City, Culture and Society最新文献

{"title":"Social infrastructure in diverse and unequal cities: Examining Civic Management facilities in Barcelona","authors":"Marina Pera","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100666","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100666","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article offers a nuanced exploration of the notion of social infrastructure and its capacity to foster encounters and strengthen social ties in urban contexts. Focusing on Civic Management Facilities in Barcelona—municipally owned and funded spaces managed by local non-profit associations that offer cultural, youth, and leisure activities accessible to all residents—this study examines their potential as central neighbourhood hubs. It addresses the gap in understanding how these facilities enable spaces of encounter in contexts characterised by social fragmentation, inequality, and diversity. Employing a mixed-methods case study approach, the findings reveal how social inequalities and power dynamics shape the use of Civic Management Facilities, often resulting in the underrepresentation of neighbourhood diversity. The study underscores the importance of agency in enhancing inclusive participation by vulnerable groups within social infrastructures. Facility managers, through sustained efforts, implement mechanisms to promote user diversity and cultivate public familiarity—understood as the recognition of the facility and unfamiliar individuals as integral parts of the community. By analysing the relational dimension of social infrastructure, this research provides a deeper understanding of how these spaces can promote encounters and inclusion in urban settings marked by inequality and socio-cultural diversity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100666"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145267251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rebels without a pause (but with a cause): Exploring self-governance and engaged behavior in hip-hop and alternative performing arts in Northern Europe","authors":"Emilie Schei ,&nbsp;Valeria Morea","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100655","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100655","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This research examines how community-based artistic organizations navigate social and political tensions in urban settings, bridging hip-hop studies to political economy studies on self-governance. Artists and cultural organizations engage with these tensions through political protest, fostering public participation, and representing marginalized groups. For genres like hip-hop, social and political tensions are inherent, making it particularly interesting to study their institutionalization. A multiple case study was conducted on four organizations: Hiphophuis, WORM, Rapolitics, and Soul Sessions Oslo, based in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway. These organizations use alternative performing arts to engage with social and political issues through self-governance. Data from 13 semi-structured interviews with key individuals provided in-depth insights, analyzed thematically to reveal two themes: \"Social and Political Engagement Through Self-Governance: 'By Us, For Us'” and \"Creating Space for a Socially and Politically Engaged Community\". The findings highlight that these organizations are “rebels without a pause but with a cause”: self-governance and engaged behavior enable alternative performing arts organizations to interact with diverse marginalized groups through cultural expressions often overlooked by institutionalized cultural entities. This community-based approach also facilitates engagement with local communities on broader issues.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100655"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144922234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From the creative city to the city of cultural rights. Analysing inequalities and diversity in the right to participate in urban cultural life. The case of Barcelona","authors":"Artur Rubinat-i-Lacuesta ,&nbsp;Roger Soler-i-Martí ,&nbsp;Nicolás Barbieri Muttis","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100668","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100668","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent empirical evidence within the framework of the creative city has reproduced a narrow view of cultural participation. To better understand diversity and new and more complex logics of inequalities, this paper proposes an alternative multidimensional framework: the right to participate in urban cultural life. Using data from the Survey of Cultural Rights of Barcelona (2022), we analyse evidence of not only cultural access, but also the dimensions of practice, community engagement and governance, including both legitimate and non-legitimate cultural activities. This study considers how relevant are individual socioeconomic and spatial factors in explaining inequalities and diversity in the right to participate in urban cultural life. We conclude firstly that, as previous research has shown, socioeconomic individual resources (such as education) play a significant role in explaining inequalities in levels of participation in legitimate culture. The impact of these factors is significantly reduced when community and governance dimensions, and above all, non-legitimate cultural activities are considered. Second, neighbourhood has its own role in explaining inequalities and diversity. Being from a well-off neighbourhood is more related to accessing legitimate culture but less related to non-legitimate cultural activity and other cultural rights dimensions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100668"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145332914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Universities as innovation agents for the creative industries – An exploratory quantitative study from Wales","authors":"Komorowski Marlen ,&nbsp;Fodor Máté Miklós","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100670","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100670","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Universities are increasingly recognized as key actors in regional innovation ecosystems, yet their role as “innovation agents” for the creative industries remains underexplored. While previous scholarship highlights universities’ contributions through research, skills provision, and technology transfer, little empirical evidence exists on how they amplify the innovation capacity of creative firms. This article addresses this gap through an exploratory quantitative study of 385 firms in Wales, drawing on data from the <em>Clwstwr</em> programme (2019–2021), a university-led initiative. We develop