Can the ‘creative city’ be sustainable? Lessons from the Sant Martí district (Barcelona)

ABSTRACT

The urban transformations of many contemporary cities have been articulated around the concepts of ‘culture-led regeneration’ and ‘creative city’. However, the implemented policies often fall far short of the initial expectations. In fact, they have been linked to negative effects such as gentrification, polarisation of the labour market, casualization of the cultural sector and the commoditization of the creative process and the trivialisation of heritage assets. Given this reality, it is appropriate to inquire whether culture and creativity can become the driving forces behind a sustainable regeneration – i.e. materially, economically, socioculturally and environmentally viable in the long term – without leading to such undesired outcomes. The paper addresses this issue through the examination of Sant Martí –Barcelona’s historic industrial cluster. This district has undergone a culture-led regeneration that in the last two decades has been closely tied to the principles of the ‘creative city’. Given that Sant Martí has curbed some of the negative effects commonly attributed to this approach, I analyse what variables have enabled this particularity and connect them with what I have called BFSs (Basic Factors of Sustainability). I establish that certain variables can bring the ‘creative city’ closer to the ‘sustainable city’.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative city
• urban regeneration
• culture-led policies
• sustainable urban planning
• Barcelona 22@

Acknowledgments

The author heartily thanks the two anonymous reviewers who provided very helpful comments on a prior version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. For more information on this topic, see previous work of the author (not to be cited in this anonymous version of the paper).

2. We used the historic perimeter of the Sant Martí municipality rather than the current administrative district delimitation based on the sense of belonging expressed by local population and reflected in a number of publications (Ajuntament de Barcelona n.d.; Nadal and Tafunell 2003; Tatjer and Vilanova 2004; Serchs 2005).

3. The Art Factories project has not been spared criticism: it could not prevent the replacement of part of the artistic fabric that was expelled following the 22@ requalifications, it has entailed the bureaucratization of the processes for gaining access to spaces for artistic creation, and it is held liable for an artistic gentrification, as it excludes amateur artists (Paül i Agustí 2014a, 2014b). At the same time, a notable number of artists still valued the possibility this program offered to move back to workshops in Sant Martí (Colombo and Badia 2018; Consell de Cultura de Barcelona 2018).

4. For instance, the Art Factory ‘La Escocesa’ is managed by an association of artists that where amongst the first ones to rent the factory when it stopped its productive activity in the 80s, and ‘La Nau Ivanow’ by a team of local cultural agents previously engaged in community-led cultural dynamization.

Additional information

Funding

This study was carried out as part of a project entitled: ‘Patrimonio inmaterial y museos ante los retos de la sostenibilidad cultural’ (PID2021–123063NB-I00), which was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the FEDER Program. This work was also supported by Fundación Banco Santander under the grant Ajuts predoctorals Santander-UdL, and by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of the Spanish Government & European Union, under project RTI2018-094142-B-C21.

Notes on contributors

Èlia Casals-Alsina

Èlia Casals-Alsina is a PhD candidate at University of Lleida with a background as a cultural manager focused on performative arts; she is currently researching on culture-led policies developed in former industrial clusters in European urban contexts. She graduated in Musical Performance at ESMuC (Barcelona) and obtained a degree in Humanities and a master’s degree in Cultural Management at the UOC, in all three cases with honours in the final thesis. In 2020 she began her PhD studies at the UdL as part of the ‘Territory, Heritage and Culture’ program under the direction of Dr. Paül i Agustí and with a Santander-UdL pre-doctoral scholarship. She teaches the subject ‘Cultural and city tourism’ at this university. She has done study stays and internships in Germany and Italy, both funded, and has professional experience in the field of music performance, teaching and cultural management.