‘Cultural Buzz’ on the Neighbourhood: The Impact of the URBAN I Initiative on Cultural Consumption Opportunities

Abstract

AbstractUrban development projects typically include policy actions to change neighbourhoods as cultural spaces. These actions try to promote quality of life among residents through cultural services and to generate opportunities for local economic development: educational and instrumental strategies in relation to the role of cultural policies in local development, respectively. This chapter briefly analyses the ‘cultural contents’ of local plans in terms of their orientation towards educational and instrumental strategies This is followed by an analysis of the impact of urban projects on the ‘cultural scenes’ of neighbourhoods. The cultural scenes approach examines neighbourhoods as a cluster of cultural consumption opportunities in terms of existing cultural amenities and the lifestyles they promote. The chapter compares two types of cultural scenes: communitarian (oriented to residents) and innovative (oriented to promote economic development and tourism attraction). Comparing experimental and control neighbourhoods between 1991 and 2001 shows that local projects enable a trend towards less communitarian cultural scenes.