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Beyond the Creative City: Cognitive–Cultural

Capitalism and the New Urbanism
a
Allen John Scott
a
Geography, UCLA, Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
Published online: 17 Mar 2014.

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Urbanism, Regional Studies, 48:4, 565-578, DOI: 10.1080/00343404.2014.891010

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 Regional Studies, 2014
Vol. 48, No. 4, 565–578, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2014.891010

Beyond the Creative City: Cognitive–Cultural

Capitalism and the New Urbanism
ALLEN JOHN SCOTT
Geography, UCLA, Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. Email: ajscott@ucla.edu

(Received January 2013: in revised form January 2014)

SCOTT A. J. Beyond the creative city: cognitive–cultural capitalism and the new urbanism, Regional Studies. Creativity is a concept
whose time has come in economic and urban geography. It is also a concept that calls for enormous circumspection. An attempt is
made to show that the interdependent processes of learning, creativity and innovation are situated within concrete fields of social
relationships. Because much existing research on creative cities fails adequately to grasp this point, it tends to offer a flawed
representation of urban dynamics and leads in many instances to essentially regressive policy advocacies. Cognitive–cultural
Downloaded by [Universite Laval] at 23:02 17 June 2014

capitalism is a more robust theoretical framework through which contemporary urbanization processes can be described. The
framework of cognitive–cultural capitalism shapes the peculiar logic of learning, creativity and innovation that are observed in
cities today but also has many wider and deeper impacts on urban outcomes. It has important policy implications so a critique
of current policy stances derived from creative city ideas is also provided.

Cognitive–cultural economy Creative city Creativity Service underclass Symbolic analysts Urbanization Urban
policy

SCOTT A. J. 超越创意城市：认知—文化资本主义与新的城市主义，区域研究。创造力之概念，在经济与城市地理学
中已发展成熟，但它同时也必须慎以待之。本文试图显示，学习、创造力和创新之间相互依赖的过程，坐落于社会
关係的坚实领域中。但诸多既有的创意城市文献无法充分地捕捉此一特点，因而倾向对城市的动态提出错误的再现,
并导致在诸多案例中倡议本质上是倒退的政策。认知—文化资本主义，则是一个较为强健的理论架构，当代的城市
化过程得以藉此描绘之。认知—文化资本主义的架构，形塑着今日城市中可观察到的特定学习、创造力与创新逻辑,
却也同时对城市结果有着诸多广泛且深层的影响。它具有重要的政策意涵，也因此对由创意城市概念衍生出的当前
政策立场提出批评。

认知—文化经济 创意城市 创造力 提供服务的底层阶级 符号分析人员 城市化 城市政策

SCOTT A. J. Au-delà de la ville créative: le capitalisme cognitif-culturel et le nouvel urbanisme, Regional Studies. La créativité est
une notion qui arrive à point dans la géographie économique et urbaine. C’est une notion qui nécessite aussi beaucoup de circon-
spection. On essaye de démontrer que les processus interdépendants d’apprentissage, de créativité et d’innovation se situent au sein
des champs concrets des rapports sociaux. Parce que beaucoup de la recherche actuelle à propos des villes créatives ne réussit pas à
bien saisir ce point, elle a tendance à fournir une image imparfaite de la dynamique urbaine et, par la suite, prône dans beaucoup des
cas des politiques qui sont essentiellement régressives. Le capitalisme cognitif-culturel constitue un cadre théorique plus solide par
lequel on peut comprendre des processus d’urbanisation contemporains. Le cadre du capitalisme cognitif-culturel influence la
logique d’apprentissage, de créativité et d’innovation qui est observable dans les villes d’aujourd’hui mais qui a des effets plus
larges et plus approfondis sur le développement du milieu urbain. Les conséquences pour la politique s’avèrent importantes,
ainsi on fournit aussi une critique des positions de principe remontant aux idées relatives aux villes créatives.

Économie cognitive et culturelle Grande ville créative Créativité Classe marginale de service Analystes
symboliques Urbanisation Politique urbaine

SCOTT A. J. Jenseits der kreativen Stadt: kognitiv-kultureller Kapitalismus und der neue Urbanismus, Regional Studies. Die Kreativität ist
ein Konzept, dessen Zeit in der Wirtschafts- und Stadtgeografie gekommen ist. Ebenso ist sie ein Konzept, das enorme Umsichtigkeit
erfordert. In diesem Beitrag wird versucht zu verdeutlichen, dass die voneinander abhängigen Prozesse des Lernens, der Kreativität und
der Innovation innerhalb konkreter Felder von sozialen Beziehungen angesiedelt sind. Da dieser Punkt in der bisherigen Forschung
über kreative Städte meist nicht richtig erkannt wird, wird die urbane Dynamik oft fehlerhaft dargestellt, was in zahlreichen Fällen
zu im Wesentlichen regressiven politischen Empfehlungen führt. Der kognitiv-kulturelle Kapitalismus bietet einen robusteren
theoretischen Rahmen zur Beschreibung von modernen Urbanisationsprozessen. Der Rahmen des kognitiv-kulturellen Kapitalismus
prägt die besondere Logik des Lernens, der Kreativität und der Innovation, die sich heute in Städten beobachten lassen, hat aber auch
zahlreiche breitere und tiefere Auswirkungen auf die Ergebnisse in den Städten. Ebenso ist er mit wichtigen politischen Auswirkungen

© 2014 Regional Studies Association

http://www.regionalstudies.org
 566 Allen J. Scott
verbunden, weshalb auch eine Kritik der derzeitigen politischen Standpunkte aufgrund der Vorstellungen von der kreativen Stadt
geliefert wird.

