Planning for the cultural economy: lessons from Ontario, Canada

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how policymakers interpret and deploy cultural economy approaches within municipal economic development strategies and cultural plans. Focusing on the 33 largest municipalities in Ontario, Canada, we conduct a keyword analysis of 63 municipal planning documents, supplemented with key informant interviews with economic development and cultural planning staff. Our analysis reveals that the use of cultural economy approaches in economic development and cultural plans varies depending upon city size, municipal governance structure and municipal organizational structure. However, despite the widespread use of cultural economy ideas in planning documents, we conclude that its uptake in municipal policymaking fails to reflect its professional and scholarly popularity.

KEYWORDS:

• Canada
• creative cities
• cultural planning
• local economic development
• municipal government policy

Introduction

Over the past two decades, there has been considerable attention and debate in scholarly, professional and popular city building discourse over the role of the cultural economy. While interest in amenity and cultural planning has long been part of city building conversations, the publication of Charles Landry’s The Creative City (Landry, 2000) and Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class (Florida, 2002) have reinvigorated popular and scholarly interest in cultural economy strategies as potential tools for economic development. Twenty years after the publication of Florida’s popular and controversial book, the ideas associated with the creative class and creative cities remain highly influential. However, these ideas must be understood in the context of a much richer and varied literature where there remains considerable disagreement on terms, definitions and conceptualizations of the cultural (or creative) economy, each aligned with different types of policy and planning interventions (Scott, 2006; Prince, 2012; Pratt & Hutton, 2013; Grodach, 2013, 2017). Evidence suggests that global cities regularly pursue cultural economy strategies to advance their economic development objectives (Grodach, 2013, 2017; Hatuka et al., 2018; Li, 2020). But, to what extent have these popular concepts and other related ideas become embedded in the practice of economic development and cultural planning at the local level in jurisdictions beyond large global centres?

In this paper, we address this question directly by shedding light on the types of cultural economy approaches invoked in local economic development strategies and cultural plans. We seek to improve our understanding of what factors influence how the uptake of cultural economy approaches varies from city to city and if (and how) cultural economy ideas have become widespread and deeply embedded in the plans of jurisdictions outside of major metropoles and global cities. Using the Province of Ontario (Canada) as our study area, we ask: What cultural economy approaches are used in municipal economic development strategies and cultural plans? And, does the size of a municipality, its governance structure or its organizational structure influence the types of cultural economy strategies pursued by these jurisdictions?

To address these research questions, our paper proceeds as follows. We begin by framing our study within the existing literature on the cultural economy, highlighting the disagreement over definitions and terminology, as well as remarking on the controversy surrounding these ideas and their use in economic development and cultural planning. We also introduce various analytical approaches to studying planning and policymaking in this realm. We then adapt and use a typology of cultural economy models and policies developed by Grodach (2013) to generate a keyword analysis of municipal cultural plans and economic development strategies. Next, we use this keyword analysis to examine large and mid-sized municipalities in the Province of Ontario, Canada, revealing the presence and prevalence of keywords reflecting a range of cultural economy approaches. We supplement this keyword analysis with interviews with municipal economic development and cultural planning staff. Our findings reveal that policymakers have adopted some cultural economy strategies in their plans and that the uptake of these strategies is influenced by municipal characteristics. We also find that policymakers tend to mix-and-match language reflecting multiple cultural economy approaches, without particular reverence for the underlying theories or ideas associated with them. Ultimately, we conclude that municipal economic development and cultural planning remain dominated by traditional economic development approaches, suggesting that the uptake of cultural economy models in practice fails to reflect the popularity of these concepts within city building discourse.

Analytical and policy approaches to planning for the cultural economy

As noted at the outset of this paper, the publication of Florida’s (2002) book on the creative class sparked a renewed interest in how localities promote, plan for and support cultural activity. Certainly, the decades-long popularity of creative cities and creative class ideas within city building discourse has generated a substantial body of academic research. Yet, this literature offers only a partial perspective on the role of cultural or creative activity in local economies. Indeed, there is an extensive, theoretically rich, and diverse body of scholarship that has carefully examined the dimensions, dynamics and planning of creative and cultural activities in a range of local contexts. This work invokes a variety of related – and sometimes overlapping – terms. While not an exhaustive list, authors refer to the creative class (Florida, 2002), creative cities (Landry, 2000; Pratt, 2010; Hatuka et al., 2018; Goldberg-Miller, 2019), cultural industries (Hesmondhalgh & Pratt, 2005; Hesmondhalgh, 2019), creative placemaking (Redaelli, 2016; Zitcer, 2020), cultural planning (Kovacs, 2011), cultural economy planning (Grodach, 2013); the creative economy (Pratt & Hutton, 2013), and the cultural creative economy (Li, 2020). A full review of these ideas and the critiques thereof is beyond the scope of this paper. Common amongst the observations of these various scholars, however, is that cultural and creative activities have taken on greater prominence in local economies and local jurisdictions have taken greater interest in supporting these activities through planning and policy. In this paper, we use the term cultural economy as an umbrella term to describe the various theoretical, policy and planning approaches invoked in the literature.

