Popken, Bart (2023) The Right to the Creative City. Master thesis.
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Final ReMa Thesis (S3246892).pdf Download (33MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Street art and graffiti have long been rebellious forms of resistance but with the emergence of the creative city they have been subsumed by local authorities. Creative placemaking became a dominant strategy pushed by city authorities to transform urban environments. Critical voices raised concerns about the fuzziness of such strategies and the potential exploitation of underground art practices and artists as it often remains unclear who benefits from these processes. Therefore, this study has aimed to clarify these tensions by comparing two creative cities: Groningen and Ghent. Through 22 participant-led walking interviews with urban artists and planners, participants directed attention to the importance of creativity in the redevelopment of the Oude Dokken (Old Docks) harbour neighbourhood in Ghent and the Damsterdiep-Eemskanaal industrial area in Groningen. What became clear from my study is that street art is embraced by local municipalities and deeply embedded into creative city policies. In Ghent, the Sorry Not Sorry street art festival at Oude Dokken illustrated that street art has been used as a tool for urban renewal to attract investors to the plan area. In Groningen, the Aletta Jacobs mural project clarified that street art can be an important tool to brand cultural and historical assets. Both cases appeared to be part of a longer lineage of endorsements of creative cities to attract creative classes by sanitizing neglected areas. In Ghent, this resulted in an exodus of impacted residents, making the city transform into a place exclusively for the wealthy. However, I found that there is active resistance of sidelined artists in Groningen that are negatively impacted by creative city policies. The Betonbos (Concrete Jungle) is an autonomous zone occupied by artists living together in a common space at the Damsterdiep-Eemskanaal area. The political mobilizations of such ‘artistic commons’ show that there is a culture of resistance emerging where urban creatives question neoliberal trajectories and struggle for their Right to the Creative City.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
|---|---|
| Degree programme: | Spatial Sciences (Research) |
| Supervisor: | Turhan, E. and Lamker, C.W. |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Aug 2023 11:28 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Aug 2023 11:28 |
| URI: | https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4217 |
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