Unique Urbanity?

Family stories weave in and out of sanitized, reified national histories. Colonized nations such as Australia, the United States, Canada, and Aotearoa/New Zealand are built on a pioneering myth of white ‘settlers’ and ‘explorers’ moving through a landscape and ‘discovering’ mountains and rivers. The ‘other side of the frontier’ of genocide, sickness and institutional racism against indigenous people who were not granted the right of citizenship—sits uncomfortably within the propulsive narrative of progress and economic development for a (debateably) modern nation.

Cities have signified excitement, movement, chaos, political intrigue and opportunity since—at least—the industrial revolution. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels developed theories for political change while watching the twisting Manchester landscape, bending and buckling under the speed of economic and social change caused by the textile industry. Yet in the century that followed, urbanity started to be marketed, gentrified and celebrated, displacing the industrial tailings and poor health of the workforce. Since the first set of creative industries policies were instigated by the Tony Blair government in 1997, economic development and city development have been tethered. Researchers such as Richard Florida, Charles Landry and Charles Leadbeater have aligned progress with urbanity. Certainly, there is positive correlation between urbanization and per capital income. Efficiencies in agriculture frees a population to move into cities. Through the history of the creative industries, the challenges and specificities of small, third-tier cities have been under-discussed. Indeed, a series of proxies—such as the presence of a gay community or ‘bohemians’—have been the building blocks for researchers of a creative city. This has meant that assumptions have dominated the creative industries literature. The most damaging and seductive is the theory of cultural modelling. Researchers suggest that the practices that operate well in San Francisco in the United States or Manchester in England will have a relevance and resonance in Wagga Wagga or Invercargill. Indeed, even the relevance of Manchester’s regeneration to Bolton, Blackburn or Morecambe is questionable.

All cities share many characteristics: a transportation network, pollution and commercial hubs. Differences are instigated through immigration, size of population, geographical specificities, weather and economic policies. As shown in the introduction to this book, one strategy to organize cities for both research and policy development is to position them into tiers, based on size, influence, branding and impact. Global cities are the spine of the international economy, with a huge multicultural population, housing the international headquarters of corporations and diverse modes of production and consumption. Such global cities can be listed with ease: New York, Toronto, Mumbai, Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Moscow, Sydney, Auckland, Tokyo and Cairo. They have much in common. This similarity is matched by an intense connectivity and mobility. The point of globalization is that it renders global cities homogenized. Indeed, Saskia Sassen—the key theorist of global cities—argued that they are “de-nationalized”. Global cities are disconnected from national imaginings and form relationships with other global cities. They hold a particular function in the global economy. After September 11, global cities like New York and London became places of fear, confusion and terrorism, with a targeting of transportation networks. The premise of such an argument is that New York has more in common with Toronto and London than New Orleans or Las Vegas. Non-global cities, not surprisingly, describe all the other cities that are not global cities. The most researched cities in this category are situated on the second tier. They are sites of difference, including divergent popular culture, tourism, industries and economic development. These cities, like Vancouver, Brighton, Wellington, Perth, Osaka, Dunedin and Düsseldorf, are very different from each other. While the second-tier cities have both economic and social potential, third-tier cities are not only neglected in the research literature, but are lacking infrastructural and policy support. These cities require the most intervention.

Australia as a nation—and like many nations—is sliced by a series of binary oppositions: east versus west, south versus north, urban versus regional, coastal versus inland. These binaries also punctuate narratives of indigeneity and immigration. But the power is held in and by the coastal cities in the southeast of Australia. While the capital of Canberra is inland, the two most influential and largest cities—Sydney and Melbourne—embrace the coast. This means that multiple disadvantages overlay inland, third-tier cities and towns. Each state has examples of them, such as Katherine in the Northern Territory and Northam and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. Even in the most populous state, New South Wales, a series of inland cities fan Sydney. Commencing at Port Macquarie in the north—which as the name suggests in hemmed by water—through to Albury in the south—these cities face structural disadvantages. They are all underserved by public transportation, face challenges in holding their population, health and education services, but also—structurally—have not developed relationships between them. Following the transportation infrastructure, the alignments are between Bathurst and Sydney, Dubbo and Sydney, Wagga Wagga and Sydney, and Albury and Sydney. Only one train operates each day connecting Bathurst and Dubbo and it commences—no surprise here—in Sydney. Every movement inland requires a return to a coastal, global city. There are no trains or buses that link Bathurst and Wagga Wagga. To catch a train to Wagga from Bathurst requires a detour via Sydney. There are no direct flights. To move between the regional hubs (such as Dubbo and Albury) requires a flight to Sydney and then back out to inland New South Wales. The disadvantages of hub and spoke travel—first flying or travelling to a global or second-tier city and then out to a third-tier city—involves added expense, inconvenience and time. Few options are made available for the young, the old and those with impairments. This is a profound structural limitation.

What do a car race, apple blossom festival and an Elvis weekend have in common? The answer is that each of these events hook into three strategies to create tourism, profile and economic development in third-tier cities in the Central West of New South Wales in Australia. Such strategies combine entrepreneurialism, natural advantages in the landscape and luck. Urban environments, at their best, create a matrix between landscape, economic development and social behaviour. At their best, organic and productive relationships emerge between these variables, creating imaginative, dynamic and innovative patterns in daily life. The generic policies for the creative industries and city imaging provide the basic framework to consider the changing nature of urbanity. The problem is how to decode, translate and filter these agendas for very distinctive environments and outcomes.

After the more expansive presentations of Evocities, clustering, and the role of event management in developing a profile through dominating a (short) moment in time rather than space, this small chapter holds a distinct function. The goal is to create an analytical pause and offer a reminder of the specific challenges in research and for researchers in ‘placing’ a third-tier city and developing strategies for economic and social sustainability through the life cycle of residents. A key issue that was hinted in the last chapter is that programmes like Evocities are targeting a particular type of migrant: middle-class families with school-age children. While a workable short-term strategy, the question is: what happens as those children—and their parents—age?

A city is experienced through the senses. Traffic, buildings and the streets create an amalgam of sight and sound, touch and smell. As our bodies move through cities, our senses deliver information about threat and interest, alongside patterns of behaviour. Although our analogue bodies move through streets, shops and sporting organizations, digitization attends this movement through mobile phones, tablets and applications. This digitized strategy is not only detailing branding and marketing for a small city. Digitization also improves the life of those resident in a city. Progressive city administrators have discovered the positive benefits of providing free-of-charge wi-fi facilities in the hub of the city. Norwich was an early adapter of this strategy. Mandurah in Western Australia also rendered this a priority. Digitization matters to small cities. Many are located in rural and regional areas. In some nations, including South Africa, Canada and Australia, there is an incredible disparity in online connectivity, particularly with regard to broadband in regional and remote areas. This is a particularly problematic inequality. Social media have great uses for the men and women in small cities and towns. As facilities and public services leave, the online environment can manage some of these needs.

Alicia Keys breathlessly captured her love for New York as a place ‘where dreams are made of’. Global cities capture the intensity of life, nightlife, music, ambition and the future. Second-tier cities remain ‘sticky’, quirky, different and defiant. The third-tier cities are the garbage dump of the world, bearing the scars of industrialization, pollution, depopulation and decaying infrastructure. Even the schemes used to rebuild these regions focus on schools and families. While schools and families are important, there are many stages of life. While Richard Florida’s creative cities, classes and regions over-egged the excitement of bohemia, there is an importance—rhetorically at least—in claiming the value of tolerance, technology and talent. Such a strategy allows urban planners to understand city residents through their lifetime and understand the intricacies and emotions of these places.