Scholars have been critical of how many of these cultural economy ideas have been applied to local economic development and cultural planning, policy and practice (Pratt, 2011; Grodach, 2017), with the strongest rebukes often directed towards the application of Florida’s (2002) concept of the creative class and the connection between amenity-based urban development strategies, talent attraction and economic growth (Peck, 2005; Wilson & Keil, 2008). And, unsurprisingly – given the substantial level of disagreement over terms and definitions – the interpretation of these theoretical ideas by policymakers and planners is not always straightforward (Prince, 2012). Relatively absent from this scholarship, however, are nuanced investigations of how local governments and municipal staff actually develop and use cultural economy ideas in economic development and cultural planning (Grodach, 2013, 2017; Cruickshank, 2018; Kovacs & Biggar, 2018). This is perhaps surprising given both the degree to which these strategies are held aloft by practitioners, politicians and other public figures as tools for local economic development and the aforementioned volume of scholarly debate.

Nevertheless, there exists a small, but growing body of scholarship that examines cultural economy models and policymaking, particularly in the context of global cities, as well as single or paired case studies of local policymaking experiences (cf. Grodach, 2013; Redaelli, 2015; Goldberg-Miller, 2019). Less common are analyses of smaller municipalities and comparative analyses of the wider adoption and use of cultural economy models and policymaking across (dis)similar jurisdictions (McGranahan & Wojan, 2007; Lewis & Donald, 2010; Evans, 2016; Redaelli, 2016). Of particular note to this study, however, is the body of work that examines cultural economy models and policymaking in Canada (Sands & Reese, 2008; Polèse, 2012; Wolfe & Gertler, 2016). But here too there are fewer studies that examine how planning for the cultural economy and economic development intersect (Goldberg-Miller, 2015, 2018; Kovacs & Biggar, 2018).

This scholarly debate and discourse on the cultural economy has provided policymakers with a wide array of models, strategies and language to draw upon when developing economic development and cultural plans. To this end, Grodach (2013) developed a typology of cultural economy models and policies that identifies five scholarly and professional approaches to the cultural economy: the conventional model, the creative city model, the cultural industries model, the cultural occupations model and the cultural planning model. Each of these approaches emphasizes different elements of the cultural economy and invokes different policy interventions. For example, creative cities policies use culture as a vehicle to attract and retain talent (Landry, 2000; Clark et al., 2002; Florida, 2002). Cultural industries policies recognize the economic contribution of activities such as film, television and music, viewing these activities as targets of inward investment, tax revenue and job creation that contribute to urban economies (Hesmondhalgh & Pratt, 2005; Scott, 2006; Pratt, 2010; Martin & Grodach, 2020). Approaches emphasizing cultural occupations focus on the role of artists and the provision of space and services to them (Markusen & Schrock, 2006; Currid, 2007; Ryberg et al., 2012; McLean, 2014). Cultural planning models focus on government led processes that aim to integrate and leverage community cultural resources for economic and community development (Pratt, 2010; Canadian Urban Institute, 2011; Borén & Young, 2013). Finally, there remain approaches that rest on conventional or more traditional economic development strategies and prioritize objectives like employment growth, industry and investment attraction, marketing and branding, small business services and tourism (Malizia, 1994; Leigh & Blakely, 2017).

Grodach’s typology of cultural economy models offers a strong framework for examining existing economic development and cultural plans. It can help reveal the extent to which cultural economy approaches have made their way into the toolboxes of local policymakers. It is well-suited to our analysis since the typology explicitly ties urban policy approaches to particular theoretical concepts related to the cultural economy. Grodach (2013) also uses this typology to compare urban policy approaches in two large North American cities, Toronto and Austin, demonstrating that it is well-suited to jurisdictional comparisons and, moreover, that it is applicable to the Canadian context in which our own study is situated. By applying Grodach’s typology of cultural economy models to municipal economic development strategies and cultural plans in Ontario, we build upon recent province-wide studies of urban and economic development policies (Arku, 2014, 2015; Jamal, 2018), continue to extend the scholarly conversation beyond large global centres to smaller municipalities and systematically assess municipal policymaking within a shared policy environment.

