Urban Research & Practice

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Cultural and creative clusters – a systematic

literature review and a renewed research agenda

Caroline Chapain & Dominique Sagot-Duvauroux

To cite this article: Caroline Chapain & Dominique Sagot-Duvauroux (2020) Cultural and
creative clusters – a systematic literature review and a renewed research agenda, Urban
Research & Practice, 13:3, 300-329, DOI: 10.1080/17535069.2018.1545141

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URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE
2020, VOL. 13, NO. 3, 300–329
https://doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2018.1545141

Cultural and creative clusters – a systematic literature review

and a renewed research agenda
Caroline Chapaina and Dominique Sagot-Duvaurouxb
a
Business School, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK; bGRANEM, University of Angers, Angers,
France

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Cultural/Creative Quarters/Clusters/Districts’ (CCC) have become Systematic literature review;
very popular local development strategies in the last 30 years as cultural quarter; cultural
reflected within the Urban Planning, Geography, Economics and district; cultural cluster;
Cultural Studies literature. However, this multi-disciplinarity has creative quarter; creative
district; creative cluster;
rendered the CCC academic field of research quite fuzzy as authors creative cities; urban
offers their own definition or borrow from each other without regeneration; gentrification;
clear explanations. In order to address this issue, this paper pre- local and economic
sents a systematic literature review and analyses the ways these development; value chain;
concepts have evolved, what have been the themes and dimen- policies; flagship; branding
sions associated with them, how they have been studied and and governance
researched, and then suggest a renewed research agenda.

1. Introduction
With the rise in popularity of the creative industries discourse across the World in the
last 20 years and their use to support economic development at the local and regional
levels (ECIA, 2013, 2014; UN, 2010, 2013), the notions of cultural and/or creative
cluster, district and quarter have gained in popularity. More specifically, these concepts
have been used since the 1990’s in Western Europe (Wynne 1992; Teo and Huang
1995) with a growing number of publications both within Western and Central and
Eastern European contexts in the last 10 years (see, for example, Mommas, 2004, 2009;
Cooke and Lazaretti, 2008; Chapain et al. 2010; Kharnaukhova 2012; Namyslak 2012).
These terms have also been increasingly adopted in North American (Coe 2001; Vang
and Chaminade 2007; Chapple, Jackson and Martin, 2010; Zukin and Braslow 2011)
and Asian contexts (Keane 2009; Kong 2012; O’Connor and Gu 2012; Zheng and Chan
2014); and, some literature is emerging on CCC in Latin America (Blejer and Blanco
Moya 2010) and in the Middle East (Ponzini 2011).
Some useful bespoke academic contributions offering some form of classification
and/or typologies based on empirical evidence or academic literature from Western
countries have been published in the last 15 years (Santagata 2002, Mommaas 2004,
Cinti 2008, Evans 2009a, Legner and Ponzini 2009). While helpful these efforts do not
necessarily complement each other and tend to be based on a handful of case studies at

CONTACT Dominique Sagot-Duvauroux [email protected] GRANEM, EA 7456, UNIV ANGERS,

SFR Confluences, UFR Droit Economie Gestion, 13 Allée François Mitterrand, 49036 Angers Cedex 01, France
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE 301

