Creative City Framework: Assessing Cairo City's Creativity

Abstract

Creativity is now seen as the new currency in a global world. It is considered the best intangible resource. That's why many studies assess the importance of creativity as a key driver for economic development. However there is no assessment framework that covers all cities' creative aspects. In addition; there are no clear creative city actions in the strategies of the Egyptian public institutions. Consequently; this paper discusses creativity of cities and how to assess it. It is based on an inductive methodology where the creative city concept is explored studying its characteristics. Then the paper adopts analytical and comparative approaches to analyze and compare five indices that assess creativity of cities. As a result of these two approaches; the paper concludes a framework consisting of five main environments of a creative milieu; their characteristics and main dimensions to assess them. Accordingly; the developed framework is applied on the Egyptian context; Cairo city; to recognize the city's creative assets; and learn how to exploit them to increase city's creative products. The paper follows a qualitative approach; it doesn't give absolute numbers for the creative city qualities, it only gives a checklist for a city to become creative; and explains some qualities of the creative city concept and strategies.