Sometimes digging into the past is necessary in order to illuminate the present. In this case, contrasting Amsterdam’s ongoing Creative City policy with a utopian precursor will hopefully shed some light on the contradictions inherent in the contemporary fusion between creativity and industry. Despite being a recent hype, the Creative City policy has shown remarkable vigour and longevity. Not unlike famous ageing rock bands, even in advancing years it has still been able to maintain a spell on groupies and adherents at local city governments around the western world.1
However, I do not intend to argue that when it was young and fresh, Richard Florida’s Creative Class Rock rang any truer, only that all along the line, a different tune is being played than the lyrics imply. In this article, I will argue that Amsterdam’s Creative City policy - far from intending to make the city’s entire population more creative - is predominantly a branding exercise, an expression of a more general shift towards entrepreneurial modes of city government; a shift that is currently being played out through an impressive urban redevelopment of Amsterdam.
The comparison between sociologist Richard Florida – author of two books on the rise and flight of the Creative Class – and a rock star is not unusual. Google ‘rock star’ with ‘Richard Florida’ and you will find dozens of descriptions of performances by the ‘rock star academic’ responsible for introducing pop sociology into regional economics. Amongst his urban policy dos and don’ts, ‘lacking rock bands’ even figures prominently among the reasons why a city could lose out on the economic development race.2 This article, however, is not about the peculiar fusion occurring between pop culture and social science, but rather about the utopian claims that are being made for the creative economy. Florida has pronounced creativity to be a ‘great equaliser’, pleading for a ‘New Deal’ of the creative economy. Likewise, Job Cohen - the mayor of Amsterdam - has pronounced Amsterdam to be a Creative City that will ‘foster the creativity of all its inhabitants’3.
In retrospect, these claims can be seen as somewhat distorted echoes of an earlier utopian project that alluded to the revolutionary rise of creativity. Let’s take a short leap back in history, back to the future as imagined by the Dutch avant-garde, and more specifically, the artist Constant Nieuwenhuys. He was one of the founders of the experimental art group Reflex, which later became part of the international CoBrA movement. Discontented with the limitations of the world of art and the ‘individualistic nature’ of painting, Constant abandoned them in 1953 to focus on a more promising exploration of metal and architectural techniques. In 1957, he became a co-founder of the Situationist International (SI) and wrote the renowned tract on Unitary Urbanism with Guy Debord. Until his resignation in 1961, he would play an essential role in the formulation of a Situationist perspective on the contemporary city and a critique of modernist urbanism.
In 1956, Constant started a visionary architectural project that would stretch out over 20 years. A utopian city that went by the name of New Babylon, it consisted of an almost endless series of scale models, sketches, etchings and collages, further elaborated by manifestos, lectures, essays and films. The project was a provocation, an explicit metaphor for the Creative City:
The modern city is dead; it has been sacrificed to the cult of utility. New Babylon is the project for a city in which people will be able to live. For to live means to be creative. New Babylon is the product of the creativity of the masses, based on the activation of the enormous creative potential which at the moment lies dormant and unexploited in the people. New Babylon assumes that as a result of automation non-creative work will disappear, that there will be a metamorphosis in morals and thinking, that a new form of society will emerge.4
Constant Nieuwenhuys envisaged a society where automation had realised the liberation of humanity from the toils of industrial work, replacing labour with a nomadic life of creative play outside of the economic domain and in disregard of any considerations of functionality. ‘Contrary to what the functionalists think, culture is situated at the point where usefulness ends’, was one of Constant’s more provocative statements5. Homo Faber, the worker of industrial society, was to be succeeded by Homo Ludens, the playful man or as Constant stated, the creative man. This was the inhabitant of New Babylon that thanks to modern architectural techniques would be able to spontaneously control and reconfigure every aspect of the urban environment. Constant took the surrealist slogan ‘poetry should be made by all’ and translated it to the urban environment, ‘tomorrow, life will reside in poetry’6. The work of Constant thus combined an aversion for modernist functionalism with an intense appreciation of the emancipatory potentials of new technology. Mechanisation would result in the arrival of a ‘mass culture of creativity’ that would revolt against the superstructure of bourgeois society, destroying it and taking the privileged position of the artist down with it. A society would be created where, in accordance with Marx’s vision of art in a communist society, ‘there are no painters but only people who engage in painting among other activities’.7 Nieuwenhuys’ work would have a direct and major influence on the rise of youth movement Provo. The Dutch counterculture proved to be an almost perfect incarnation of the Homo Ludens; through relentless provocation, happenings and playful actions, Provo would bring the authoritarianism of the Dutch 50’s down to its knees.