one point in time. As such, mirroring the lack of a clear definition (Martin and Sunley
2003) and unified theoretical approaches on geographic ‘cluster’ (Malmberg and
Maskell 2002; Vorley 2008), there is a lack of consensus on the definitions, approaches
and typologies of CCC (Evans, 2009a; Chesnel et al. 2013). This is partly due to the fact
that the CCC literature spans various academic disciplines (economic geography,
planning…) and that the original confusion about the ‘cluster’ terminology and the
diversity of theoretical approaches developed in economic geography to study this
phenomenon seems to have transferred to the CCC notion. However, this is also
explained by the diversity of the creative clustering phenomena at play, some with little
public sector involvement (bottom-up) and others initiated by policymakers with the
aims of fostering both economic and non-economic policy objectives (top down)
(Mommaas 2009; Evans, 2009a). The latter objectives are particular to CCC and
originate from the cultural, social and environmental impacts that cultural and creative
activities can generate beyond their economic impacts (Matarosso 1997; Cebr 2013,
Ambrosino, Sagot-Duvauroux, 2018). However, the prevalence of some objectives over
others in cluster initiatives can change over time and across countries depending on the
understanding and dominant paradigms (economic, cultural…) associated with the
cultural and creative activities and their contributions to society (Andres and
Chapain 2013; UN 2013). With the increasing transfer/use of the concepts of both
cultural and creative industries and cluster from Western countries to other parts of the
World, there is a need to better understand how CCC have been defined and studied
over time and in different national contexts and to offer a more in-depth overview of
the field and identify areas for future research and development.
The aim of this article is to fill a gap in the literature by presenting a systematic
literature review (SLR) of the evolution of the terminology and research associated with
what can be called today ‘cultural and/or creative clusters’ (CCC). By analysing this
literature, we would like to answer the following questions: What are cultural/creative
district, cluster and quarter? When did these concepts appear? Are these concepts
overlapping? Who has been writing about these? In which disciplines and in which
countries? What has been the evolution in terms of conceptual understanding? What
are the themes and dimensions associated with these concepts? How have they been
studied and researched (methodologies)? What issues and research gap are present
within this literature? Such systematic overview is sorely lacking at the moment despite
an increasing policy focus on this concept. Another objective of this research is to
discuss some aspects of the issues of interdisciplinarity researches in Social and Human
Sciences. Indeed, the understanding of CCC needs to cross several disciplines (urban
planning, economics, management, sociology…). How do scholars appropriate the
question of interdiscilinarity in their works?
This paper addresses these issues by undertaking a SLR combining a meta-analysis
and an in-depth analysis of the most cited papers in the academic literature using the
concepts of creative or cultural clusters, districts or quarters (the most popular combi-
nation of terms found in the literature). Based on our findings, we then present
recommendations and guidelines to develop a clearer research approach to study
CCC and a renewed research agenda. The next section describes our methodology
while the third one presents the results from the statistical analysis conducted with our
main database. Section four underlines the thematic analysis undertaken with the most
302 C. CHAPAIN AND D. SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

cited papers of our database. The last section discusses our key findings and presents
our renewed research framework for the field.

2. Methodology
Our methodology builds on bibliometric studies and meta-analysis in the economic
geography fields such as the ones from Lazzeretti, Sedita, and Caloffi (2014), Lazzeretti,
Capone, and Innocenti (2015) and Chuluunbaatar, Ottavia, and Kung (2013) which
provide bibliographic overviews on related concepts such as ‘cluster’ or ‘creative econ-
omy’ or ‘cultural and creative industries’. However, we add to these works and meth-
odologies by offering a two steps enquiry and a more in-depth SLR including a thematic
analysis. The paper thus presents a more in-depth examination of the specific field of
CCC, how it has been studied and identifies areas for further research and development.
Creative cluster is only one subset of the work of Lazzeretti, Capone, and Innocenti (2015)
and as such their paper does not offer a detailed comprehension of this sub-field in
particular. In addition, their work only presents a broad meta-analysis of the evolution of
the literature over time in terms of disciplines, authors, etc. Our objectives are to delve
deeper and to test the coherence of the field in terms of concepts and definitions, to
examine the analytical themes covered and the methodologies used and to suggest some
avenues for future research. Indeed, the purpose of systematic reviews is to critically
examine and integrate a large body of research in a systematic fashion to identify the state
of the knowledge in one area and where gaps exist and to offer either a new theorisation of
the field or new avenues for research (Pettigrew and Robert, 2006). For example, the work
undertaken by Wilson et al. (2017) on festival research is an interesting point of departure
in terms of methodology and approach.
In order to construct our bibliographic database, we use the Scopus database, which
is a bibliographic European database with more than 60 million references (including
from 21,500 peer-reviewed journals); 24% of them from social sciences disciplines (the
focus of this paper). We preferred it to Web of Science as Scopus is more representative
of the European and Asian literature in addition to the North American one. Taking
into account the various concepts used in the literature, we scanned the social sciences
references for any combination of words related to cultural industries and/or creative
industries with cluster, district or quarter included in their abstract, title and/or the full
body of their text. Table 1 describes the various combinations of terms we opted for;
these terms were chosen as they reflect the ones used within the few comprehensive
overview and typologies developed in the field (Mommaas 2004; Santagata 2002, Cinti
2008; Evans 2009a; Legner and Ponzini 2009). The references obtained were then
screened to remove any Marketing papers within which similar concepts are adopted
in the sense developed by Geert Hofstede’s1 research on cultural cluster understood as
cultural groupings as well as any paper for which these terms could refer to cluster

