The Arts and Urban Development

Dear Colleagues,

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, a number of models for considering the significance of the arts for urban experience were elaborated and expanded, including Richard Florida’s idea of the “creative city”, as well as models of the notions of “creative industries”, which generate urban economic growth and measure the economic impact that arts institutions have on urban environments. While the notions of the contribution of the arts to metropolitan economies is not entirely new, a focus on placemaking and fostering artistic cultures in cities has resulted in the manifestation of these ideas, spreading them to a wide variety of urban forms around the world.

The goal of this Special Issue is to account for the impacts of these new developments, to consider which strategies for urban planning and development have emerged that bring the arts into the picture, and to think about how artists (visual, performing or otherwise) contribute to urban culture. New concepts such as “culture-led regeneration” are on the rise, but artists have been engaging the city in so many ways; it is important to account for both top-down, government- and developer-led initiatives, as well as the bottom-up initiatives of artists on the ground. This Special Issue welcomes investigations of the arts and urban development from a variety of fields and specializations, including those working in urban studies, considering manifestations of the visual and performing arts and affiliated institutions in the contemporary sense. How can we expand our comprehension of the way that the urban and artistic cultures intersect and the impacts that they might have on one another? As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, there is a need to assess the preservation of culture in the urban frame, but there is also much that artists and artist/activists can do to shape the cities of the future. This Special Issue aims to consider these dynamics and the multifarious outcomes that have and will emerge.

Prof. Dr. John Zarobell
Guest Editor

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• urban arts
• contemporary art
• urban development
• creative city
• creative industries
• culture-led regeneration
• intangible cultural heritage