Kognitiv-kulturelle Wirtschaft Kreative Stadt Kreativität Dienstleistungs-Unterklasse Symbolanalysten

Urbanisierung Stadtpolitik

SCOTT A. J. Más allá de la ciudad creativa: el capitalismo cognitivo–cultural y el nuevo urbanismo, Regional Studies. La creatividad
es un concepto a la que le ha llegado su hora en la geografía económica y urbana. Es también un concepto que necesita una enorme
circunspección. Aquí se intenta mostrar que los procesos interdependientes de aprendizaje, creatividad e innovación están situados
en campos concretos de las relaciones sociales. Debido a que este aspecto no se entiende bien en muchos estudios sobre las ciudades
creativas, se tiende a ofrecer una representación errónea de las dinámicas urbanas y esto conduce en muchos casos a defender
políticas básicamente regresivas. El capitalismo cognitivo–cultural es un marco teórico más sólido mediante el que se pueden
describir procesos de urbanización modernos. El marco del capitalismo cognitivo–cultural forma la lógica peculiar del aprendizaje,
la creatividad y la innovación que se observan en las ciudades de hoy día, pero también tiene muchos efectos más amplios y
profundos en los resultados urbanos. Debido a sus importantes repercusiones políticas, en este artículo se ofrece una crítica de
las actuales posturas políticas que proceden de las ideas de la ciudad creativa.

Economía cognitiva-cultural Ciudad creativa Creatividad Clase inferior de servicios Analistas de símbolos
Urbanización Política urbana

JEL classifications: O18, R10

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INTRODUCTION city as it emerges in the literature includes ingredients

