Creative Economies, Creative Cities

The cultural and creative industries have become increasingly prominent in many policy agendas in recent years. Not only have governments identified the growing consumer potential for cultural/creative industry products in the home market, they have also seen the creative industry agenda as central to the growth of external markets. This agenda stresses creativity, innovation, small business growth, and access to global markets—all central to a wider agenda of moving from cheap manufacture towards high value-added products and services.

The increasing importance of cultural and creative industries in national and city policy agendas is evident in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Australia, and New Zealand, and in more nascent ways in cities such as Chongqing and Wuhan. Much of the thinking in these cities/ countries has derived from the European and North American policy landscape.

There has been an increased interest by policymakers in the cultural and creative economy¹ in recent years, in part due to the success of developing reliable empirical measures of activity, and in part due to the anticipated economic and social benefits that such growth might bring. These benefits are partially based upon empirical growth (KEA_European_Affairs 2006), and partially reinforced by information society theories that suggest the creative industries are the leading edge of the next long-wave of economic development (Garnham 2005). Developing nations have been quick to see both the possibilities of the creative industries, and the way that they might be used to ‘upgrade’ their position within international production chains (Pratt 2008a).

However, such interest and expectation has been difficult to resolve with a range of policy tools, or without an in-depth understanding of the CCI.² There is clear evidence of confusion as to the role and potential of the CCI, a problem that is further obscured by imprecision concerning the core concepts that underpin the CCI. At the same time, there is much ‘hope’ value in policy making in this field, some of which is patently aspirational rather than practical. For some, the CCI represent the leading edge of the information society and hence offer a promise of development associated with leading technologies. For others, engagement in cultural production offers a potential means to ascend the value chain. So in the field of CCI policy, the stakes are high, and the pressure to do what somebody else has already done or to mimic policies adopted in other sectors is attractive. However, this begs two questions: does generic policy work with respect to the CCI, and, can policy be simply applied in different social and political conditions and have the same outcome?

This chapter examines the relationship between culture, economics and policy within the creative industries (which for the purposes of this paper, are assumed to be equivalent to the cultural industries), and their manifestation in Asia. Addressing any one of these three issues is a challenge in itself, but addressing all three of them together raises the complexity even further. Early writers on the “creative economy” have noted how it works differently from the traditional economy (Florida 2002; Howkins 2001).¹ Culture is vitally important to understanding how creative industries develop, but the role of culture in shaping national competitive advantage is not that clear. The same can be said for policy, and a discussion of the triad can be quite convoluted. Having said that, all three levels are still very relevant to the proper description of a creative industry — as I will show in this chapter.

This paper attempts to address this triad of issues primarily with a production-and-innovation-oriented view of industrial organisation, bringing in creativity, culture and policy where possible. I shall do this primarily through the lens of one sector in particular — the video games industry — in which Asia has been investing heavily lately, and in which Japan has been an early leader. I will also provide a limited focus on the animation sector for comparative purposes. I will first provide a summary of how creative production in video games occurs in the US, followed by an examination of how Asian patterns compare. In particular, I am interested in whether individual and industrial level creativity differs in Asia. Within Asia, more detailed cases of the Chinese online games industry and the Philippine animation industry will be discussed, but relevant observations are also drawn from general knowledge and a literature review of Japan, Korea and Singapore, as well as interviews which corroborate those observations.

However, cultural-creative clustering strategies have often been based on notions not usually made explicit. In particular, there was a fragmented understanding of the role of culture and creativity in the new service economy, and in relation to that, of the economic transformation of cities and regions. This went together with an under-exploration of the transformations the cultural realm itself was going through, from a rather hierarchical and canonical reality, to something much more open and horizontal, but also more commercial. What did this imply for notions of artistic professionalism, the cultural resourcing of artistic creativity, the composition of critical audiences, artistic role models, and the reputation of creative careers? As a consequence, complex questions about the role of culture and the arts in the future economy and in future cities and regions have been left underexplored, thus resulting in the lumping together of different models of artistic, cultural, urban and industrial development. One possible result of this was that the cultural-creative clustering agenda either got stuck in former ‘artisanal’ models of creative communities or was hijacked by more economically oriented industry, ICT, innovation or real estate policy agendas (cf. Cunningham 2004; O'Connor 2007). In either case, an embryonic understanding of the nature of cultural-creative clusters, together with unclear aims and objectives, produced a lot of distrust among the parties involved.