The Province of Ontario has long encouraged municipal cultural planning through initiatives such as the Municipal Cultural Planning Project and the Community Cultural Prosperity Fund (Carrie Brooks-Joiner & Associates & Victoria Stasiuk Associates, 2005; see also Kovacs, 2011; Government of Ontario, n.d.), and through commissioning reports such as Ontario in the Creative Age (Martin & Florida, 2009). These initiatives have been followed by other provincial efforts, including the release of the Ontario Culture Strategy (Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, 2016), frameworks to guide the growth of Ontario’s entertainment and creative clusters (Ministry of Tourism and Culture, 2010) and programs intended to encourage municipalities to develop their own comprehensive cultural planning documents (Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, 2016). Because of this provincial level support for municipal cultural policies, there has been a substantial increase in the number of Ontario municipalities with standalone cultural plans over the past two decades and the province has been viewed as a leader in cultural plan development (Kovacs, 2011; Municipal Cultural Planning Inc., 2011). For example, in 2005, only 34 municipalities in Ontario reported having plans that incorporated aspects of local cultural development (such as tourism strategies, libraries or cultural industries). Only eight of these municipalities reported having comprehensive standalone cultural plans, with several reporting that cultural plans were in development (Carrie Brooks-Joiner & Associates & Victoria Stasiuk Associates, 2005). By 2016, just over a decade later, 69 municipalities, encompassing nearly three quarters of Ontario’s population, had developed standalone cultural plans or had engaged in cultural mapping initiatives (Communications MDR, 2016). The relatively widespread adoption of cultural planning strategies in Ontario municipalities therefore presents a rich case study within which to examine the prevalence of cultural economy approaches in local planning.

Research design and data

Our study focuses on how policymakers interpret and deploy cultural economy models in municipal economic development and cultural planning. We opted for a case study of municipalities in Ontario (Canada’s most populous province) for at least two reasons. First, the aforementioned provincial policy support for cultural planning provides a compelling setting for exploring the uptake of cultural economy approaches in municipal economic development strategies and cultural plans. Second, and relatedly, since mid-sized and large municipalities in Ontario normally have standalone economic development and/or cultural plans, it presents an opportunity to provide a systematic assessment of the extent to which cultural economy ideas have been adopted beyond large global centres. To capture municipalities with these standalone strategic documents, we limited our case study to jurisdictions with a population of at least 75,000, resulting in a final study size of 33 municipalities (Table 1).

Table 1. Characteristics of Municipalities (n = 33).

Municipality	Population (2016)	Governance Structure	Location of Cultural Services
Toronto	2,731,571	Single-tier	Development Services
Ottawa	934,243	Single-tier	Community Services
Mississauga	721,599	Lower-tier	Community Services
Brampton	593,638	Lower-tier	Development Services
Hamilton	536,917	Single-tier	Development Services
London	383,822	Single-tier	Community Services
Markham	328,966	Lower-tier	Development Services
Vaughan	306,233	Lower-tier	Development Services
Kitchener	233,222	Lower-tier	Development Services
Windsor	217,188	Single-tier	Community Services
Richmond Hill	195,022	Lower-tier	Community Services
Oakville	193,832	Lower-tier	Community Services
Burlington	183,314	Lower-tier	Development Services
Greater Sudbury	161,531	Single-tier	Development Services
Oshawa	159,458	Lower-tier	Community Services
Barrie	141,434	Single-tier	Development Services
St. Catharines	133,113	Lower-tier	Community Services
Guelph	131,794	Single-tier	Community Services
Cambridge	129,920	Lower-tier	Community Services
Whitby	128,377	Lower-tier	Community Services
Kingston	123,798	Single-tier	Community Services
Ajax	119,677	Lower-tier	Community Services
Milton	110,128	Lower-tier	Community Services
Thunder Bay	107,909	Single-tier	Community Services
Waterloo	104,986	Lower-tier	Development Services
Chatham-Kent	101,647	Single-tier	Community Services
Brantford	97,496	Single-tier	Development Services
Clarington	92,013	Lower-tier	Community Services
Pickering	91,771	Lower-tier	Community Services
Niagara Falls	88,071	Lower-tier	Community Services
New Market	84,224	Lower-tier	Community Services
Peterborough	81,032	Single-tier	Community Services
Kawartha Lakes	75,423	Single-tier	Community Services

Source: Statistics Canada; Authors.

For each of the 33 municipalities included in our study, we assembled data to allow us to evaluate how population size, municipal governance structure and the organizational location of cultural planning services influence the adoption of cultural economy language and strategies. We grouped the 33 municipalities into those with populations of 150,000 or fewer persons (n = 18) and those with more than 150,000 persons (n = 15). We also divided the municipalities according to their governance and organizational structures. In Ontario, a municipality is governed as either a single-tier, upper-tier or lower-tier entity. Single-tier municipalities are wholly responsible for their own governance responsibilities, as set out in the province’s Municipal Act (e.g. economic development, infrastructure, planning and growth management) (Municipal Act, 2001). Upper-tier municipalities contain two or more lower-tier municipalities and share governance responsibilities; however, the division of responsibilities between the upper- and lower-tier is not universally defined in the Act and is therefore inconsistent among Ontario’s upper- and lower-tier municipalities. For the purposes of our study, we focused only on single-tier municipalities (n = 14) and lower-tier municipalities (n = 19); cultural planning or economic development responsibilities held by upper-tier municipalities are assumed to apply to all lower-tier municipalities within their jurisdictions. We also sought to determine whether cultural planning staff within the selected municipalities are affiliated with development services (n = 11) or with community services (n = 22), hypothesizing that the working environment of cultural planning staff may influence how they sample from cultural economy discourse, and whether they may influence the work of their colleagues employed in other portfolios, like economic development. While there is variation in terms of the internal organizational structure of Ontario’s municipal governments, development services – as the name suggests – includes municipal government departments related to business support, planning, land use and economic development. Community services often include services related to parks and recreation, neighbourhood support and maintenance, by-law enforcement and other services directed towards citizens. To determine where cultural planning staff are located within government offices, we consulted municipal government websites, organizational charts and staff directories; where information was not publicly available, we contacted municipal staff directly by email or phone. All information was current as of October 2018.