such as an employment base comprising successful
‘Creativity’ is a concept whose time has come in econ-
new-economy industries, a vibrant pool of talented
omic and urban geography. The withering away of
and qualified labour, high levels of environmental
fordist capitalism and the steady rise of a new cogni-
quality, a dynamic cultural milieu including artists,
tive–cultural economy (S COTT , 2008) have put a
bohemians and gays, a glamorous nightlife, recurrent
premium on academic research focused on the interplay
festivals and spectacles, iconic architecture, and a unify-
of new digital technologies, advanced forms of human
ing symbolic identity in the guise of a striking global
capital, the logic of process and product innovation,
brand. This description is, of course, a caricature, but
and intellectual property; that is, on greatly intensified
one that nonetheless captures some of the main
creative performance over a wide range of economic
themes that have now entered into the ever-broadening
and social relata. As will be shown, these phenomena
international discussion on the creative city. It should be
are in turn associated with a number of important
added that there are aspects of the description that cer-
shifts in patterns of urbanization and the character of
tainly reflect current urban realities, and at least some
the urban environment. But ‘creativity’ is also a
of the research that proceeds under the rubric of the
concept that calls for enormous circumspection, not
creative city has considerable merit. The purpose of
least in view of its deeply positive but also problematical
this paper is not to deny that cities are often endowed
resonances suggestive of inspired and avant-garde
with certain kinds of creative potentials as it is to
accomplishment. This paper examines one especially
propose a theoretical formulation that resituates these
contentious expression of this concept in current geo-
potentials in the context of a more widely ranging por-
graphical thinking, namely, its resurgence in creative
trayal of urbanization dynamics in the current conjunc-
city discourse. It is argued that while this discourse
ture. In pursuit of this goal, an attempt will be made to
offers a number of quite useful insights into urbanization
evaluate the extant body of creative city research while
processes today, it also has significant blind spots and
simultaneously pointing to a number of alternative hor-
leads in many instances to essentially regressive policy
izons of investigation, and perhaps most importantly of
advocacies. The overall approach adopted here consists
all extending a warning to policy-makers that the
in an attempt to reassemble the diverse phenomena
quest for the creative city, at least in the terms of
that it describes, and to evaluate the normative actions
many current formulations, is as likely as not to be
that it advocates, within a more encompassing theoreti-
attended by heavy social costs and disappointments as
cal framework focused on the concrete realities of con-
it is by some sort of urban efflorescence.
temporary capitalism.
The idea of the creative city as both a descriptive
figure and a policy desideratum has taken especially
BRIEF ARCHAEOLOGY OF AN IDEA
firm hold over the last decade or so (B AYCAN , 2011).
The precise substantive meaning of the idea varies Psychologists have long been interested in the question
widely from one author to another, but it might be of individual creativity and its general aetiology, but it
said that a kind of composite ideal vision of the creative was Jane Jacobs (J ACOBS , 1984) who first alluded to
 Beyond the Creative City: Cognitive–Cultural Capitalism and the New Urbanism
the creative city, as such, in a discussion of innovative
small-scale craft industries, inspired by the inquiries of
S ABEL (1982) into industrial development in the
Third Italy.1 Sabel himself went on to write at length
(partly in partnership with Piore) about the peculiar
model of agglomeration-specific innovation that
seemed to be developing in the Third Italy in the late
1970s and early 1980s (P IORE and S ABEL , 1984). A
number of parallel research thrusts by authors such as
A YDALOT (1986), O AKEY (1985) and S TÖHR (1986)
also raised questions about the broadly innovative char-
acter of industrial agglomerations. At about the same
time, A NDERSSON (1985) came up with the related
proposition that structural instabilities in particular
localities might give rise to ‘creative regions’. Quite
independently of these efforts, the idea of integrating
arts and culture into urban planning was put forward
by Y ENCKEN (1988) who also suggested that this
manner of proceeding pointed toward a new kind of
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creative city. It was only after about 1990, however,
that the notion of the creative city really began to
gather momentum. This was the year in which
Glasgow was proclaimed as the European Capital of
Culture, leading directly to a detailed report by
COMEDIA (1991)2 in which the creative city was por-
trayed prescriptively as a vortex of innovation in all
spheres of life and most especially in the arts, design
and new media. The Comedia report was succeeded
in 1993 by Vancouver’s decisive policy push to
develop its artistic and cultural assets (D UXBURY ,
2004). Shortly thereafter, a number of other cities (e.g.
Toronto and Cologne) declared that they, too, would
henceforth move in much the same direction.
Over the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, then,
various initial research and policy thrusts started to raise
questions about the genetics of creativity and inno-
vation in spatial agglomerations, even though there
was a tendency, still discernible in the literature today,
to restrict the term ‘creativity’ to activities in culture
and the arts while the somewhat more sober notion
of ‘innovation’ was more consistently invoked in ana-
lyses of the manufacturing economy and especially
technology-intensive industry. Virtually all this effort
resonated explicitly or implicitly with an emergent
theoretical framework focused on postfordism and its
expression in flexible production (cf. A MIN , 1994;
E SSER and H IRSCH , 1989; S ABEL and Z EITLIN ,
1985; S AYER , 1989). The intellectual terrain was thus
already well prepared when, in the mid-1990s, two
extended statements, one by L ANDRY and B IANCHINI
(1995), the other by L ANDRY et al. (1996), helped
further to bring the notion of creative cities to the
fore. L ANDRY (2000) subsequently published a land-
mark manifesto that issued an all-azimuths call for the
investment of creative energies in virtually every
aspect of urban existence and especially for major
efforts to be made in promoting the cultural life of
the city. A further gloss on these propositions was
567
added by H ALL (1996, 1998) who argued that
density, human interaction and synergy were essential
foundations of the creativity of individual places.
Alongside these lines of enquiry, a number of geogra-
phers and sociologists were starting to develop ideas
about the cultural economy of cities (e.g. L ASH and
U RRY , 1994; M OLOTCH 1996; P RATT , 1997;
S COTT , 1996), and these ideas came rapidly to be inter-
twined with work on the creative city.
Despite this evident ferment, research on the urban
and regional foundations of creativity was still confined
to a relatively small number of scholars up to the end of
the 1990s. The year 2002 marks a major turning point.
This was the year in which Richard Florida published
his influential book on the rise of the ‘creative class’
(F LORIDA , 2002), an event that almost immediately
sparked off an extended debate about creativity as a
force in urban development. Florida restated his ideas
two years later in a book that advanced the additional
claim that cities could attract large numbers of creative
class workers if they offered high-order amenities
(among which social diversity and tolerance were said
to play a major part), thereby stimulating local economic
growth (F LORIDA , 2004). Florida’s identification of the
creative class as a significant new social stratum in con-
temporary capitalism was unquestionably an important
insight (though anticipated in different ways by analysts
such as B ELL (1973), G OULDNER (1979) and R EICH
(1992), but his further asseverations to the effect that
urban growth flowed spontaneously from the presence
of this class were met – appropriately, as will be
shown – with considerable scepticism (e.g. M ARKU-
SEN , 2006; P ECK , 2005).
In spite of this scepticism, Florida’s work marked the
beginning of a widening stream of academic work on
the topic of the creative city that has continued to
expand down to the present day (Fig. 1). Moreover,
Florida’s writings found instant echoes in the practical
initiatives that were building up around the creative
city idea so that his message (consolidated by his frenetic
consulting efforts and extensive press coverage) found a
sympathetic audience among policy-makers all around
the world. This enthusiastic reception is reflected in
the proliferation of cities over the last decade or so
that claim to have been touched in one way or
another by the viaticum of creativity. By one account,
there are now over 60 self-professed creative cities
worldwide (K ARVOUNIS , 2010), and even such palp-
ably improbable places – on the face of it, at least – as
Sudbury, Canada (P AQUETTE , 2009), Milwaukee,
