ABSTRACT
Economic prosperity in the future will be dominated by city regions, larger cities but also smaller cities that are ‘smart’ and which ‘punch above their weight’. Many cities and their regions are gearing up to compete as international centres for culture, fashion, finance and innovation. A major weapon in this battle is the quality of life, sense of place and way of living in a city. The cultural life of the city is thus not an add-on but a key point of difference, a specialism. For culture is the means by which cities express identity, character, uniqueness, make positive statements about themselves, what they are, what they do and where they are going. It also, increasingly, is one of the ways they make their living (Florida 2002, Landry 2000). Without a serious commitment to developing its creative economy, a city will be lacking one of the determinants of success (Montgomery 2007). (See also, Miller, and O’Connor, Chapters 3 and 10, this volume.) Cultural quarters are one means of helping to achieve this. (See also, Stevenson, and Sasaki, Chapters 9 and 12, this volume.)
The more recent meaning of the term cultural quarter dates from the early 1980s in the United States, for example in Pittsburgh and Lexington, MA (see Florida 2002: 304-14, and Whitt 1987). Cultural Quarters were proposed in the UK as long ago as 1987 by organizations such as the British American Arts Association (BAAA 1989) and the cultural consultancy Comedia (Bianchini et al. 1988). Culturally-led urban development began to appear as a concept in the urban planning literature from the late 1980s (see Boogarts 1990, Griffiths 1991, Montgomery 1990). Internationally, Sydney is now beginning to get in on the act, with creative industries only recently being taken seriously as economic sectors. The NSW Business Sector Growth Plan (2010) sets out a strategy for developing the creative industries economy in Sydney and across New South Wales. This includes promoting Sydney as a ‘digital hub’, a Digital Media Initiative, financial and business support for small creative enterprises, and the development of creative precincts at Walsh Bay, Ultimo and Sydney’s Inner West. In Europe, examples now include the Cable Factory in Helsinki, the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, Circus Space in Belfast (Figure 20.1), Wood Green’s chocolate factory, Marseilles’s cigarette factory, Berlin’s Brueri and more. Boston has its MASS MoCA, opened in 1999, and there is now even a similar complex at Factory 798 in Beijing.
