Performing the Creative-Economy Script: Contradicting Urban Rationalities at Work

Dzudzek I. and Lindner P. Performing the creative-economy script: contradicting urban rationalities at work, Regional Studies. The 'creative economy' as a guideline for development strategies has long become performative and generated its own urban realities. The paper first critically engages with policy mobility approaches as an explanatory framework for this guideline's global reach. It then puts forward the concepts of 'script', 'articulation' and 'performance' as an alternative perspective to understand better how this new paradigm inscribes itself into existing and well-established fields of urban politics. The case study on the city of Frankfurt/Main investigates the articulations of the creative-economy script with specific rationalities of urban governance. It traces the way by which a hegemonic understanding has been established that nevertheless is characterized by friction and ruptures that offer opportunities for a counter-hegemonic politics of differentiation.