CREATIVE SPACES

Both as a context and a set of dynamics for the emancipation and production of cultural expression, globalization erodes certainty. Traditional relationships among what the editors of this volume call the ‘worldly, productive sites of crossing’: complex, unfinished paths between local and global attachment (James Clifford) are turning on their head. If we can accept that creative expression involves individual acts, in creative sites which allow for new types of collaboration, then it is important to understand the forces structuring these sites. Places for expression are driven by a need for agglomeration in much new creative economy thinking (see the Second Volume of the Cultures and Globalization Series), so that design of place, contextualization and aesthetics of space become productive factors in understanding creativity and innovation. The scale of creative spaces can range from the global hierarchy of cities, their emergent rivals and the satellite communities or cracks at the margins and boundaries of systems, to the sub-city-scale hubs and particular places of connection in which global and local flows of creativity and innovation intermix and are facilitated. Cultural geography, urban planning and new thinking about the global flows of the creative economy present fundamental opportunitie