The significance of creative industry policy narratives for Zurich's transformation toward a post-industrial city

Abstract

During the past decades, the city of Zurich endeavoured to facilitate both a transition toward a post-industrial economic base and a diversification of its existing service sector. The latter relates to Zurich’s idiosyncrasies that, besides its long industrial tradition, it already disposed of a strong service sector, i.e., the financial services since the 19th century. Since the repeated financial crises in the 1990s and 2000s, however, the city pursued a two-fold strategy. It sought to lessen its over-dependence on dominating private banking, whilst attempting to strengthen this sector’s global competitiveness by attracting talent. This article shows how the creative industries served as a key instrument for both strategies and critically investigates the narrative created to legitimise and underpin a new economic growth agenda with concomitant new urban policies of neo-liberal design. Important socio-spatial consequences of these new urban policies are discussed in the example of the transformation of one of Zurich’s former industrial districts, Escher Wyss, today known as Zurich-West. Empirically, this article draws on a detailed content analysis of policy and marketing documents between 2005 and 2010, which reveal the legitimisation process of the making of the new trend-quarter, Zurich-West. Additional qualitative interviews with the new creatives in this quarter illustrate the catalysing of the urban redesign.