The implications of creative industries for regional outcomes

As the 21st century progresses, the most successful economies and societies will be creative ones. Worldwide, governments are producing strategies to encourage the development of creative industries and to strengthen the role of knowledge cities nationally and internationally. There is a significant policy discussion regarding the role of creative clusters in strengthening local economies and significant energy has been expended discussing the many positive outcomes of such developments. This article takes these issues as a starting point and considers the role of creative industries within broader concerns regarding uneven metropolitan development. By developing a typology of jobs across Australia’s metropolitan regions, the article will consider the broad social and economic impacts of uneven development of creative industry jobs between metropolitan regions and also the implications for individual metropolitan regions and policy outcomes.

Cipher cities

Cipher Cities was a practice-led research project developed in 3 stages between 2005 and 2007 resulting in the creation of a unique online community, ‘Cipher Cities’, that provides simple authoring tools and processes for individuals and groups to create their own mobile events and event journals, build community profile and participate in other online community activities. Cipher Cities was created to revitalise peoples relationship to everyday places by giving them the opportunity and motivation to create and share complex digital stories in simple and engaging ways. To do so we developed new design processes and methods for both the research team and the end user to appropriate web and mobile technologies. To do so we collaborated with ethnographers, designers and ICT researchers and developers. In teams we ran a series of workshops in a wide variety of cities in Australia to refine an engagement process and to test a series of iteratively developed prototypes to refine the systems that supported community motivation and collaboration. The result of the research is 2 fold: 1. a sophisticated prototype for researchers and designers to further experiment with community engagement methodologies using existing and emerging communications technologies. 2. A ‘human dimensions matrix’. This matrix assists in the identification and modification of place based interventions in the social, technical, spatial, cultural, pedagogical conditions of any given community. This matrix has now become an essential part of a number of subsequent projects and assists design collaborators to successfully conceptualise, generate and evaluate interactive experiences. the research team employed practice-led action research methodologies that involved a collaborative effort across the fields of interaction design and social science, in particular ethnography, in order to: 1. seek, contest, refine a design methodology that would maximise the successful application of a dynamic system to create new kinds of interactions between people, places and artefacts’. 2. To design and deploy an application that intervenes in place-based and mobile technologies and offers people simple interfaces to create and share digital stories. Cipher Cities was awarded 3 separate CRC competitive grants (over $270,000 in total) to assist 3 stages of research covering the development of the Ethnographic Design Methodologies, the development of the tools, and the testing and refinement of both the engagement models and technologies. The resulting methodologies and tools are in the process of being commercialised by the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design.

Beyond the inner city : real and imagined places in creative place policy and practice

As the economic and social benefits of creative industries development become increasingly visible, policymakers worldwide are working to create policy drivers to ensure that certain places become or remain ‘creative places’. Richard Florida’s work has become particularly influential among policymakers, as has Landry’s. But as the first wave of creative industrial policy development and implementation wanes, important questions are emerging. It is by now clear that an ‘ideal creative place’ has arisen from creative industries policy and planning literature, and that this ideal place is located in inner cities. This article shifts its focus away from the inner city to where most Australians live: the outer suburbs. It reports on a qualitative research study into the practices of outer-suburban creative industries workers in Redcliffe, Australia. It argues that the accepted geography of creative places requires some recalibration once the material and experiential aspects of creative places are taken into account.

Creative industries in China : four perspectives on social transformation

In late 2004, the concept of the creative industries arrived in China. It was warmly welcomed in Shanghai then subsequently adopted with some degree of caution in Beijing. In the years since, officials, scholars, practitioners, entrepreneurs and developers have exploited of the idea of creative industries, and a range of associated terms, to construct an alternative vision of an emerging China. In 2009, Li Wuwei, the Director of the Shanghai Creative Industries Association, himself a leading player in national political reform, released a book titled Creativity is Changing China (Chuangyi gaibian Zhongguo), subsequently translated as Creative Industries Are Changing China in English. The paper investigates the uptake of the creative industries in China and asks: can they really change China, or are they just rearranging the cultural landscape in some cities?

Augmenting competitiveness of cities through tourism planning : the role of collaborative decision support systems

Many cities around the globe are now considering tourism facilities and their remarkable revenues in order to become competitive in the global economy. In many of these cities a great emphasis is given to the cultural tourism as it plays an important role in the establishment of creative and knowledge-base of cities. The literature points out the importance of local community support in cultural tourism. In such context, the use of new approach and technologies in tourism planning in order to increase the community participation and competitiveness of cities’ cultural assets gains a great significance. This paper advocates a new planning approach for tourism planning, particularly for cultural tourism, to increase the competitiveness of cities. As part of this new approach, the paper introduces the joined up planning approach integrated with a collaborative decision support system: ‘the community-oriented decision support system’. This collaborative planning support system is an effective and efficient tool for cultural tourism planning, which provides a platform for local communities’ participation in the development decision process.