USA (Z IMMERMAN , 2008), Huddersfield, UK (C HAT-
TERTON , 2000), and Darwin, Australia (L UCKMAN
et al., 2009) have now jumped into the fray. As K ONG
and O’C ONNOR (2010) indicate, the idea has caught
on with special tenacity in Asian policy circles, and is
notably strong in China where the cities of Beijing,
Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongquin and Wuhan (not
to forget Hong Kong and Macau) are all now asserting
 568 Allen J. Scott
Fig. 1. Annual number of citations of the term ‘creative cities’ as recorded by Google Scholar, 1990–2012
Downloaded by [Universite Laval] at 23:02 17 June 2014
their creative accomplishments and potentials. In
addition, recent research on the creative city has steadily
widened the terms of reference of this idea. Some of the
major themes running through the current literature
focus on aspects of creative urbanism revolving around
the institutions of the new economy (the cultural
economy above all, but other forms of enterprise as
well, including high-technology industry), human
capital formation, cultural policy, and innovative
idioms of urban design and architecture (e.g. B ONTJE
et al., 2011; C OHENDET et al., 2010; C OMMUNIAN ,
2011; C OSTA et al., 2008; C UNNINGHAM , 2012;
E VANS , 2009; GREFFE , 2011; GRODACH , 2012;
KAGAN and HAHN , 2011; KONG and O’CONNOR ,
2010; KRÄTKE , 2011; MC CANN , 2007; PONZINI and
ROSSI , 2010; PRATT , 2008; VIVANT , 2009). This
research has also pointed to some of the more naïve
and/or cynical appropriations of the creative city idea
in the world of policy. A further emerging theme
refers not only to major urban centres but also to the
creative countryside and small towns in rural areas
(B ELL and J AYNE , 2010; L EWIS and D ONALD , 2010;
S COTT , 2010b; W AITT and G IBSON , 2009).
There is much that can be defended in this overall
body of work, including the deep reservations in the
recent literature about any approach that starts with the
so-called creative class as a sort of privileged independent
variable. There is also much, however, that needs to be
questioned with regard to its theoretical bases and orien-
tation as well as its broader political implications. The dis-
cussion that follows is an attempt to rethink various
aspects of all of this work by putting it in the context of
21st-century capitalism and related overarching shifts in
the economic and social characteristics of cities. The
attempted reconstruction here seeks to move away
from ‘creativity’ as a foundational concept for approach-
ing urban issues, not only because creativity itself needs to
be problematized and its essential social origins revealed,
but also because the term so clearly fails to capture so
much that is at stake in the urbanization process today,
even in those cities that have been identified as being
on the cutting edge of creative performance. It will be
argued that even when urban outcomes are most inti-
mately connected to creativity, as such, one still needs
to go well beyond the confines of this concept in order
to achieve an adequate understanding of its motions –
and limits – in the city.
DECIPHERING CREATIVITY
Creativity is an extraordinarily difficult word whose
meaning is bedevilled by its oft-presumed connection
with exalted states of mind, and notably with the ‘mys-
terious’ workings of artistic and scientific genius. Right
at the outset, therefore, one needs to be wary of any
metaphysical connotations of the term, especially its
not-infrequent association with the transcendent.
Instead, one can usefully begin by situating creativity
between two concrete polarities, one psychological or
internal to the individual, the other sociological or
external. On the one side, then, creativity resides in
the mental capacities and personal endowments of indi-
vidual subjects. Some individuals have the native talent
and acquired know-how enabling them to accomplish
certain kinds of creative acts; some have little or none.
Much useful analysis has been published by psycholo-
gists on these aspects of the problem (for a summary,
see S TERNBERG and L UBART 1999). On the other
side, creativity is also embedded in concrete social con-
texts that shape its character and objectives in many
different ways (cf. C SIKSZENTMIHALYI , 1990;
H EMLIN et al., 2008; S EITZ , 2003). It is this second
facet of the problem that is most pertinent to the
 Beyond the Creative City: Cognitive–Cultural Capitalism and the New Urbanism
present discussion, though assuredly one must not fall
into an untenable dualism that separates these two
moments of creativity into watertight compartments.
In this context, one also needs to distinguish between
three interconnected but rather distinctive processes,
namely, learning, creativity and innovation. Learning,
the essential complement of the ‘prepared mind’, is a
preliminary to creativity (cf. PASTEUR , 1854); creativity
itself is the act of producing meaningful new ideas,
where the qualifiers ‘meaningful’ and ‘new’ both need
to be stressed (B ASTIDE , 1977); and innovation entails
the translation of those ideas into concrete, effective
outcomes. Thus, creative thinking is always in impor-
tant respects moulded by the knowledge and skills of
individuals. These assets are acquired to a significant
degree through education, practice and informal sociali-
zation, that is, from external sources that are themselves
permeated with definite historical and geographical
character. Equally, knowledge and skills are bound by
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all manner of checks and limits (e.g. by theoretical
closure, by prescriptive ideologies, by historical tra-
dition, by habit, and so on) though the degree of rigidity
of these constraints will vary greatly depending on
specific circumstances (A MIN and R OBERTS , 2008;
B AUTÈS and V ALETTE , 2004; B ROWN and D UGUID ,
1991). In brief, individuals typically internalize elements
of their daily environment and these are then reflected
back – via further mental processing – in more or less
socially conditioned creative efforts. At the same time,
individuals caught up in dense transactional networks
of various kinds are obviously in a more favoured pos-
ition to acquire useful information and to explore its
wider potentialities than those who are more socially
isolated. In fact, much of the labour process in the
new economy is organized specifically in ways that
seek to capture and optimize these transactional
aspects of creativity. As G RABHER (2001) has written,
this manner of organizing work is especially evident in
the case of project-oriented teams in which selected
individuals are brought together for a period of time
in order to pool their know-how and to cross-fertilize
each other’s thinking in a context of close collaboration
directed to problem-solving exercises. This remark
exemplifies another important dynamic of creative
activity, namely, that certain kinds of disruptive com-
munications or situations can enhance creative efforts.
In this respect, N OTEBOOM (1999) suggests that inter-
personal cognitive distance (further refined in terms of
novelty and communicability) is an important inter-
mediate variable in the way such disruption works. In
particular, too little novelty in any given transaction is
apt to be unproductive because it merely reinforces
what is already known; and so is too much, because it
may not be decodable at the point of reception. Inter-
mediate doses are calculated to push creativity forward
most effectively.
The point of all this is that creativity is in deeply
meaningful ways a social phenomenon. What this
569
signifies in the present account is that whatever it is
that might be identified as the essential nexus of the
creativity of cities, its motions can only be deciphered
in the last instance, by reference to the communal,
context-dependent and purpose-driving conditions
that are found in the urban milieu. As will be shown,
there is also always a dimension of political choice that
shapes these conditions and their effects. In any case,
creativity is most certainly not a purely self-acting
primum mobile of urban development. An alternative
way of referring to these matters is to say that something
like an energized creative field extends across the city in
the guise of overlapping physical and social infrastruc-
tures and that the dense, polarized, multifaceted mesh
of transactions generated within this field is a major
factor in moulding locally distinctive patterns of ingenu-
ity and imagination (S COTT , 1999, 2006, 2010a). It
should be added that creative fields can be identified
at many other levels of scale, including the national
and the global, but for present purposes attention is
focused solely on the urban.3 What is the specific con-
crete character of the creative field of the city? How
does it reflect the logic of urbanization at the beginning
of the 21st century? What are its potentialities and
limits? And once these questions have been dealt with,
what remains of a creative city problematic? These
issues can now be dealt with by an extended discussion
of urban processes in the emerging, transformative
world of cognitive–cultural capitalism. The discussion
will underline the legitimacy and urgency of concerns
about creativity in contemporary cities, but will, at the
same time, seek to dissolve these concerns into what is
taken to be a considerably more robust theoretical