Amsterdam™
However, developments took an unexpected turn. Automation and consequent de-industrialisation – the outsourcing of manufacturing to developing countries – did not lead to the liberation of the Homo Ludens. Since the sixties the total amount of working hours has grown steeply. Together with the consolidation of consumption as a leisure activity, the expansion of labour time has led to an unprecedented amount of human activity being directly or indirectly incorporated into the sphere of economic transactions through a process Marx would have called ‘real subsumption’, or the extension of capitalism onto the field of lived social practice. Whereas Constant envisioned the liberation of the creative domain from the economic, we are currently witnessing – in sync with the Creative City discourse – the extension of the economic into the creative domain. This is exemplified by the transformation of the artist into a cultural entrepreneur, the marketing of (sub)cultural expressions, the subservience of culture to tourist flows and the triumph of functionalism over bildungsideal at the university.
To properly understand the arrival of the Creative City policy and what sets it aside from its utopian predecessor, we have to place it in a larger context. The Creative City is part and parcel of a greater shift impacting on the city, causing the Keynesian management of bygone eras to be replaced by an entrepreneurial approach. The rise in importance to a city’s economic well-being of economic sectors that are increasingly internationally mobile has led to a growing pressure of interurban competition. Amsterdam is pitted against urban centres such as Barcelona, London, Paris and Frankfurt in a struggle to attract economic success in the form of investments, a talented workforce and tourists flocking to the city. The ever-present threat of interurban competition is continuously invoked and inflated throughout the policy rhetoric8.
The dominance of entrepreneurial approaches to city politics is the feature of a new urban regime, labelled by scholars as the ‘Entrepreneurial City’.9 With origins in the reality of neo-liberal state withdrawal from urban blight in the United States, it has taken some time to arrive in the corporatist Netherlands and filter through the minds of policy makers. In this new urban regime, independent of any specific party in power, the public sector displays behaviour that was once characteristic of the private sector: risk assessment, innovation, marketing and profit motivated thinking. To face this new market reality – where cities are seen as products and city councils operate as business units – Amsterdam Inc. has launched the branding projects I Amsterdam and Amsterdam Creative City. After coming to power in Spring 2006, one of the first steps of the new progressive city council was to launch a ‘Top City Programme’ aimed at consolidating the city’s ‘flagging’ position in the top ten of preferred urban business climates. Unsurprisingly, the programme states that ‘creativity will be the central focus point’ of this programme, since ‘creativity is the motor that gives the city its magnetism and dynamism’10.
However when one looks beyond the rhetoric, at the practicalities of the programme, it is surprisingly modest: sponsored expat welcome centres in Schiphol Airport, coaching for creative entrepreneurs by mayor Dutch banks and MTV, ‘hospitality training’ for caterers, ‘Amsterdam Top City’ publications in KLM flights, and the annual Picnic Cross Media week, a conference aspiring to be the Dutch Davos of creative entrepreneurs.
In arguably one of the best analysis of the Creative City theory yet, geographer Jamie Peck11 asked himself why it is that Florida’s work proved to have such an impressive influence on policy makers around the world. He came to the sobering conclusion that it wasn’t because Florida’s creative city thesis was so groundbreaking – various authors had published on the knowledge economy before - but mostly because it provided a cheap, non-controversial and do-able marketing script that fitted well with the existing entrepreneurial schemes of urban economic development. Something city authorities could afford to do on the side, a low budget PR scheme complemented by a reorientation of already existing cultural funding. In Amsterdam, however, creative branding is maybe modest in it’s budget but extensive in it’s effects, it is the immaterial glazing on the cake of an impressive physical redevelopment of the city.
For Amsterdam abounds with building works; the city’s waterfronts are being redeveloped into luxurious living and working environments; in it’s southern belly a new skyline is being realised, the Zuidas, a high rise business district that is supposed to function as a portal to the world economy. In the post war popular neighbourhoods more houses are being demolished than ever before in the history of the city, and a significant part of the social housing will make way for more expensive owner occupant apartments. These urban redevelopment projects are part of the city’s economic strategy to attract a higher educated and more economically potent population, and to displace parts of Amsterdam’s lower income population towards the periphery.
At the same time, creativity in the non-utilitarian sense that Constant was pleading for, seems to be dwindling in its new entrepreneurial surrounding. At universities an entire bureaucracy has been set up that forces teachers and students into streamlined submission to quotas and efficiency concerns. In the cultural field, the artist is being converted into a cultural entrepreneur. An illustrative example is the transformation of the Artist Allowance, a state scheme that before its current transformation was just a monthly allowance, but has now been made conditional on a yearly growing profit. The new Art Plan and other Creative City initiatives attempt to infuse a entrepreneurial mindset into the artist by giving them crash courses on administration and entrepreneurial strategies. The creative city houses an increasingly professionalized and segregated creative class. It is here that Florida’s disclaimer is most in place. According to his work creativity ‘is a fundamental and intrinsic human capacity’12. ‘In the end all human beings are creative, but just a small part is so lucky to get paid for it’. For those outside the creative sector, the dream of a society where there are no creatives, but only people that engage in creativity amongst other activities, seems further away than ever.
