Cultural and creative clusters – a systematic literature review and a renewed research agenda

ABSTRACT

Cultural/Creative Quarters/Clusters/Districts’ (CCC) have become very popular local development strategies in the last 30 years as reflected within the Urban Planning, Geography, Economics and Cultural Studies literature. However, this multi-disciplinarity has rendered the CCC academic field of research quite fuzzy as authors offers their own definition or borrow from each other without clear explanations. In order to address this issue, this paper presents a systematic literature review and analyses the ways these concepts have evolved, what have been the themes and dimensions associated with them, how they have been studied and researched, and then suggest a renewed research agenda.

KEYWORDS:

• Systematic literature review
• cultural quarter
• cultural district
• cultural cluster
• creative quarter
• creative district
• creative cluster
• creative cities
• urban regeneration
• gentrification
• local and economic development
• value chain
• policies
• flagship
• branding and governance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See, for example, Hofstede, Geert (December 1983). ‘Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values’. Administrative Science Quarterly. Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University. 28 (4): 625–629.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Regional Council Pays de la Loire, France [1] and the Regional Studies Association [2].