Smart Creative Cities and Urban Regeneration Policy: Culture, Innovation, and Economy at Nexus. Learning from Lyon Metropolis

In 1995, the English planner Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini published “The Creative City”, focusing on three intertwined topics: the cultural, social, and economic impact that arises from creativity in cities; the need to promote integrated urban planning levering on knowledge from other disciplines; and the active inclusion in urban planning processes of ordinary, often marginalized people. A few years later, Landry issues “The Creative City. A Toolkit for Urban Innovation”, a book in which he challenges and further develops his ideas by proposing them as a “toolbox for urban renaissance.” At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the American economist Richard Florida delivers what is considered a milestone on the subject of the creative city: “The Rise of the Creative Class”, in which he emphasizes the characteristics of people performing creative activities in cities, as well as the conditions that cities must offer in order for the “creative class” to be attracted and settle in them. The Smart Creative City is a more recent concept. It grew out of economic science, especially the so-called Experience Economy. Regarding specifically the economic development of cities, creativity, art, and culture represent strategic assets in the urban regeneration process, and the socioeconomic feature of smart creative cities can be considered the most evident and critical one. This study thus springs from the recognition of the relevance of smart creative cities, and of an integrated and visionary planning approach to urban regeneration—itself creative. This analysis has been conducted focusing on selected experiences developed by Lyon metropolis, aiming at understanding whether and how the municipality is levering on creativity, art and culture within its urban regeneration programmes. This objective is addressed through a mixed-qualitative methodology that investigates the political discourse and adopts a descriptive case study approach to analyse policy processes, drivers, and obstacles that are fostering or limiting that vision in the local context of Lyon. The research responds to the questions posed, showing both the transformative capacity and the trade-offs of explicitly integrating cultural and artistic projects and events, as urban “innovative” regeneration devices, within the “common” planning and design practice of the municipality of Lyon.