What is a Creative City made up from. An approach to culture, leisure and creativity in the contemporary city

Abstract

The study of the Creative City has commonly been arisen in the context of two dichotomies, addressing its urban and material dimension; and adding to it the importance of the symbolic, social and discursive but considering both as clearly preexistent and distinguishable elements; and on the other hand situating the debate on either the praise or criticism of the model. More than a critique, we consider that is strategic to take a step back, towards an interrogation on the forms and compositions in which the Creative City is constantly being performed, what is it made up from, what produces the creative city and simultaneously what is that which the creative city produces. In order to highlight the relation between a) practices of leisure and recreation, b) the production of spaces, objects and technologies around culture and c) the promotion of a creative citizen/subject; we suggest some theoretical tools raised by Michel Foucault that may allow us to analyze the emergence of a dispositif of ‘the cultural’ and ‘the creative’ in the context of a liberal regulation of the city; which are the assemblages of knowledge, architectural arrangements, operations of enunciation and visibility, networks of practices and techniques of diverse nature that shape the production of a Creative City.