References:
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Chtcheglov, Ivan. ‘Formulary for a New Urbanism’, trans. Ken Knabb, Interactivist Info Exchange, August 2006, http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/08/25/191240&mode=nested&tid=9
Florida, Richard. ‘The Rise of the Creative Class. Why Cities Without Gays and Rock Bands Are Losing the Economic Development Race’. Washington Monthly, 2 May 2002, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html.
________. ‘Cities and the Creative Class’, City & Community, 2.1 (2003): 3-19.
Fröbel, Folker et al. ‘The New International Division of Labour’. Social Science Information 17.1 (1978), pp. 123-142.
Gemeente Amsterdam: Amsterdam Topstad: Metropool. Economische
Zaken Amsterdam (14 July 2006), Amsterdam, http://www.amsterdam.nl/ondernemen?ActItmIdt=12153.
________. Amsterdam Creatieve Stad, Kunstenplan 2005 – 2008, (2004), Amsterdam,
http://www.amsterdam.nl/gemeente/documenten?ActItmIdt=4750
_______. Choosing Amsterdam; Brand, Concept and Organisation of the City Marketing. (2003) Amsterdam, http://www.amsterdam.nl/aspx/download.aspx?file=/contents/pages/4629/d69_citymarket_samen.pdf
Brian Holmes, ‘The Flexible Personality’ (Parts 1 & 2), posting to nettime mailing list, 5 january, 2002, http://www.nettime.org.
Hall, Tim and Phil Hubbard (eds). The Entrepreneurial City. Geographies of Politics, Regimes and Representation. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 1998.
Harvey, David. ‘From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism’. Geografiska Annaler71.1 (1989): pp. 3-17.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nichelson Smith, Oxford, Blackwell, 1991.
Marx , Karl and Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology, -46, New York, International Publishers edition, 1970.
Nieuwenhuys, Constant and Simon Vinkenoog. New Babylon : Ten Lithographs, Amsterdam: Galerie d’Eendt 1963.
Nieuwenhuys, Constant. ‘Opkomst en Ondergang van de Avant-Garde’. In: Randstad8 (1964), pp 6-35.
Peck, Jamie. ‘Struggling with the Creative Class’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29.4 (2005), 740-770.
Raban, Jonathan. Soft City, London: Hamilton, 1974.
Ratingen, Bart van. ‘Ik Zie Ik Zie Wat Jij Niet Ziet, Vijf Ontwikkelaars over de “Creatieve Stad”, haar Mogelijkheden en haar Beperkingen’, Real Estate Magazine, May 2006.
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Uitermark, Justus. ‘De omarming van subversiviteit’. Agora24.3, (2004): pp 32-35. Also available from: http://squat.net/studenten/kraken-is-terug.pdf.
1 Even though according to a recent investigation the creative economy in Amsterdam is experiencing decline instead of growth, the City Council still expresses its confidence in the strategic importance of the creative sector. “It’s beyond numbers”, according to Alderman Asscher of Economic Affairs.
‘Creatieve Industrie Slinkt’, Het Parool, 25 January, 2007, http://www.parool.nl/nieuws/2007/JAN/25/eco2.html.
2 Richard Florida, ‘The Rise of the Creative Class. Why Cities Without Gays and Rock Bands Are Losing the Economic Development Race’. Washington Monthly, 2 May, 2002, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html.
3 Speech delivered by Cohen at the Creative Capital Conference, 17-18 March 2005, Amsterdam. See: http://www.creativecapital.nl/
4 Constant Nieuwenhuys and Simon Vinkenoog, New Babylon: Ten Lithographs, Amsterdam: Galerie d’Eendt, 1963: p. 10.
5 Constant Nieuwenhuys, ‘Opkomst en Ondergang van de Avant-Garde’. In: Randstad 8 (1964), pp 6-35.
6 Not Bored, http://www.notbored.org/tomorrow.html
7 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, New York, International Publishers, 1970: p. 109.
8 To illustrate my point, even the discussion on whether to discontinue a prohibition of gas heaters on the terraces of Amsterdam cafés was recently framed in these terms: “it’s a serious disadvantage in comparison with cities like Berlin and Paris”, according to the leader of the local social democrat party. The opinion of the city’s population itself was not even mentioned. See: ‘Kachels op Terras gaan aan’, Het Parool, 23 January 2007,
http://www.parool.nl/nieuws/2007/JAN/23/p2.html.
9 David Harvey, ‘From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism’. Geografiska Annaler71.1 (1989): pp. 3-17.
Tim Hall and Phil Hubbard (eds) The Entrepreneurial City. Geographies of Politics, Regimes and Representation. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 1998.
10 Gemeente Amsterdam, Amsterdam Topstad: Metropool, Economische Zaken Amsterdam (14 July 2006), Amsterdam, http://www.amsterdam.nl/ondernemen?ActItmIdt=12153.
11 Jamie Peck, ‘Struggling with the Creative Class’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29.4 (2005), pp 740-770.
12 Richard Florida, ‘Cities and the Creative Class’, City & Community, 2.1 (2003): 8