The concept of “creative clusters” is a difficult one, complicated not least by the complexity of its constituent components — the concept of “creativity” and the idea of “clusters”. The debates surrounding the explanatory value and the promise and potential of creative clusters are particularly significant in the face of the sometimes hypnotic hold of cluster creation on policy makers. Yet, scholars have observed that the heightened popularity of the cluster concept may mask its weak conceptual and empirical basis (Martin and Sunley 2003; Simmie 2004). In this chapter, I will examine the nature of creative clusters, and particularly, “cultural creative clusters” — i.e. clusters in which creative activity take place in the cultural field. This analysis is undertaken through detailed study of a specific visual arts cluster in Singapore and seeks to contribute to the development of a more nuanced theoretical position about the nature of creative clusters.

The terms “creative cluster” and “cultural cluster” have oftentimes been used interchangeably in the literature. If some distinction is to be made, it is that studies stemming from Europe (with the exception of UK) commonly use the term ‘ cultural clusters’ while those from US and Australia appear to favour the term “creative clusters”. Often, this is a reflection of the lack of conceptual clarity around the ideas of “cultural industries” and “creative industries” themselves. These differences are not merely semantic and are not inconsequential. The nature of clustering does differ depending on the specific activities under consideration, and cultural clusters focused on performing and visual arts, for example, may have quite different dynamics at work from clusters focused on television and film work, or fashion and design, just to use a few examples. All may be termed “creative clusters” but the nature of activity is not all the same, and the specific dynamics deserve careful scrutiny and analysis. Certainly, they differ from business and industrial clusters as elaborated by Michael Porter (1998, 2000) and Alfred Marshall (see Markusen 1996) respectively. Yet, in much of the literature, creative clusters are often treated as a subset of business clusters, and subjected to the same economic analysis and policy responses as other industries. I have used the term “cultural creative cluster” to draw attention to my focus on creative work in the cultural, and specifically, arts, sector.

The scale of urban development in Beijing during the past decade is nothing short of astonishing. Construction workers have relentlessly cleared space for high-rise apartments while historic factories are demolished or turned into centres for creative industries. The view flying into Beijing resembles a pancake-like development sprawl dotted with five-star tourist hotels, modernist business centres, hyper-modern television towers, eye-catching sports complexes, overpasses, underpasses, ring roads, technology parks, theme parks and convention centres. Meanwhile, city streets are congested by cars, residents suffer increasing instances of respiratory illness and traditional ways of living vanish amid the dust of bulldozers. This is progress Chinese style, reflecting the idea of modernity as “a coming into being,” as process, rupture and even disruption. It is also an unprecedented phase in China's history as the nation harbours aspirations of becoming a world power, a harmonious civilisation and an advanced society.

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of how the idea of creative industries has provided the impetus for a new phase of cultural infrastructure construction in Beijing. A walled city of four separate enclosures during Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, by the 1950s Beijing had transformed into a sprawling city of industrial districts. The economic reform period, which began in 1979, saw a transition from Maoist revolutionary class struggle to a pragmatic model of economic reconstruction and modernisation under Deng Xiaoping. An ensuing boom in development led to a surge in urban migration, putting further pressure on infrastructure. During the mid-1980s, several of China's large cities, notably Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Tianjin and Beijing began to compete with one another, attempting to lure i nternational investment. Beijing assumed a capital complex; not only was it the centre of political power, it saw itself as the cultural centre of the new China.

Richard Florida's notion of a “creative class” and the role that mobile knowledge workers can play in the economic development of cities and regions have been highly influential in UK policy circles. In a climate of hunger for “evidence-based policymaking,” Florida's attempt to quantitatively measure, through the use of “indices” of various sorts, the conditions that he deems necessary for successful city-regions, have proved popular with policymakers, keen for what appear to be empirical approaches to policy development.

This chapter aims to trace and critically examine that phenomenon. In particular, it seeks to understand why the work of a hitherto respected but relatively obscure economic geographer, should prove so popular with policymakers. It argues that the combination of some much-needed “good news” for British cities, still recovering from de-industrialisation and job losses, and a technocratic approach, well-suited to the “post-ideological” politics of the time, proved an irresistible combination.