an analytical framework focusing on four major innovation drivers - skills and knowledge, networking, training, and funding - and examine whether university engagement enhances their effect on firm innovativeness. Employing econometric modelling, we find that firms engaged with the university exhibit significantly stronger relationships between each driver and overall innovativeness than firms outside the university-programme. Notably, university engagement magnifies the marginal effects of networking, training, and funding on innovativeness, with funding showing particularly large gains. These results provide novel evidence that universities can act as effective innovation agents, going beyond traditional roles of knowledge creation to actively shape firm-level innovation processes in the creative industries. The findings have implications for firms, which can leverage university partnerships to strengthen innovation outcomes; for universities, which can expand their role in local creative economies; and for policymakers, who can design targeted support mechanisms to embed universities within regional innovation strategies. By situating the Welsh case within broader debates on creative clusters and university–industry collaboration, this study contributes to understanding how universities drive innovation in under-researched sectors such as the creative industries.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100670"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145332916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Graffiti gaze. The writers looking at urban territory and its places","authors":"Carlo Genova","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100674","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100674","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article investigates how graffiti writers perceive, interpret and use urban space. Drawing on qualitative interviews with writers conducted in Italy, it proposes and substantiates the notion of a distinctive “graffiti gaze”: a situated way of seeing that reworks both individual places and the city as a whole. Place selection is guided by four criteria – materiality of surfaces, visibility, architectural accessibility and social accessibility – combined through search strategies that include vigilant everyday observation, targeted exploration (including virtual surveys) and exchanges of information within social networks. The practice generates evolving mental maps composed of painted spots, prospective sites and preferred routes, which anchor personal memories and scene infrastructures. The findings refine the analogy with the “skater's eye” and “parkour vision”, showing family resemblances yet outlining specificities of writing. Comparative glimpses across cities highlight variations in competitive climates, morphologies and institutional arrangements, without undermining shared patterns. The article then provides new insights into how unconventional uses of space challenge dominant perceptions of urban territory and contribute to its re-signification.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100674"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145525673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transitioning from STEM to STEAM engagement mechanisms: a Yorkshire-based creative industry collaborative ecosystem approach for fashion and textiles","authors":"Susan Rainton ,&nbsp;Kevin Almond","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100665","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100665","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper adopts a reflective practice methodology, outlining how the Future Fashion Factory award stimulated sectoral activity, facilitating innovative collaborations and delivering regional impact. FFF built on decades of academic collaboration and long-standing relationships with both industry and local/regional government, it brought regional initiatives together to enable new activity and raise the profile of existing collaborations. In this context the University of Leeds, along with HEI partners, acted as a broker for innovation connectivity and change. It contrasts the Future Fashion Factory ecosystem with previous Yorkshire-based cluster programmes which had a STEM-based foundation for their interventions, reflecting differences in funding mechanisms and outcome monitoring. Fashion and textiles are a significant regional economic contributor, value chains are complex, integrating creativity with materials and advanced manufacturing requiring the delivery of STEAM-based interventions. Mills in the Yorkshire's ‘textile heartland’ are globally recognised, some exporting c.90 % of their total production. In January 2020 Future Fashion Factory supported the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (MIT REAP) visit, facilitating academic connectivity with Leeds City Council and a visit to AW Hainsworth &amp; Sons Ltd; one of many collaborative initiatives. Over five-years Future Fashion Factory has worked extensively with regional and national bodies to maximise learning, impact and future opportunities. Since October 2018 it has developed and trialled several iterations of an industry-led Responsive R&amp;D process. Focused on regional cluster support Future Fashion Factory recognised fashion and textiles as a national/international collection of complex, interlocking eco-systems. Future Fashion Factory network membership focused on regional connectivity but with UK-wide industrial participation; project awards always ensured direct cluster impact. Learning developed from this industry-led approach led to wide-ranging engagement activity and triggered c.450 innovation ideas and c.£47m co-investment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100665"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145227500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cultural identity and creative labour of mobile artists: A narrative review of Jing Piao community in Jingdezhen","authors":"Diying Cai ,&nbsp;Zitong Zhan","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100675","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100675","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Jingdezhen porcelain culture, renowned for its long history and exquisite craftsmanship, has long attracted ceramic enthusiasts and contributed to the development of local art and culture. While much of the existing literature emphasizes the role of the government, experts, and ceramic masters, this review article turns its attention to the contributions of grassroots groups, particularly the little-studied ‘Jing Piao’ group, in shaping urban ceramic art culture. This article explores the engagement of the ‘Jing Piao’ ceramic community in Jingdezhen through three themes: (1) a historical perspective on the cultural identity of ‘Jing Piao’, (2) the impact of the creative labour of the ‘Jing Piao’ group on local ceramic culture and markets, and (3) Intermediaries’ practices in bridging ‘Jing Piao’ and the local ceramic community. This study examines how ‘Jing Piao’ contributes to Jingdezhen’s cultural and industrial regeneration through their evolving identity and creative labor. While promoting ceramic renaissance and globalization, their influence raises challenges regarding cultural ethics, craft valuation, and sustainability.