framework.
CITIES IN COGNITIVE–CULTURAL
CAPITALISM
Over the history of capitalism, a distinction was fre-
quently made between cities of industry and commerce,
on the one hand, and cities of art and culture, on the
other, and, indeed, these two forms of urban develop-
ment were widely seen as being quite incompatible
with one another. Today, this distinction is disappearing
in favour of a more syncretic view of cities that is in
some degree captured under the rubric of the ‘postfor-
dist city’, one of whose declinations is the ‘creative
city’, i.e. a city where production, work, leisure, the
arts and the physical milieu exist in varying degrees of
mutual harmony.
This trend is in significant ways related to a number
of important transformations that have come about in
the shift from fordism to postfordism that occurred
over the 1980s and 1990s and that have a strong
bearing on learning, creativity and innovation. Four
main points follow immediately from this remark.
First, the main capitalist economies have come to
 570 Allen J. Scott
focus increasingly on unstandardized products in sectors
like technology-intensive production, business, finan-
cial and personal services, and a wide array of cultural
industries ranging from the media to fashion-intensive
crafts. Second, the same sectors display definite ten-
dencies to extensive horizontal and vertical disinte-
gration with selected groups of firms then being
recomposed into networks of specialized but comp-
lementary producers with strong proclivities to
agglomeration, especially in large cities. Third, increas-
ing shares of the output of these sectors are marked by
firm- and place-specific product specifications. Fourth,
the conspicuous growth of the new economy is echoed
in the expansion of a labour force (roughly equivalent
to Florida’s creative class, or what Reich, 1992, has
called ‘symbolic analysts’) that is called upon increas-
ingly to deploy high-level cognitive and cultural skills
such as deductive reasoning capacities, technical
insight, leadership, communication abilities, cultural
awareness and visual imagination – in other words,
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more or less creative capacities – in the workplace.
As these transformations have come about, economy
and culture have fused together in important ways, in
the sense that economic outputs are subject to ever-
increasing injections of aesthetic and semiotic
meaning, while the culture that is consumed is pro-
duced more and more by profit-seeking firms in the
commodity form.
In line with these remarks, and as advocated else-
where, the term ‘postfordism’ should doubtless be
abandoned and replaced by the more affirmative desig-
nation ‘cognitive–cultural capitalism’ (S COTT 2011,
2012). The former label has the disadvantage of expres-
sing itself only by what it is not, whereas the latter has
the advantage of positively reflecting the foundations of
much contemporary economic activity – above all in
the more advanced centres of capitalism – in the cer-
ebral and affective capacities of the labour force. It
can be argued that we are now entering a period
marked by a distinctive third wave of urbanization
based on cognitive–cultural capitalism, in contradistinc-
tion to a first wave associated with the 19th-century
factory and workshop system and a second wave associ-
ated with 20th-century fordism (S COTT , 2011). This
remark is not intended to suggest that all cities have
entered this phase as equal participants, but it is cer-
tainly the case that more and more large cities in
North America and Western Europe are taking part
in this trend, as well as cities in the Asia-Pacific
Region and elsewhere. A very partial illustrative list
of such cities would include New York, Los Angeles,
London, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Sydney,
Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok.
At the same time, many smaller cities and even rural
areas are increasingly subject to transformation within
this cognitive–cultural order (S COTT , 2012).
The contention here is that these new socio-
economic arrangements in third-wave cities generate
distinctive creative fields while simultaneously provid-
ing terms of reference that point well beyond a
narrow focus on creativity as such. A core element of
the creative fields within these cities consists of the clus-
ters of technology-intensive, service and cultural produ-
cers that nowadays constitute so much of their
economic base. These clusters are sites of productive
labour in which know-how is accumulated, skills are
honed, and firm- and place-specific forms of product
configuration (the source of Chamberlinian monopolis-
tic competition) are worked out. The same clusters are
shot through with dense transactional networks that in
part hold them together as geographical entities, and
that function as important channels of information and
mutually cross-fertilizing creative signals (A SHEIM and
C OENEN , 2005; B ATHELT et al., 2004; D ESROCHERS
and L EPPÄLÄ , 2011). The labour markets that form
around these clusters are also important sources of crea-
tive energies as workers rotate through different jobs and
interact with one another in project-oriented teams. At
the same time, the wider urban system plays a role in
helping to sustain (or impede) individual creative
drives via the forms of social reproduction that it sus-
tains. In this regard, the cultural and social spaces of
the city as well as local institutions, like schools and uni-
versities, are of major consequence (S COTT , 2010a). In
favoured cases, the physical fabric and cultural insti-
tutions of the city help to underpin these functions by
providing a milieu that is supportive of the overall
social and economic vocation of the city, as well as
exuding images that function as branding devices and
as advertisements for its capabilities, attractions, and
ambitions (O KANO and S AMSON , 2010; V ANOLO ,
2008).
The most visible expression of the latter phenom-
enon can be found in the central business districts of
major global cities where peculiar new forms of aesthe-
ticization, as represented above all by markedly idiosyn-
cratic buildings signed by star architects, amplify the
individuality and visibility of the urban milieu. The his-
torical and cultural patrimony of cities serves much the
same purpose, and often forms the basis of lucrative
heritage and place marketing efforts (G RAHAM et al.,
2000; P HILO and K EARNS , 1993). Even many former
manufacturing centres are attempting to upgrade parts
of their ageing built stock in efforts to construct some
sort of ‘creative’ future for themselves, above all one
that emphatically involves a break with the old
economy and that reaches out to more knowledge-
and culture-intensive forms of production. Initiatives
like these are evident in the widespread recycling of
derelict industrial and warehouse properties in cities
that prospered in earlier phases of urban economic
development, and their utilization for art centres and
galleries, music venues, boutique retail outlets, and
facilities such as small design, media and fashion firms
(cf. A NDRES and G RÉSILLON , 2011; B ROWN et al.,
2000; C OMMUNIAN , 2011; G NAD , 2000;
 Beyond the Creative City: Cognitive–Cultural Capitalism and the New Urbanism 571
W YNNE , 1992). In brief, and to repeat an earlier refrain, CHIAROSCURO: INTRA-URBAN SOCIAL
forms of creative expression in the contemporary city AND SPATIAL TRANSFORMATIONS
are not simply sovereign emanations from the minds
Human capital and social restratification. Much, though by
of the citizenry but are also mobilized and moulded
no means all, of the research accomplished on the crea-
by the complex interweaving between relations of
tive city to date celebrates the ostensibly benign dimen-
production, social life and the urban milieu at large.
sions of this concept while neglecting or deemphasizing
These trends have been associated with a notable if
its more malignant elements. But cities in advanced
selective resurgence of urban growth over the last few
capitalism, even those that are well-endowed with
decades, and this in turn has sparked off a debate –
advanced cognitive and cultural employment opportu-
deeply interwoven with the creative city idea – about
nities, are in practice awash in crisis conditions – exacer-
the causalities underlying this growth. One fashionable
bated by fiscal austerity in these last few years – not in a
view about this matter can be summarized in Florida’s
purely contingent way, but as an organic outgrowth of
claim that cities with abundant amenities are apt to
their role as cynosures of the new economy. Among the
grow because the creative class will preferentially
problems and predicaments created in this manner,
migrate to such cities, and their presence will then be
those that revolve around the widening economic and
reflected in bursts of local economic dynamism (see
social gap between the upper and lower halves of the
also F LORIDA , 2008; and M ELLANDER et al., 2013,
labour force are undoubtedly the most explosive in pol-
for extensions). One variation on this theme can be
itical terms.
found in C LARK (2004) who views successful modern
In classical fordist society the dominant division of
cities as ‘entertainment machines’ that attract and main-
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labour in production was represented by the white-