To assess what types of cultural economy approaches municipal policymakers in Ontario use in their economic development and cultural plans, we pursued a keyword analysis of planning documents, supplemented with semi-structured interviews with municipal staff. The keyword analysis allowed us to systematically assess the frequency and types of cultural economy language prevalent in current municipal strategic documents as a means of assessing the prevalence of different cultural economy planning approaches. Examining the language of local plans and strategies is well-accepted as a way to assess how cities frame and approach various aspects of urban planning and policy, including economic development, transportation, land use, equity and climate change (Currid-Halkett & Stolarick, 2011; Filion & Kramer, 2011; Ashley et al., 2021; Angelo et al., 2022). Within our study, 32 of the 33 municipalities have cultural plans and 31 have economic development plans, resulting in 63 municipal documents that were used in our analysis. For each municipality, we used the most recent economic development strategy and cultural plan. In the small number of cases where municipal level strategies or plans were not available, other documents were reviewed. For example, some lower-tier municipalities rely on regional economic development plans developed by upper-tier municipalities. All of the documents that we examined were created during the fifteen-year period between 2003 and 2018.

To conduct our analysis, we developed a list of 125 keywords frequently used in the scholarly and policy literature on the cultural economy. Initial keyword lists were generated for each of the five original categories associated with Grodach’s (2013) typology: creative cities; cultural industries; cultural occupations; cultural planning; traditional (or conventional) economic development. To do so, we drew upon the academic literature, as well as the authors’ collective knowledge and related professional experience. Generating keywords and assigning them to categories was an iterative process; one author initially generated and classified the list of keywords and a second author reviewed and identified where there was disagreement on the list of terms and/or their classification. All discrepancies were discussed before arriving at a final categorization. Words that were ambiguous or did not easily fit into one category were placed in the ‘other’ category. Table 2 provides example keywords associated with each category.

Table 2. Cultural economy typology and sample keywords.

Category	Sample keywords
Traditional economic development	Infrastructure, marketing, tourism
Creative city	Quality of life, creative class, amenities, creative city(ies)
Cultural industries	Cultural industries, creative industries, film, digital media
Cultural occupations	Artists, performers, cultural workers, musicians
Cultural planning	Cultural planning, capacity building, cultural mapping
Other	Cultural sustainability, cultural development, cultural practices

Source: Authors’ elaboration of Grodach’s (2013).

With this extensive list of keywords in hand, we reviewed each of the 31 municipal economic development strategies and 32 cultural plans to identify the section(s) that contained the strategic actions, objectives or goals of the plan. We focused on these sections of the documents since they reflect the practical steps, policies and programs that a municipality intends to pursue. We performed a keyword search and recorded the frequency of each keyword present in the goal and action-oriented sections of the municipal documents. While conducting the analysis, we took into consideration the context within which the keywords were being used to ensure their appropriate inclusion in the study.

In our analysis, we focus on both the prevalence and distribution of cultural economy planning keywords in economic development and cultural plans across the six categories of cultural economy models. Additionally, we seek to understand if there are variations according to size of the municipality, its governance structure or its organizational structure. In order to evaluate whether the differences we observe are significant, we conducted chi square tests. All differences are statistically significant (p = 0.01), except where noted otherwise. Moreover, given that we were interested in assessing differences according to the size of municipality, we were cognizant that the City of Toronto is considerably larger than the other than the other municipalities in our study (see Table 1 above) and is often considered a global city (Bunce et al., 2020). Thus, we conducted our analysis both including and excluding the City of Toronto. We observed no differences in the overall trends and results; for this reason, we present our results including the City of Toronto.

Finally, and to further contextualize the findings from our keyword analysis, we conducted nine key informant interviews with economic development and cultural planning staff from our case study municipalities. We recruited our interviewees to reflect expertise and responsibilities in either or both economic development and cultural planning, along with the intent of having coverage from municipalities reflecting the dimensions of our analysis (e.g. population size, governance structure, location of cultural planning) to capture a breadth of perspectives. The interviews were open-ended and explored the attitudes and practices related to the creation and implementation of municipal economic development and cultural plans. We intended for the interviews to shed light on how policy ideas are used in municipal strategic documents. We also explored how practitioners perceive their own roles within economic development or cultural planning and the contributions of economic development and cultural planning to their jurisdictions. Finally, we explored the influence of governance and organizational structures on the development and implementation of municipal economic development and cultural plans, as well as on the working relationships between practitioners and between different municipal service divisions. We integrate the insights provided by our interviewees to elaborate upon the findings from our keyword analysis. In accordance with our ethics protocol, quotations drawn from our key informant interviews have been anonymized to remove any information that may identify particular municipalities or individuals.

