Cultural Clusters and the Post-industrial City: Towards the Remapping of Urban Cultural Policy

Abstract

This paper explores and discusses the fairly recent phenomenon of cultural clustering strategies in the Netherlands. Amongst other things based on ideologies of 'enterprise culture', the quest for urban imagery and positioning strategies, the changing spatial fabric of cities and a search for economic and cultural revitalisation, for the past 5-10 years, the formation of cultural clusters has turned into something of an urban cultural development hype. However, what at first glance appears as a common model, often accompanied by boldly expressed slogans concerning the new role of culture and creativity in the physical and economic revitalisation of cities, in more detail unfolds as an ambivalent and conflict-ridden mixture of cultural, economic, social and spatial interests and sentiments. From a short-term perspective, such an eclectic blending of interests and sentiments might be considered as a good opportunity for urban cultural developments within a 'post-modern' urban development regime. However, from a long-term perspective, there is the danger that the divergent sentiments and interests start to undermine and constrain each other, in the end resulting in adverse effects, mutual distrust and a standstill of developments. Following a detailed investigation of five cultural clustering projects in the Netherlands, and based on Zukin's account of the exchange of cultural and economic values in the contemporary city, the paper argues that, in order to get out of this potentially self-defeating situation, and to enable a more sensitive but also strategic involvement of the cultural sector in the governance of cultural cluster projects, it is necessary to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the complex dynamics involved. Central to this is a locally specific appreciation of the changing interaction between culture (place) and commerce (market) in today's mixed economy of leisure, culture and creativity. This implies both a critique and advancement of existing theories concerning the role of culture in urban development and the development of a more detailed comparative perspective on urban cultural policy projects, thus moving beyond overgeneralised perceptions of the developments concerned.