tain highly qualified workers by virtue of their amuse-
and blue-collar fractions of the workforce. This division
ment value. Another is offered by G LAESER (2011)
of labour was projected out into intra-urban space
for whom cities have evolved from being centres of pro-
where it reappeared in the form of a pervasive but
duction in the 20th century to consumer cities in the
never fully accomplished division of neighborhoods.
21st, and he avers that the latter cities grow when
With the advent of the new economy, an alternative
they have abundant amenities (sunshine, low crime
bipartite division of labour is now overriding the old
rates, ‘playground’ effects, etc.) that draw in workers
white/blue-collar social split (L EVY and M URNANE ,
endowed with high levels of human capital. In opposi-
2004) leading to a significant restratification of urban
tion to these amenity-based and sumptuary views on
society and thence to significant readjustments in the
urban dynamism, S TORPER and S COTT (2009) have
geography of urban neighborhoods. The new division
argued that cities develop primarily on the basis of
of labour is represented on the one side by the creative
their job-generating capacities. This argument does
class or symbolic analysts, and on the other by a low-
not dismiss the auxiliary role of human capital in the
wage service underclass. In more polemical terms, the
recursive, path-dependent process of urban growth.
latter group might be said to constitute a new servile
However, it does claim that even today it is jobs not
class. S TANDING (2011) and others refer to a ‘precariat’
amenities that attract highly qualified workers to par-
that is more or less equivalent to this class. The steadily
ticular cities and that keep them durably in place.
widening gap in the fortunes of these two strata is in
The complexities of this debate are much too great
large part a function of their differential command of
to be summarized in the present context, except
skills and formal qualifications, but is greatly exacerbated
perhaps to say that one of the fatal flaws of the ame-
by the increasing atomization and competitiveness that
nities-based view is that it is quite incapable of explain-
have invaded labour markets as neoliberal fundamental-
ing how it is that the production systems of cities, and
ism and globalization have continued to run their
their corresponding stocks of human capital, are so fre-
course. The deepening divide in advanced capitalist
quently specialized. If the view as articulated by Storper
cities is all the more evident given the steady retreat of
and Scott is correct, it means that even so-called crea-
manufacturing employment (by both attrition and
tive cities (or, in what is taken to be a more theoreti-
movement offshore) from major urban centres and the
cally informed vocabulary, cities with vibrant
concomitant shrinkage of the traditional blue-collar
cognitive–cultural economies) remain directly depen-
labour force.
dent for their growth and prosperity on the health of
The human capital assets of the top half of the urban
their internal productive arrangements (and, of
labour force comprise advanced technical knowledge,
course, export markets). This statement holds as
analytical prowess and relevant forms of socio-cultural
much for cities dominated by sectors like tourism,
know-how. These assets are typically valorized within a
the heritage industry, theatre and casino gambling,
system of formal credentialing. By contrast, the abilities
whose outputs are largely immobile, as it does for
of the service underclass are very much more informal
cities dominated by technology-intensive sectors,
and undervalued. These workers are deployed in jobs
business and financial services, and cultural industries,
whose subaltern status is underlined by the high pro-
producing outputs that can normally be readily trans-
portion of politically marginal social groups (such as
ported to distant markets.
 572 Allen J. Scott
immigrants from poor countries) who carry them out.
These jobs are focused above all on sustaining the facili-
ties and infrastructure of the urban system, and on provid-
ing diverse kinds of domestic and personal help. This
remark implies at once that service underclass work is
geared in large degree to providing for the direct and
indirect demands of the upper echelon of workers in
the cognitive–cultural economy. It would be a grave
mistake, however, to suppose that the labour of the
service underclass is devoid of cognitive and cultural
skills. Consider, for example, the kinds of flexibility and
discretionary decision-making required for janitors,
motor-vehicle operators, and crossing guards to accom-
plish their work, or the communicative and resourceful
capacities that must be mobilized by child care workers,
home health aides, and beauty salon personnel. More-
over, because the members of the service underclass
must always be available in proximity to the point of
service, the tasks that they perform, unlike much manu-
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facturing activity, cannot be repackaged and sent offshore
(G ATTA et al., 2009). Indeed, the incidence of these
workers has been rising in both absolute and relative
terms in American cities of late. Thus, among the
fastest growing jobs in large US cities in the first decade
of the 21st century are found such low-wage service
occupations as couriers and messengers, dining room
attendants, dishwashers, food preparation workers,
grounds maintenance workers, highway maintenance
workers, hotel clerks, miscellaneous motor vehicle oper-
ators, painters, parking lot attendants, and service station
attendants (S COTT , 2009, 2010c).
Land use changes. As the social shifts noted above have
occurred, significant rearrangements of intra-urban
space have also come about. Among the more dramatic
of these changes is the revitalization of selected areas in
the city, most especially in and around the urban core.
This form of revitalization comprises two related but
distinctive phases, each frequently equated with creative
city dynamics. One involves the upgrading of deterio-
rated residential areas, notably but not exclusively, in
inner-city areas; the other is focused on the redevelop-
ment of commercial and business properties within the
central business district. Both phases are commonly
referred to in the literature by reference to ‘gentrifica-
tion’, though the term is unsatisfactory in many ways.
What follows will continue to refer to residential
upgrading as gentrification, but the more evocative
phrase ‘aestheticized land use intensification’ will be
used to refer to commercial and business land-use rede-
velopment in central business districts.
Gentrification, as such, was first identified by G LASS
(1964) who observed that a number of poorer neighbor-
hoods in Central London were undergoing social trans-
formation as upper middle-class families started to take
over much of the local housing stock. The historical
origins of gentrification thus precede the rise of the cog-
nitive–cultural economy, though it might well be
maintained that Central London was a harbinger of
things to come with its already declining manufacturing
industries and its shifting occupational structure reflect-
ing the rapid growth of its financial, media, fashion and
entertainment sectors. In many instances, the incipient
stages of gentrification are signalled by incursions of
artists and bohemians into run-down working-class
neighborhoods (L LOYD , 2002; Z UKIN 1982). A
pioneer fringe of middle class gentrifiers then frequently
starts to move in and renovate local properties, followed
by successive waves of further gentrification and rapidly
increasing property values. These events are
accompanied by steady displacement of the original