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100675"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145578838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Creative Informatics: the role of ‘the university’ in Edinburgh and South East Scotland's creative cluster","authors":"Vikki Jones,&nbsp;Inge Panneels,&nbsp;Frauke Zeller,&nbsp;Melissa Terras,&nbsp;Nicola Osborne","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100664","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100664","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This positioning paper reflects on the idea of ‘the university’ as a creative industries intermediary, through a case study of the Creative Informatics programme. It asks where ‘the university’ fits within the context of the creative industries and creative economy, and its value in that ecosystem. Creative Informatics was a five-year R&amp;D programme (2018–2024), part of the UK-wide Creative Industries Clusters Programme (CICP) funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to encourage innovation in and through the creative industries. The programme was a partnership between two universities, The University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh Napier University; creative industries support organisation Creative Edinburgh; and startup incubator Codebase. Creative Informatics leveraged and mediated university structures, while also attempting to position itself as embedded in the Edinburgh and South-East Scotland ‘Cluster’ through its networked relationships with non-academic partners. As well as funding creative industries activity, the programme included supporting activities designed to develop and maintain connections between practitioners and organisations, beyond the time-limited operation of the CICP. As such, this paper frames Creative Informatics as a temporary organisation and creative industries intermediary that operates both within and without the permanent construct of ‘the university’ and asks what happens next to the community of creative practitioners it has supported. In considering these intermediaries through the lens of a value constellation, this paper explores if and how the balance of power between cities and regions were challenged by or reproduced through the CICP.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100664"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145332917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Entrepreneurial capability? Understanding the resources needed for sustainable cultural and creative entrepreneurship in cities. A case study of Enschede, The Netherlands","authors":"Tamsyn Dent,&nbsp;Roberta Comunian,&nbsp;Sana Kim","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100672","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100672","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>What sustains creative and cultural entrepreneurship in a city? This paper questions the sustainability of urban policies focused on attracting knowledge-based human capital as a strategy to foster entrepreneurial and creative-driven growth. It acknowledges that the literature on entrepreneurial cities, while connecting with the creative city approach, has commonly imposed growth-led agendas without fully considering the local cultural infrastructure, including creative practices, amenities and the wider resources that enable citizen engagement. Using the capability approach, the paper considers what resources and opportunities are available, and to whom, within a specific urban location to facilitate sustainable creative and cultural entrepreneurship. Based on research conducted in the Dutch city of Enschede, we explore how resources for sustainable creative and entrepreneurial development are fostered at the local policy level. Drawing on qualitative data collected from a wide range of citizens; the paper questions the sustainability of policies focused on expanding higher education and the commercially oriented creative industries in order to foster regional entrepreneurial activity. We conclude that a better understanding of how citizens can be empowered to engage with the city's creative and cultural entrepreneurship might offer more fruitful and sustainable results.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100672"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145424626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Workplace tours and the cultural production of flexibility","authors":"Lizzie Richardson","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100671","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100671","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Tours of offices in English cities for those who are not working in them have risen in popularity since the growth of co-working spaces in the 2010s. In contrast to workplace tours of industrial sites, in these contemporary office tours the tourist is neither clearly distinct from the worker, nor are they necessarily undertaking the tour to see work taking place. The contemporary office tour therefore enacts a process of “de-differentiation” between work and leisure spaces. Yet simultaneously though and somewhat countering this thesis of de-differentiation, it is <em>flexibility</em> that is the attraction displayed in these office tours, understood as the capacities to make micro-distinctions in activity in a given space. Contemporary office tours frequently stage a proximity and even interchangeability between work and leisure, one that highlights abilities to both make and dissolve the boundaries between the two, creating a flexible workplace structure that has been typically associated with urban cultural economies that foreground entrepreneurialism and passion for work. The article argues though that office flexibility is itself part of processes of urban cultural production that are intended to create value both within and beyond the work in the office itself. The production of flexibility in the office tour is an indicator of contemporary urban cultural economies in which value is produced in the present through the promise of future adaptable usage of space.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100671"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145424627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}