Creative neighbourhood initiatives

Abstract

Last two decades, the creative city theory has been the main source of inspiration for urban regeneration approaches (Krätke in Brenner et a. (eds.), 2012). Researchers like Landry, Hall and Florida stated creativity as the new engine of economic growth and urban development (Florida, 2002; Hall, 2000; Landry, 1996). However, urban regeneration approaches based on the creative city concept have negative side-effects such as gentrification and segregation, and are not able to provide an answer to the current trends of an increasing underclass and mass migration. This asks for the development of a new urban regeneration approach wherein these side-effects and trends are taken into account: a more sustainable social urban regeneration approach. Creative events might contribute to sustainable social urban regeneration by increasing social inclusion, social cohesion, social justice and spatial justice. It is not scientifically proven whether creative events could contribute to sustainable social urban regeneration, since the creative events concept is not exhaustively described in literature yet. As a result, the meaning and implications of creative events — especially their short-term and long-term effects on urban regeneration — are not known. This research proposal describes the setup of a study that aims to overcome this by meeting the following objectives: examining whether creative events could contribute to sustainable social urban regeneration, and examining what role the actors involved in creative events could take regarding creative events to contribute to sustainable social urban regeneration.