low-income residents as rental rates rise and as what
remains of their local employment base in manufacturing
is demolished. The pace of change is frequently boosted
by unscrupulous landlords eager to reap the benefits of
higher property values and by overzealous city councils
anxious to enhance the image of the city (L EES et al.,
2008; S LATER , 2006; W ACQUANT , 2008). As this
happens, inner-city residential areas become increasingly
dominated by ‘creative’ workers with demographic pro-
files like young professional families, cohabiting couples,
people in same-sex unions, apartment sharers, metrosex-
ual singles, and so on (H AASE et al., 2010; H AMNETT and
W HITELEGG , 2007; H ARRIS , 2008).
The allied process of aestheticized land-use intensifica-
tion can be described as the quest for increased pro-
ductivity per unit of urban land in central business
districts (as well as more outlying business clusters), par-
ticularly with regard to cognitively and culturally
inflected sectors. Today, this quest is typically associated
with forms of embellishment coinciding with strikingly
new idioms of architecture and urban design that are
very different from the ageing modernist style that for-
merly dominated downtown areas in different parts of
the world. These idioms in many ways reflect something
of the character of the cognitive–cultural activities that
now dominate in downtown areas as well the ideology
and tastes of the new transnational capitalist class whose
members move with ease between the various global
foci of new economy (S KLAIR , 2005). They are also a
reflection of an aggressive global urbanism that thrives
on dramatized city branding strategies not only in the
interests of self-assertion but also as a means of attracting
inflows of capital investment and highly qualified labour.
A widely accepted theoretical explanation of these
processes of land-use redevelopment and change was
proposed by SMITH (1982, 1986) in terms of what he
called a ‘rent gap’. Smith argues that inner-city proper-
ties often seem to command potential rents far above the
actual rent earned and that this gap provides the incen-
tive for land-use upgrading and socio-economic succes-
sion. A phenomenon analogous to the rent gap can
certainly be observed at different times in different
cities. However, it is suggested that it should more prop-
erly be seen not as a cause but as an effect of gentrifica-
tion (in all of its senses), or perhaps, better yet, an
 Beyond the Creative City: Cognitive–Cultural Capitalism and the New Urbanism
endogenous element of the gentrification process rela-
tive to the wider economic and social changes currently
going on in cities. Above all, these changes need to be
considered in the light of two basic and mutually rein-
forcing trends. On the one hand, these peculiar forms
of redevelopment owe much to the collapse of manu-
facturing employment in inner-city areas and the
erosion of adjacent working-class neighborhoods. On
the other hand, they also reflect the enormous recent
expansion of the new economy in central business dis-
tricts, leading in turn to revalorization of surrounding
residential areas and their steady colonization by cogni-
tive–cultural workers. Central business district redeve-
lopment has also typically been accompanied by major
investments in cultural and entertainment facilities
such as museums, art galleries, music venues and sports
arenas, and this has added to the attractions of nearby
neighborhoods for well-paid, well-qualified, cognitive
and cultural workers.
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As these developments have moved ahead, patterns of
socio-spatial segmentation in cities have been significantly
reshaped by comparison with the situation under fordism.
In some respects, socio-spatial segmentation has actually
become more strongly indurated than it was in the
fordist era as the incomes of different occupational strata
diverge and as members of the upper tier of the labour
force increasingly secure their own residential seclusion
by means of gated communities and stringent zoning
regulations, not only in central cities but also in the
suburbs (B LAKELY and S NYDER , 1997; LE G OIX ,
2005). The incongruity of cities of the third wave,
despite frequent claims about their creative vitality, is
the glaring contrast between the shimmer of their more
affluent landmark areas and the squalor of their darker
underside. Increasing numbers of cities in both the
Global North and Global South today are marked by a
yawning void between their internal islands of prosperity
linked to the global economy, and widely ranging tracts
where social and political marginalization is the order of
the day. In these circumstances, the right to the city that
L EFEBVRE (1968) saw, correctly, as one of the basic con-
ditions for a renewal of democratic values, social solidarity
and the capacity for réjouissance seems as distant as ever.
Some of the most creative cities in today’s world are
deeply caught up in this stubborn predicament.
THE URBAN POLICY DIMENSION
In its unreconstructed form, creative city theory offers a
seductively glowing vision of urban potentialities. The
call to creativity as a centrepiece of urban development
goals is certainly compelling by comparison with politi-
cally fraught and often ineffectual measures focused on
more traditional approaches entailing attempts to
improve the local business climate and efforts to lure
inward investors by means of fiscal incentives. Small
wonder, in view of this vision, that large numbers of
573
self-declared creative cities are asserting themselves on
every continent at the present moment in history.
To be sure, cities have always been centres of creativity,
even if in different ways at different times (A NDERSSON ,
2011; H ALL , 1998; H ESSLER and Z IMMERMAN , 2008).
Today, forms of urban creativity reside substantially in the
specific socio-economic relationships built into the new
cognitive and cultural order. As already noted, however,
the descriptive and normative resonances of ‘creative
city’ discourse systematically occlude much of what is
most fundamental in the contemporary urban process
and are hence prone both to overlook many crucial ques-
tions and to generate dysfunctional policy advocacies. It is
undeniably the case that a great deal of what goes on in
contemporary cities is symptomatic of diverse creative
impulses, especially in the guise of the continual destruc-
tion and reconstruction of ideas, images, styles, routines,
organizational arrangements, and all the rest. These
impulses are embedded in a new socio-economic
regime of volatility, flexibility, intensified competition
and a type of consumerism that is increasingly focused
on the aesthetic, semiotic and libidinal content of the pro-
ducts that circulate through global markets. These circum-
stances, by and large, remain beyond the purview of
creative city discourse, which in its uncritical optimism,
expresses a sort of credulity about the urban future com-
pounded by policy recommendations that in practice, as
PRATT (2011) has argued, lead frequently to regressive
policy outcomes. For one thing, as noted above, creative
city policies help to turbo-charge gentrification processes
thus exacerbating the exclusion of low-income families
from central city areas and underwriting the takeover of
those areas by the new bourgeoisie (B AYLISS , 2007;
M C C ANN , 2007; S MITH , 2002). The irony here is that
although creative city theory puts much emphasis on
diversity and tolerance, the policy advocacies that have
been constructed in its name actually make few gestures
in the direction of social inclusion and even less in the
direction of income redistribution. For another thing,