Results

We designed our analysis to explore the types of cultural economy approaches used in municipal economic development strategies and cultural plans, as well as the extent of their use, as measured by the presence and prevalence of keywords. Given that cultural plans, by virtue of their purpose, are more directly tied to these ideas, we hypothesized that cultural plans would contain both more occurrences of keywords and a greater proportion of possible keywords overall compared to economic development plans. Our results largely validate our hypothesis. Almost all of the 125 keywords appear at least once in our scan of the documents, with 112 (89.6%) appearing at least once in the cultural plans and 83 (66.4%) appearing at least once in the economic development strategies. Table 3 reveals that while economic development and cultural plans both engage with cultural economy ideas, such language and concepts are more prevalent in cultural plans. Keyword occurrence is more than twice as high in cultural plans (4,910) compared to economic development strategies (1,885). Moreover, the proportions of keywords in each category that occur in each set of documents vary. Perhaps not unexpectedly, more than 60% of the keywords found in economic development policies reflect the traditional economic development category, followed by roughly similar proportions of keywords in the categories for cultural occupations (11.6%), cultural industries (9.5%) and cultural planning (9.2%). Somewhat surprisingly, within cultural plans, keywords associated with traditional economic development represent almost one-third (31.7%) of all keywords present, followed by cultural planning (23.1%). Finally, although keywords associated with creative cities appear in both sets of documents, they account for a higher proportion of keywords used in cultural plans (12.9%) than in economic development plans (6.2%).

Table 3. Keywords by category and document type.

Category	Economic development # (%)	Cultural planning # (%)
Traditional economic development	1,140 (60.5)	1,557 (31.7)
Creative city	116 (6.2)	631 (12.9)
Cultural industries	179 (9.5)	370 (7.4)
Cultural occupations	219 (11.6)	461 (9.4)
Cultural planning	173 (9.2)	1,136 (23.1)
Other	58 (3.1)	755 (15.4)
Total	1,885 (100)	4,910 (100)

Source: Authors’ calculations. Note numbers may not add due to rounding.

The extensive presence of cultural economy keywords in both sets of municipal documents may be due, in part, to the popularity of cultural economy – especially creative cities – ideas amongst planners and other municipal practitioners. As Peck (2005) argues, the publication of Florida’s (2002) book and the subsequent attention it received led to jurisdictions quickly adopting these ideas. The widespread use of cultural economy language apparent in our analysis provides some empirical evidence that this might be the case. However, our interviews cast additional light on practitioners’ views on the process of creating economic development strategies and cultural plans. Interviewees acknowledged that these plans played several roles, reflecting economic and cultural logics, noting the importance – especially in cultural plans – of building community capacity. When asked about the purpose of cultural plans, municipal cultural planning practitioners spoke about contributions to place and quality of life both as place making strategy and as means to attract and retain businesses and workers, echoing creative cities ideas in the academic and policy literature. Certainly, our interviewees indicated familiarity with Florida’s (2002) notion of the creative class, noting its influence in their economic development strategies and cultural plans. However, interviewees were also quick to note that plans were also shaped through working directly with communities and longstanding cultural planning traditions and practices. Overall, the municipal plans examined invoke a wide range of cultural economy approaches and incorporate strategies that support both traditional economic development and cultural economy initiatives within their respective communities.

Size of municipality

Next, we examined the influence of the population size of a municipality. Overall, we anticipated that larger municipalities would be more likely to incorporate cultural economy approaches into their economic development and cultural plans due to the likelihood that they have more capacity, resources and – potentially – greater employment related to cultural activity. Indeed, Table 4 reveals some notable differences between smaller municipalities, with populations between 75,000 and 150,000, and larger municipalities, with populations greater than 150,000. We found that the proportion of keywords associated with traditional economic development is higher in smaller municipalities (36.4%) compared to those with larger populations (25.2%). Conversely, the proportion of keywords associated with cultural planning and cultural industries are lower in smaller municipalities (21.1% and 5.5%, respectively) compared to larger municipalities (26.0% and 10.3% respectively). Beyond this, there are few other notable differences in the distribution of keywords in cultural plans between larger and smaller municipalities.

Table 4. Keyword occurrence by municipal population size and document type.

	Cultural Plans		Economic Development Strategies
Category	Population, 75,000 to 150,000 # (%)	Population, Greater than 150,000 # (%)	Population, 75,000 to 150,000 # (%)	Population, Greater than 150,000 # (%)
Trad. economic development	1,038 (36.4)	519 (25.2)	625 (65.9)	515 (55.0)
Creative city	372 (13.1)	259 (12.6)	44 (4.6)	72 (7.7)
Cultural industries	158 (5.5)	212 (10.3)	62 (6.5)	117 (12.5)
Cultural occupations	254 (8.9)	207 (10.0)	105 (11.1)	114 (12.2)
Cultural planning	600 (21.1)	536 (26.0)	85 (9.0)	88 (9.4)
Other	427 (15.0)	328 (15.9)	28 (2.9)	30 (3.2)
Total	2,849 (100.0)	2,061 (100.0)	949 (100.0)	936 (100.0)

Source: Authors’ calculations. Note numbers may not add due to rounding.

