont aujourd’hui englobées dans une nouvelle approche, celle d’industries créatives. Dans ce contexte, les interrogations sur les contributions de la culture au développement économique peuvent être repensées de manière élargie. La contribution examine les différentes réponses possibles à cette question, et quatre modèles sont ainsi distingués: l’approche du bien être; l’approche concurrentielle; l’approche de la croissance; l’approche de l’innovation. A chacun de ces modèles correspond une interprétation du lien entre activités créatives et économie. Ce sont ces interprétations dont la pertinence est appréciée à l’aide de données statistiques simples.

Shanghai : images of modernity

This chapter profiles China's biggest city and economic powerhouse, Shanghai. The authors examine the city’s use of culture to position itself as a global city and how a particular narrative of the city has informed western commentators and Shanghai policy makers. They also analyze the development of an arts and cultural infrastructure and the parallel separation of art and entertainment, with contemporary art as an unexpected challenge, but one the city successfully negotiated. They looks at the marketisation of culture and the context in which this takes place, tracing the connections between market reforms in culture and those in the wider economy. The authors are convinced that the half-formed or distorted use of western concepts like creative industries or creative clusters, rather than indicating a duplicity or an incomplete modernity actually highlight some of the complicities of canonical cultural policy.

Arts and creative industries

The book examines the relationship between the notion of 'art' and of 'the creative industries'. Staring with a brief overview of some contemporary views from Australia's leading creative and artistic people it goes on to give an historical account of this long and complex relationship. In the last two chapters it outlines how we might approach the relationship between art,design and media and understand their complex location within an urban ecosystem.

From allure to ethics : design as a ‘creative industry'

In this chapter I look at the question of design and ethics in a situation where design as a set of related economic practices has been re-positioned as a key identifier for a new kind of ideas-driven industry - the creative industries. Previously marginal to cultural policy in the form of applied arts, in the creative industries agenda design became a privileged meeting place, or indeed broker, for art and industry, economy and commerce. I explore the new kinds of ethical challenges this brings.

Manchester : the original modern city

A critical account of Manchester's 'organising concept' - original Modern.

Yorkshire Cities and Culture : A Review of Current Thinking

This report was commissioned by the Yorkshire Cultural Observatory and the Yorkshire & Humber Key Cities group. It is not a strategy document but an attempt to give an overview of the current thinking within academia and policy-making about the cultural agenda for regions and regional cities in the UK. In particular it looks at the challenges for Yorkshire cities in the context of the current and potential regional cultural offer. The report is a snapshot of current academic and policy thinking, but it also draws on a series of interviews conducted with policymakers in the five key cities as well as regional agencies. These interviews were limited in number and are not meant to be a comprehensive consultation exercise. Rather they acted to focus some of the issues raised by the literature and policy review and to develop suggestions around priority areas for the region.

Economic prosperity, suburbanization, and the creative workforce : findings from Australian suburban communities

This paper considers the changing relationship between economic prosperity and Australian suburbs, noting that what has been termed “the first suburban nation” in experiencing an intensification of suburban growth in the 2000s, in the context of economic globalization. The paper reports on a three-year Australian Research Council funded project into “Creative Suburbia”, identifying the significant percentage of the creative industries workforce who live in suburban areas. Drawing on case studies from suburbs in the Australian cities of Brisbane and Melbourne, it notes the contrasts between the experience of these workers, who are generally positive towards suburban life, and the underlying assumptions of “creative cities” policy discourse that such workers prefer to be concentrated in high density inner urban creative clusters.

Right to the city, desire for the suburb?

The 2000s have been a lively decade for cities. The Worldwatch Institute estimated that 2007 was the first year in human history that more people worldwide lived in cities than the countryside. Globalisation and new digital media technologies have generated the seemingly paradoxical outcome that spatial location came to be more rather than less important, as combinations of firms, industries, cultural activities and creative talents have increasingly clustered around a select node of what have been termed “creative cities,” that are in turn highly networked into global circuits of economic capital, political power and entertainment media. Intellectually, the period has seen what the UCLA geographer Ed Soja refers to as the spatial turn in social theory, where “whatever your interests may be, they can be significantly advanced by adopting a critical spatial perspective”. This is related to the dynamic properties of socially constructed space itself, or what Soja terms “the powerful forces that arise from socially produced spaces such as urban agglomerations and cohesive regional economies,” with the result that “what can be called the stimulus of socio-spatial agglomeration is today being assertively described as the primary cause of economic development, technological innovation, and cultural creativity”