Spatial restructuring of cities in the age of knowledge economy : insights from Australian cities

In the age of knowledge economy, knowledge production, and where, how and by whom it is produced, has become one of the most important factors in determining the quality of life and competitiveness of a city. In different parts of the world, cities that are the centres of knowledge production are branded under different names, e.g. knowledge city, creative city, ubiquitous eco city, smart city. This paper focuses on the core building block of these cities: ‘knowledge precincts’ that are the catalytic magnet infrastructures impacting knowledge production. The paper discusses the increasing importance of knowledge-based urban development within the paradigm of knowledge economy, and the role of knowledge community precincts as an instrument to seed the foundation of knowledge production. This paper explores knowledge based urban development, particularly knowledge community precinct development, potentials of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and benchmarks them against Boston. The paper also draws conclusions and recommendations for other cities considering knowledge based development.

Cities and the Night-time Economy

Reports on the reemergence of a concern with planning city centers as focal points in the 1980s. De-industrialization of older industrial areas; Revalorization of city center sites; Emergence of city-to-city competitiveness at a national and supranational level.

Creative exports

The article draws on research and policy experience surrounding the development of a cultural industries agenda for St. Petersburg. It tries to explain the reason for some of the resistance to the “internationalization” of the cultural industries agenda. It suggests, first, that this agenda is implicated in tensions around “modernization”; second, that the United Kingdom's “independents-led” ' approach might have real limitations in other contexts; and third, that the idea that cities are able to compete within an ever more global cultural market might ignore some very real problems faced by the “losers” or “outsiders” in this process.

Urban informatics and sustainable cities (Workshop)

One way to build more sustainable cities through network technologies is to start with monitoring the level and usage of resources as well as encourage citizens to participate in sustainable everyday practices. This workshop focuses on three fundamental areas of sustainable cities through urban informatics and ubiquitous computing: Environment: climate change adaptation Health: Food practices and cultures Civic engagement: citizen participation and interaction In particular, the workshop seeks to come up with locally (Oulu) specific ‘mash-up’ solutions that enhance the interactions of citizens with the physical city using data from various sources such as sensor networks. Students will work in groups to research, analyze, design, and develop local mash-ups. The workshop is designed to help students gain understanding of sustainability in a techno-social context, such as how the existing data can be effectively utilized, how to gather new data, and how to design efficient and engaging computer-human interactions. Further issues of consideration include access to and privacy of information and spaces, cultural specificities, and transdisciplinary research.

Knowledge infrastructure : managing the assets of creative urban regions

Urban infrastructure along the hard forms such as roads, electricity, water and sewers also includes the soft forms such as research, training, innovation and technology. Knowledge and creativity are keys to soft infrastructure and socioeconomic development. Many city administrations around the world adjust their endogenous development strategies increasingly by investing in soft infrastructure and aiming for a knowledge-based development. At this point, the mapping and management of knowledge asset of cities has become a critical issue for promoting creative urban regions. The chapter scrutinizes the relations between knowledge assets and urban infrastructures and examines the management model to improve soft infrastructure provision.

Cultural and creative industries

This chapter evaluates the rise of creative industries from four standpoints: the growing interest in creativity in the early 21st century; the 'culturalisation' of economic life with the rise of service industries; clustering and uneven development in the cultural economic geography of the creative industries; and the future of arts and cultural policy.

Connected Communities and Creative Economy; Clash, cluster, complexity, creativity

After a brief personal orientation, this presentation offers an opening section on „clash, cluster, complexity, cities‟ – making the case that innovation (both creative and economic) proceeds not only from incremental improvements within an expert-pipeline process, but also from the clash of different systems, generations, and cultures. The argument is that cultural complexity arises from such clashes, and that clustering is the solution to problems of complexity. The classic, 10,000-year-old, institutional form taken by such clusters is … cities. Hence, a creative city is one where clashing and competitive complexity is clustered… and, latterly, networked.

Resilient creative economies? Creative industries on the urban fringe

The relationship between culture and the economy is of growing interest to researchers, writers and policy makers. Advanced economies have become increasingly ‘culturalised’, pushing culture from the periphery to the centre of policy concerns and action. The economic downturn commencing in late 2008 generated predictions that ranged from the apocalyptic to the sanguine, across all sectors. This article offers an insight into the relationship between the economy, the creative industries and their geographic localities. It investigates creative industries situated away from the urban core, and located in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and Brisbane. We suggest that for creative industries situated in outer suburbs, there are characteristics that may contribute to their economic resilience.

Urban informatics, ubiquitous computing and social media for healthy cities

The increasing ubiquity of digital technology, internet services and location-aware applications in our everyday lives allows for a seamless transitioning between the visible and the invisible infrastructure of cities: road systems, building complexes, information and communication technology, and people networks create a buzzing environment that is alive and exciting. Driven by curiosity, initiative and interdisciplinary exchange, the Urban Informatics Research Lab at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia, is an emerging cluster of people interested in research and development at the intersection of people, place and technology with a focus on cities, locative media and mobile technology. This paper introduces urban informatics as a transdisciplinary practice across people, place and technology that can aid local governments, urban designers and planners in creating responsive and inclusive urban spaces and nurturing healthy cities. Three challenges are being discussed. First, people, and the challenge of creativity explores the opportunities and challenges of urban informatics that can lead to the design and development of new tools, methods and applications fostering participation, the democratisation of knowledge, and new creative practices. Second, technology, and the challenge of innovation examines how urban informatics can be applied to support user-led innovation with a view to promote entrepreneurial ideas and creative industries. Third, place, and the challenge of engagement discusses the potential to establish places within cities that are dedicated to place-based applications of urban informatics with a view to deliver community and civic engagement strategies.