Similar differences emerged when we examined municipal economic development plans. While traditional economic development language dominates these documents, with municipalities of all sizes drawing heavily from these keywords in their planning documents, larger municipalities incorporate a lower proportion of these keywords (55.0%) compared to smaller municipalities (65.9%). The proportion of keywords associated with the cultural industries categories is higher in larger municipalities (12.5%) compared to smaller municipalities (6.5%). This is also true for the creative city category, where small municipalities have a lower proportion of keywords associated with this category (4.6%) compared to larger ones (7.7%),

Taken together, these observations suggest that larger municipalities draw more upon a range of cultural economy approaches, whereas smaller municipalities appear more prone to rely on conventional approaches to economic development. This difference may result from smaller municipal administrations having limited financial capacity with which to pursue less traditional means of local economic development, as well as having limited access to knowledge resources – issues well-known to limit local policymakers, including in Ontario (Arku, 2015). In the case of cultural industries approaches appearing to be more prevalent in larger municipalities, this may reflect the nature of the cultural industries themselves. Cultural industries are known to locate and be more developed in larger jurisdictions (Hesmondhalgh, 2019). This is often attributed to sector-specific dynamics related to agglomeration and networks, including the ability of a location to generate ‘buzz’ (Storper & Venables, 2004), or allow for the face-to-face contact essential to culture-related activities.

Municipal governance structure

We also examined how the governance structure of a municipality influences approaches to the cultural economy in municipal economic development and cultural plans. Specifically, we compared the distribution of keywords between documents from single-tier municipalities and those from lower-tier municipalities (Table 5). We hypothesized that the more complex governance structure of lower-tier municipalities (having both local and upper-tier administrations) makes available more resources with which to pursue cultural economy strategies than single-tier municipalities. We therefore expected to find more cultural economy keywords in economic development and cultural plans from lower-tier municipalities than those from single-tier municipalities.

Table 5. Keyword occurrence by governance structure and document type.

	Cultural Plans		Economic Development Plans
Category	Single-tier municipalities # (%)	Lower-tier municipalities # (%)	Single-tier municipalities # (%)	Lower-tier municipalities # (%)
Trad. economic development	875 (33.3)	682 (29.9)	654 (61.6)	486 (59.0)
Creative city	385 (14.7)	246 (10.8)	49 (4.6)	67 (8.1)
Cultural industries	193 (7.3)	177 (7.8)	108 (10.2)	71 (8.6)
Cultural occupations	208 (7.9)	253 (11.1)	124 (11.7)	95 (11.5)
Cultural planning	578 (22.0)	558 (24.4)	107 (10.1)	66 (8.0)
Other	389 (14.8)	366 (16.0)	19 (1.8)	39 (4.7)
Total	2,628 (100.0)	2,282 (100.0)	1,061 (100.0)	824 (100.0)

Source: Authors’ calculations. Note numbers may not add due to rounding.

Our keyword analysis of cultural plans reveals very little difference between single-tier (33.3%) and lower-tier (29.9%) municipalities in terms of their use of traditional economic development vocabulary. The use of language associated with cultural occupations approaches is slightly higher in lower-tier municipalities (11.1%) compared to single-tier municipalities (7.9%). Conversely, the use of language associated with creative cities is slightly higher in single-tier municipalities (14.7%) compared to lower-tier municipalities (10.8%). Relatedly, our examination of economic development strategies yielded similar observations. There is very little difference between single-tier (61.6%) and lower-tier (59.0%) municipalities in terms of their use of traditional economic development vocabulary. However, the use of language associated with creative cities is slightly higher in lower-tier municipalities (8.1%) compared to single-tier municipalities (4.6%).

While these differences are statistically significant, the differentials are quite small, suggesting that, ultimately, there may be no practical differences between single-tier and lower-tier municipalities in how they approach the cultural economy in economic development and cultural plans. Our interviews with municipal staff confirmed this observation. Our interviewees were hard-pressed to identify how belonging to a single-tier or lower-tier municipality made any material difference to the content of their economic development and cultural plans. However, our interviewees did suggest that more important was the organizational structure and location of culture planning and services within the municipality, to which we now turn.

Location of cultural planning services

Finally, we investigated whether the organizational structure of a municipality influences engagement with the cultural economy in municipal economic development and cultural plans. Specifically, we examined whether the location of cultural planning services within municipalities makes a difference to the extent to which cultural economy approaches were invoked. Here, we anticipated that where cultural planning services are closely aligned with – or embedded in – development services, we would observe higher uptake of cultural economy approaches in both economic development and cultural plans. On this question our analysis yielded some interesting findings (Table 6). Our analysis reveals little difference in the presence of traditional economic development keywords between cultural plans developed in community services (31.5%) and those prepared within development services (32.5%). However, we did find that cultural plans emerging from development services have higher proportions of keywords related to cultural industries (11.2%) and cultural occupations (11.6%) compared to those plans originating from community services, where keywords associated with those approaches account for 6.3% and 8.6% respectively. Conversely, words associated with creative city (13.7%) and cultural planning (24.2%) approaches occur more frequently when cultural planning staff are located within community services, compared to when they are in development services, where keywords associated with those approaches account for 10.3% and 19.9% respectively.