Richard Florida's (2002a) highly cited book, The Rise of the Creative Class, has stirred an ongoing debate on the relationship between culture, creativity and economy, and on the usefulness of the concept in devising policy prescriptions for urban development (Lang and Danielsen 2005; Peck 2005). Written in accessible language appealing to business and policy-making audiences, the book popularizes a new concept of the “creative class,” arguing that creative people are a key driver of urban economic growth. Urban cities with such specific conditions as the presence of creative talents, and the availability of technology industries and environments embracing cultural diversity are conducive to the accumulation of “creative capital”, which can be turned into economic value. In the sequels, including The Cities and the Creative Class (Florida 2005a) and the Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent (Florida 2005b), Florida continues to elaborate this refreshing, compelling but controversial “creative capital theory.” In essence, the theory explains why “ people climate” matter in attracting talents, and how such a socio-cultural environment of diversity and openness correlates with economic prosperity in the urban cities of “creativity-haves” and economic failure in the cities of “have-nots.”

Disputes that have arisen from the creative capital theory are not just about the methodology in measuring the creative class or in verifying the causation between the presence of the class and economic growth. It is also about how likely policy prescriptions can be designed so that policymakers who are looking for the elixir of urban economic growth can turn their cities into an attraction for talents and investments (see Chapter 8, Oakley, this volume). This paper offers a brief review of Florida's theory and highlights its limitations, particularly when applied to Asian city contexts. It argues that there are different paths to economic growth, as seen in the case of two Asian cities. The processes of socio-economic restructuring as demonstrated in the cases of Hong Kong and Macau are far more dynamic and complex than Florida's creative capital theory suggests. More importantly, even though we recognize the positive impact of the creative class on employment, there are heightening concerns about the socio-economic discrepancies that a creative city will lead to.

The title of ‘creative economy’ is much sought after by cities around the world. This new soubriquet in the vocabulary of urban esteem captures at a glance the zeitgeistian coupling of culture with economic value. With a renewed emphasis on place and the qualities of locality as the locus of development, there is a strong interest from policy-makers in the role of culture in economic development, particularly in the guise of the so-called ‘untraded inter-dependencies’ (Storper 1995) of shared values, trust and social capital. Similarly, once seriously neglected in studies of economic development, culture as both the context for and possible source of economic growth also now appears at the heart of new ways of thinking and practising economic development (Radcliffe 2006; Clammer 2005).

China has been experiencing rapid industrialisation ever since the beginning of the twenty-first century. At the same time, China also faces challenges of the new knowledge economy. Within this context, China is experiencing the development of creative industries, a context that differs from the process in developed countries such as in Western Europe or Japan where the notion of creative industry emerged during the post-industrialisation era. Instead, Chinese economy has maintained a growth rate of up to 7% for more than 20 years since the early 1980s (Table 1).

The need for high value-added industry is growing as a marked result of economic growth. From the late 1990s to the early twenty-first century, China's cultural creative industries¹ have been developing. During this period, China is expected to change considerably into an energy-saving, ecologically-friendly, land-saving and highly efficient economy, relying mainly on scientific and technological progress. The central government, provincial and city administrations are paying more and more attention to the creative industries. This chapter documents Shanghai's creative industries in the terms framed by the city government, and describes the tracking and documentation, policies and regulations in this rapidly developing city.

The world is in a transition period with far-reaching social changes. The umbrella metaphor for these changes is the “process of globalisation.” Both the term and the scale of globalisation are a matter for discussion. At least one important dimension of the process is the precarious nature of the balance between the market driven world system on the one hand and the political system of nation-states on the other hand. The global order is under reform. Within that tension, the increased urbanisation adds a specific dynamic. For the first time in history, the majority of mankind lives in an urban context. In the most industrialised continents that amounts to more than three quarters. The quantitative process does not in itself imply a qualitative shift. In the framework on the global restructuring of governance though, the urban systems tend to burst out of the national frames they have been caught in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is in that context that we agree with those like Davis (2006: 1), who are radicalising the importance of the transition: “it will constitute a watershed in human history, comparable to the Neolithic or Industrial revolutions.” The discussion on creative cities finds its full importance at the centre of this paradigm shift, where creative industries and actors are not merely a new kind of economic entrepreneur beneficial for post-industrial economies, but where creative cities are thought of as society builders of a new kind (Castells 1996, 1997, 1998; Featherstone 1990; Harvey 1989; Lash 1994).