creative city discourse all too often licenses deeply
flawed programmes that proceed on the faith that invest-
ments in amenities will function as a magnet for creative
class migrants and that this will then presumably foster
rising urban prosperity for all. It has already been suggested
that this faith is misplaced, and several authors have shown
that in many instances the expected returns to major
investment in urban amenities far exceed the actual
returns, notably when policy-makers have adopted exag-
gerated hopes based on mediatized but dubious models
like Bilbao’s attempted renaissance by means of its Guggen-
heim Museum (cf. E VANS , 2005; J AYNE , 2004;
P AQUETTE , 2009; S ASAKI , 2010). Moreover, investments
in amenities calculated to appeal primarily to the creative
class are ipso facto liable to involve regressive subsidies to pri-
vileged groups at the expense of other social fractions. Such
investments are particularly likely to provide dispropor-
tional benefits to property owners (O’C ONNOR and
G U , 2013).
 574 Allen J. Scott
It is no surprise, therefore, to observe that popular pol-
itical movements in large cities everywhere, have rather
consistently turned their backs on these kinds of policy
advocacies in favour of goals that address the specific
needs of low-wage workers, the unemployed and the
destitute (B ORÉN and Y OUNG , 2012; H OLM , 2010).
Alternative movements like these are well exemplified
by the Bus Riders Union and the Janitors for Justice cam-
paign in Los Angeles (cf. M ILKMAN , 2006; S OJA , 2010),
or by the community-based workers’ centres that offer
help in cities across the United States to low-income
and especially immigrant workers in their quest for
improved wages and working conditions (F INE , 2005).
Even groups of artists (who, on the basis of narrow self-
interest, would seem to have much to gain from creative
city policies) have started to campaign for socially inclus-
ive approaches in cities as far apart as Hamburg and
Toronto, and to call for reconsideration of some of the
more overtly regressive and philistine public initiatives
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intended to bring creative city ideas into concrete realiz-
ation (C ATUNGAL et al., 2009; H OLM , 2010).
More generally, the tasks of harnessing and regulating
urban realities in the interests of a progressive future
require initiatives that recognize the positive, forward-
looking energies of cities, but that go radically beyond
the advocacies of creative city enthusiasts. Three
imperatives, responding to core economic and social
breakdowns in the large city today, are of particular
importance and urgency. The first is to build insti-
tutional frameworks that can effectively manage the
common-pool resources that abound within the cogni-
tive–cultural economy at the scale of the individual city
and that are otherwise susceptible to gross inefficiencies.
The second is to rectify the huge discrepancies of
incomes and life chances that currently distort the
social landscape of large cities all over the world. The
third is to secure the wider democratization of urban
space and to promote the rehabilitation of communal
life. These desiderata are essential for achieving the full
developmental possibilities of third wave cities, and for
countering some of the more frankly rapacious and nar-
cissistic qualities of existence in the world of the new
cognitive–cultural economy.
TAKING STOCK
Despite the critical comments made here on creative
city theory and policy-making, it should be re-empha-
sized that much of the substantive content of this
approach echoes some very real currents in contempor-
ary society, albeit in a wayward and distorted manner.
These currents stem from a number of important
dimensions of the creative field in contemporary cities.
Hence, cities, large and small, in many different parts
of the world are most assuredly being transformed in
economic terms as the new cognitive–cultural
economy deepens and widens its hold; even rural areas
are participating in this shift. A distinctive stratum of
highly paid workers with well-honed cerebral and affec-
tive human capital is also coming to the fore in large
cities as these changes occur, though this ostensibly
cheerful outcome is counterbalanced by the emergence
of a low-wage service underclass and all that this implies
in terms of the socio-spatial segmentation of urban life.
The resurgence and rising wealth of cities worldwide
over the last few decades are further reflected in signifi-
cant upgrading of selected parts of the urban environ-
ment together with expanding stocks of high-grade
amenities like museums, concert halls, libraries, rec-
reational facilities and public art. And in the context of
the intensifying race for competitive advantage and
the quest for inward flows of investment and human
capital, there is continually intensifying pressure on
cities to assert their global presence and ambitions by
means of vibrant visual images and branding campaigns
emphasizing local attractions such as lifestyle, cultural
facilities and historical heritage.
Then again, as this paper has tried to show, these
trends and the creative impulses that they promote are
subjacent to a much wider set of social and economic
forces rooted in the dynamics of cognitive–cultural capit-
alism. The primary theoretical challenge therefore is to
reveal how these dynamics undergird the spatial and
temporal logic of urbanization today. An exclusive
focus on the creativity-engendering capacities of the
city, as such, misses much of what is most crucial in this
challenge, namely, the social and economic forces that
bring specific modes of urban life into being in the first
instance. By the same token, what P ECK (2005) calls
the ‘creative cities script’ assuredly contains an unwar-
ranted dose of wishful thinking not to mention its
encouragement of top-down, leadership-style political
recuperation and regressive policy-making (see also
C AMPBELL , 2013). So even if its time has come, the
concept of creativity in economic and urban geography
needs to be approached with all due caution.
Two further observations can be appended to this
injunction. First, to the degree that creativity emerges
out of the complex physical and social infrastructures of
the city it is an epiphenomenon; and second, to the
degree that it is invoked – as is so often the case –
simply as a synonym for upgrading the building stock
and cultural facilities of the city, it is a misnomer. Still,
many striking new prospects for urban development are
now coming to the fore by reason of the powerful and
intensifying interplay between cognition, culture and
economy in the capitalism of the 21st century. A basic
condition for the full flowering of these prospects is the
reining in of the neoliberal frameworks that regulate so
much of contemporary city governance, and a dramatic
enlargement of the sphere of urban democratic order.
Acknowledgements – This paper is based on the
Regional Studies Association Annual Lecture given by
 Beyond the Creative City: Cognitive–Cultural Capitalism and the New Urbanism 575
Professor Scott at the Association of American Geographers Trentino-Alto Adige, Tuscany, Umbria, and Veneto.
Annual Conference in Los Angeles, CA, USA, April 2013. Sabel himself was greatly influenced by Italian theorists
like Arnaldo Bagnasco, Sebastiano Brusco and Giacomo
Becattini.
NOTES 2. Comedia was founded by Charles Landry in 1978.
3. Of course, a fuller treatment of these fields would also pay
1. The Third Italy coincides with the regions of attention to their interaction, and, in the end, to their
Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Marche, essential fusion.

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