Table 6. Keyword Occurrence by Location of Cultural Services.

	Cultural Plans		Economic Development Plans
Category	Community Services # (%)	Development Services # (%)	Community Services # (%)	Development Services # (%)
Trad. economic development	1,160 (31.5)	397 (32.5)	756 (64.6)	384 (53.7)
Creative city	505 (13.7)	126 (10.3)	56 (4.8)	60 (8.4)
Cultural industries	233 (6.3)	137 (11.2)	92 (7.9)	87 (12.2)
Cultural occupations	319 (8.6)	142 (11.6)	126 (10.8)	93 (13.0)
Cultural planning	893 (24.2)	243 (19.9)	115 (9.8)	58 (8.1)
Other	578 (15.7)	177 (14.5)	25 (2.1)	33 (4.6)
Totals	3,688 (100.0)	1,222 (100.0)	1,170 (100.0)	715 (100.0)

Source: Authors’ calculations. Note numbers may not add due to rounding.

With respect to municipal economic development plans, the results are clearer. When cultural planning staff are located in cultural services, economic development plans have more keywords associated with traditional economic development (64.6%) compared to when cultural planning staff are located within development services (53.7%). Relatedly, when cultural services are located within development services (which is the case for one third of the municipalities studied) rather than community services, economic development plans have higher proportions of keywords related to cultural economy approaches: cultural industries (12.2% vs. 7.9%), cultural occupations (13.0% vs. 10.8%) and creative cities (8.4% vs. 4.8%).

These results require some careful interpretation. Overall, it appears that when cultural planning staff are housed within development services there is a stronger emphasis on non-traditional approaches to planning for the cultural economy. This is especially visible in our analysis of economic development plans, suggesting that the presence of cultural planning expertise within departments focused on development has some influence over the shape and trajectory of these plans. In these cases, there is a stronger emphasis on non-traditional approaches to planning for the cultural economy. It appears that when cultural planning staff are located within community services, cultural plans include more language that emphasizes quality of place (e.g. creative cities) and cultural planning itself. When cultural planning staff are embedded within development services, the orientation of cultural plans leans more heavily towards cultural industries or cultural occupations approaches, both of which are more focused on business and the urban economy.

In our interviews, municipal staff spoke openly about the impact of the location of cultural planning and services staff on the development and implementation of economic development and cultural plans. For example, one of our interviewees observed that in departments where cultural services staff are located within development services there is greater consistency in the use of cultural economy discourse in economic development strategies, as well as greater support for these activities. This sentiment was corroborated by another interviewee, who remarked that, outside of the cultural services division, there did not seem to be much understanding that supporting cultural activity in the municipality was ‘more than just space and events’ (I2). These assessments support our finding that when cultural planning and services staff are located within development services there is a reduced emphasis on traditional economic development and a greater engagement with cultural economy approaches. This may suggest that there are greater opportunities for dialogue, learning and knowledge exchange related to cultural economy planning when cultural services staff are in close proximity to their economic development counterparts.

Overall, our results reveal considerable variety in the cultural planning concepts and terminologies used within both municipal economic development strategies and cultural plans. Beyond the commonplace reliance upon traditional economic development, the presence and prevalence of keywords from all categories reinforces Grodach’s (2013) observation that policy language is regularly adapted to suit different policymaking objectives and that more than one policy framework is often invoked simultaneously. Moreover, our findings also reveal that smaller municipalities, beyond global cities, sample widely from cultural economy approaches.

Reflections on economic development and cultural planning in practice

We began this paper by noting that two decades on, the ideas associated with planning for the cultural economy have generated extensive and critical scholarly attention. Yet, despite two decades of scholarship, we still know comparatively less about how these ideas have become embedded in local plans and policies beyond global cities and large metropolitan areas. Somewhat surprisingly, there are limited systematic, comparative studies addressing these issues. This study begins to address these gaps by examining municipal economic development and cultural plans in 33 municipalities within a consistent national and sub-national policy context: Ontario, Canada. Specifically, we ask: What cultural economy approaches are used in municipal economic development strategies and cultural plans? And, does the size of a municipality, its governance structure or its organizational structure influence the use of cultural economy approaches in these plans? To answer these questions, we generated and classified keywords using the typology of cultural economy models developed by Grodach (2013) to conduct an analysis of 63 local economic development and cultural plans, supplemented with interviews with municipal economic development and cultural planning staff.

Our study finds that – at least in the Ontario (Canada) context – there is evidence that cultural economy approaches are widely present in both municipal economic development and cultural plans. Cultural economy ideas have had an obvious impact on municipal strategic documents over the last fifteen years. Indeed, the widespread presence and use of cultural economy approaches in economic development strategies and cultural plans reveals the significant influence that this popular concept has had on local economic development and cultural planning practice.

