The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy brings together a range of international experts to critically analyze the ways that governmental actors and non-governmental entities attempt to influence the production and implementation of urban policies directed at the arts, culture, and creative activity. Presenting a global set of case studies that span five continents and 22 cities, the essays in this book advance our understanding of how the dynamic interplay between economic and political context, institutional arrangements, and social networks affect urban cultural policy-making and the ways that these policies impact urban development and influence urban governance. The volume comparatively studies urban cultural policy-making in a diverse set of contexts, analyzes the positive and negative outcomes of policy for different constituencies, and identifies the most effective policy directions, emerging political challenges, and most promising opportunities for building effective cultural policy coalitions.

The volume provides a comprehensive and in-depth engagement with the political process of urban cultural policy and urban development studies around the world. It will be of interest to students and researchers interested in urban planning, urban studies and cultural studies.

Carl Grodach is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas Arlington, USA. His research, which focuses on the urban development impacts of cultural planning and policy has most recently been published in the Community Development Journal, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Journal of Planning Education and Research, and Journal of Urban Affairs.

Daniel Silver is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, Canada. His research investigates the role of culture in urban development, and has appeared in Social Forces, Sociological Theory, The Canadian Journal of Sociology, The Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society, and Theory, Culture, and Society.

Introduction: Urbanizing Cultural Policy Part 1: Urban Cultural Policy as an Object of Governance 1. A Different Class: Politics and Culture in London 2. Chicago from the Political Machine to the Entertainment Machine 3. Brecht in Bogotá: How Cultural Policy Transformed a Clientelist Political Culture 4. Notes of Discord: Urban Cultural Policy in the Confrontational City 5. Cultural Policy and the State of Urban Development in the Capital of South Korea Part 2: Rewriting the Creative City Script 6. Creativity and Urban Regeneration: The Role of La Tohu and the Cirque du Soleil in the Saint-Michel neighborhood in Montréal 7. City Image and the Politics of Music Policy in the "Live Music Capital of the World" 8. "To Have and To Need": Reorganizing Cultural Policy as Panacea for Berlin's Urban and Economic Woes 9. Urban Cultural Policy, City Size, and Proximity Part 3: The Implications of Urban Cultural Policy Agendas for Creative Production 10. The New Cultural Economy and its Discontents: Governance Innovation and Policy Disjuncture in Vancouver 11. Creating Urban Spaces for Culture, Heritage, and the Arts in Singapore: Balancing Policy-led Development and Organic Growth 12. Maastricht - From Treaty Town to European Capital of Culture 13. Rethinking Arts Policy and Creative Production: the case of Los Angeles Part 4: Coalition Networks, Alliances, and Identity Framing 14. When Worlds Collide: The Politics of Cultural Economy Policy in New York 15. What's in the Fridge? Counter-mobilization in Post-industrial Urban "Cultural" Development 16. Urban Cultural Policy in Spain: Governing the Entertainment Machine 17. Planned and Spontaneous Arts Development: Notes from Portland 18. Local Politics in the Creative City: The Case of Toronto