From the margin to the centre : towards an art strategy for the ethnic enclaves in the city

Sunnybank represents a distinctly Australian take on the classic ‘Chinatown’ – or indeed other ethic community enclaves such as ‘little Italy’, ‘little Bombay’, ‘little Athens’ and so on. In the Northern Hemisphere these tended to grow up in the dense working class neighbourhoods of industrial cities, especially in port cities like Liverpool, London, New York and San Francisco. The existing Chinatowns of Sydney and Melbourne, and to some extent Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, are of this variety. In the late 1970s, with the growth of suburbanisation and the de-industrialisation and consequent dereliction of the ‘inner city’, these ethnic communities were one of the few signs of life in the city. Apart from the daily commute into the CBD, business with the city council or a trip to the big shopping streets these areas were one of the few reasons for visiting city centres stigmatised by urban decay and petty crime.

Developing a creative cluster in a postindustrial city : CIDS and Manchester

This paper takes the establishment and demise of Manchester’s Creative Industries Development Service as an exemplary case study for the ways in which creative industry policy has intersected with urban economic policy over the last decade. It argues that the creative industries required specific kinds of economic development agencies which would be able to act as ‘intermediary’ between the distinct languages of policy makers and ‘creatives’. The paper discusses the tensions inherent in such an approach and how CIDS attempted to manage them. It suggests that which particular circumstances might have intervened the main reason for the demise of the CIDS was the domination of the ‘economic’ over the ‘cultural logic’ both of which are embedded within the creative industries policy discourse.

The art of re-industrialisation in Shanghai

This paper deals with the development of ‘art clusters’ and their relocation in the city of Shanghai. It first looks at the revival of the city’s old inner city industrial area (along banks of Suzhou River) through ‘organic’ or ‘alternative’ artist-led cultural production; second, it describes the impact on these activities of the industrial restructuring of the wider city, reliant on large-scale real estate development, business services and global finance; and finally, outlines the relocation of these arts (and related) cultural industries to dispersed CBD locations as a result of those spatial, industrial and policy changes.

designing creative clusters : some indicators

This paper explores how the design of creative clusters as a key strategy in promoting the urban creative economy has played out in Shanghai. Creative Clusters in Europe and North America context have emerged ‘organically’. They developed spontaneously in those cities which went through a period of post-industrial decline. Creative Industries grew up in these cities as part of a new urban economy in the wake of old manufacturing industries. Artists and creative entrepreneurs moved into vacant warehouses and factories and began the trend of ‘creative clusters’. Such clusters facilitate the transfer of tacit knowledge through informal learning, the efficient sourcing of skills and information, competition, collaboration and learning, inter-cluster trading and networking. This new urban phenomenon was soon targeted by local economic development policy in charge of re-generating and re-structuralizing industrial activities in cities. Rising interest from real estate and local economic development has led to more and more planned creative clusters. In the aim of catching up with the world’s creative cities, Shanghai has planned over 100 creative clusters since 2005. Along with these officially designed creative clusters, there are organically emerged creative clusters that are much smaller in scale and much more informal in terms of the management. And they emerged originally in old residential areas just outside the CBD and expand to include French concession the most sort after residential area at the edge of CBD. More recently, office buildings within CBD are made available for creative usages. From fringe to CBD, these organic creative clusters provide crucial evidences for the design of creative clusters. This paper will be organized in 2 parts. In the first part, I will present a case study of 8 ‘official’ clusters (title granted by local govenrment) in Shanghai through which I am hoping to develop some key indicators of the success/failure of creative clusters as well as link them with their physical, social and operational efficacies. In the second part, a variety of ‘alternative’ clusters (organicly formed clusters most of which are not recongnized by the government) supplies with us the possibilities of rethinking the so-called ‘cluster development strategy’ in terms of what kind of spaces are appropriate for use by clusters? Who should manage them and in what format? And ultimately what are their relationship with the rest of the city should be defined?

Creative industries, its critics, and some answers

Arguments as to just what should be included under the definition of «creative industries» have limited their acceptance and the adoption of suitable policies. There are opposing analyses and statistical categories, such as the copyright industry, the content industry, the cultural industry, the digital content industry, the arts and entertainment industry, etc. that make it difficult to gather accurate, reliable, timely data on this mega-sector. Another major criticism is that «creative» work is idealised and that the exporting of the concept outside its country of origin may be tantamount to imperialism. However, the creative industries have evolved in the past ten years from being limited to specific sectors to becoming seen as creative agents that can generate change and innovation, and have achieved high levels of acceptance and significance in many different countries.