We find that the uptake of cultural economy approaches within economic development and cultural plans does vary according to municipal characteristics. Our findings largely validate our initial hypothesis that municipality size, governance structure and organizational structure do – to varying degrees – influence the kind and extent to which cultural economy approaches appear in municipal strategic documents. First, with respect to population size, our findings show that larger places draw upon a wider range of cultural economy approaches compared to their smaller counterparts, which tend to rely on traditional economic development approaches. This likely reflects differences in access to resources and knowledge, with larger municipalities having access to a greater diversity of ideas (Storper & Venables, 2004). This may also reflect the stronger presence of cultural activity in larger centres. For example, the cultural industries are highly concentrated in the Greater Toronto Area, which includes a significant number of the larger municipalities in our study. Second, the governance structure of municipalities appears to have limited influence over the types of cultural economy models invoked in strategic documents, with statistically significant but small differences between lower- and single-tier municipalities. Finally, our results show that the organizational location of cultural services matters. When economic development and cultural services share organizational proximity, we find a greater prevalence of cultural economy approaches in both economic development and cultural plans.

For scholars, our findings suggest that far from being simply a policy fad (Peck, 2005), an array of cultural economy models has become embedded in the economic development and cultural plans of localities. Indeed, this language has made its way into the planning and strategy documents of smaller jurisdictions. Rather than being simply du jour, cultural economy approaches have had staying power, albeit not always in coherent and consistent ways. This is evident in that the documents we examined borrowed language and ideas liberally from across different cultural economy traditions and models (see also Grodach, 2013). We also note that, despite the differences described here, the popularity of cultural economy planning has not been enough to markedly displace more traditional approaches: the language of traditional economic development remains present to varying but significant degrees in strategic documents regardless of municipal characteristics. Overall, it is clear from our analysis that the translation from theory to practice is not straightforward.

Our findings are also of interest and relevance to economic development and planning practitioners, particularly our findings related to the location of cultural services. They suggestthat how a municipal government organizes their planning functions has some bearing on the strategic direction taken by local government in its approach to both arts and culture and economic development. Certainly, our findings suggest that when cultural services are co-located with economic development, both sets of plans are imbued with greater levels of cultural economy planning language. An important caveat relates to the nature of the ideas adopted. Specifically, it seems that Ontario’s municipalities remain focused on using cultural economy planning approaches to further conventional economic development objectives like industry attraction and retention, marketing and tourism. In other words, the approach to cultural economy planning is swayed towards emphasizing business-oriented activities, which – in turn – may influence the types of projects that are pursued in expected (or perhaps unexpected) ways. This sensitivity to organizational context may help to explain the pursuit of particular policy pathways (see also Goldberg-Miller, 2015).

Finally, it is important to reflect critically on our findings, the limitations of our analysis, and the practices that lead to the production of economic development and cultural plans. First, our analysis focuses on the use of cultural economy language as a way to capture the framing and intent of municipal economic development and cultural plans. It cannot, therefore, assess the outcomes associated with these plans, or even their interpretation by different stakeholders. Second, municipal strategic plans, whether related to economic development, culture or other policy areas are often influenced by election cycles, and subject to resource constraints and political opportunism, points made elsewhere in the literature (cf. Angelo et al., 2022). Municipal strategic documents themselves are subject to political agendas and are often negotiated and contested by community, government organizations and business leaders alike. Third, and relatedly, absent from our analysis is an accounting of the processes leading to the creation and formal adoption of these plans. These processes, too, can be political and can also be influenced by myriad other factors. For example, plans may be developed in-house or in collaboration with consultants. Plans may also involve varying levels of community engagement and different types of public consultation processes. This leads to another limitation of our study, which is that we do not account for the temporality of the plans under investigation. And the timeline for the creation and adoption of these plans means that there may be little coordination or synchronicity between different local plans. Nonetheless, our analysis offers a window into the nature of contemporary economic development and cultural plans and the influence of cultural economy ideas upon them.

Certainly, future work could examine more carefully the temporal dimensions of economic development and cultural plans to better understand the diffusion of these policy ideas. The fact that many municipal planning documents are updated on five- or ten-year cycles presents opportunities for longitudinal studies of the evolution of cultural economy planning, language and strategies within municipal planning documents. And more detailed, in-depth qualitative work would allow for a deeper exploration of how popular theoretical ideas, whether they be related to creative cities, the creative class, cultural industries or other contemporary urban concepts (Hatuka et al., 2018), are engaged by policymakers and planners. Doing so would shed more light on the intent, experiences and perspectives of planners and other stakeholders as they grapple with how to best plan for their local community, its businesses and its residents. Such additional research would help to further unpack and explain our finding that while municipalities have embedded a range of cultural economy approaches into their plans, traditional economic development ideas still prevail despite two decades of scholarly and professional debate and conversation on these issues.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the helpful comments of Paul Parker (University of Waterloo) on an earlier version of this paper, as well as the constructive feedback from the editor and two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.