Consuming culture-led regeneration: the rise and fall of the democratic urban experience

ABSTRACT

The role of culture in the reinvention of the post-industrial city has long fascinated urban scholars. Ronan Paddison made contributions to this debate at a time when culture had become something of a strategic orthodoxy. This paper reflects upon the emergence of the so-called creative city and its relationship to broader processes of commodification. It contends that this creativity discourse embellished a partial version of the city as a symbolic (and latterly digital) entity and, in this context, reflects upon Paddison’s broader contribution to our understanding of the city as a multifaceted arena in which social injustice so often thrives.

KEYWORDS:

• Culture
• creativity
• consumption
• experience

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributor

Steven Miles is a sociologist and author of The Experience Society: Consumer Capitalism Rebooted (Pluto; 2021). Other key publications include, Retail and the Artifice of Social Change (Routledge; 2018); Consumerism as a Way of Life (Sage; 1998), Youth Lifestyles in a Changing World (OUP; 2000) and Spaces for Consumption: Pleasure and Placelessness in the Post-Industrial City (Sage; 2010). He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Consumer Culture. Steven is Head of the Postgraduate Arts and Humanities Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University.