Table 1. Combination of terms used to construct the database.

Cluster(s) District(s) Quarter(s)
Cultural or cultural industr* X X X
Creative or creative industr* X X X
 URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE 303

statistical analyses, and thus bearing no relation with our topic. This gave us a final
number of 226 documents published or included in the Scopus database up to
April 2015: 78% being articles, 15% book or book chapters and 6% book reviews; the
remaining 1% being editorial or undefined.
It is important to recognise the limitations of this approach. First, even though the
Scopus database does include papers written in other languages than English, most of
our publications are in English, which means that it under-represents papers by non-
anglophone authors. Nevertheless, it does include documents and ideas in the field
which have a greater likelihood of circulating at the international level and which have
been influencing the understanding and academic debate on CCC. Second, we decided
to omit on purpose terms which would refer to particular industry such as ‘film cluster’
and ‘media cluster’ etc. as our objective is to comprehend and test the unity of the CCC
field as a whole overall and not of cluster of particular creative sector. As such if these
papers do not include one of the combinations of terms described in Table 1, they are
omitted from our database.
In order to offer a comprehensive analysis of the understanding of CCC and the
various dimensions associated with the academic research around this concept, the
paper presents two types of analysis: one offering a meta-analysis of the debate and one
focusing on a more in-depth thematic and critical analysis of what has been said.
First, we conducted an overall descriptive analysis of our entire database of 226
references: It allowed us to identify when and where the different concepts associated
with the CCC notion appeared, how they have been used, by which authors, in which
disciplines and which journals, tracing their dissemination over time including poten-
tial complementarities and overlaps.
Second, we undertook a more in-depth statistical and thematic analysis of the 48 most
cited papers among our 226 references i.e. cited 10 times or more. This consisted in looking
in details at the conceptual definitions of our key concepts offered within these papers and
in undertaking a systematic classification of the themes and methodologies used as well as
the types of case studies examined. The in-depth thematic analysis was undertaken by the
two authors of this paper independently who reviewed the 48 papers and coded them
accordingly to specific dimensions and themes: names of the authors, year of publication,
journal of publication, disciplines of the authors, terminologies of the concepts used,
existence or not of definition of these concepts within the paper, types of activities and
geographic scales associated with the cluster, methodologies adopted and themes touched
upon in the analysis, i.e. economic, cultural, social, urban, policy, etc. The themes identified
emerged using both a deductive and inductive approaches. First, we looked at the dimen-
sions that authors who have offered typologies of cultural and creative clusters have
associated with these concepts, for example, Evans (2009a). Second, we merged these
with the main analytical dimensions reflected in the keywords that the authors of our 48
most-cited papers chose to describe their papers. This led to the emergence of 20 main
themes – see Appendix. Each paper was then analysed and coded to decide if it discussed
each of these individual themes or not and, more importantly, if these were actually
analysed within the paper, not just mentioned in passing. Differences in coding were
discussed until a consensus was achieved to ensure inter rater reliability. Our in-depth
analysis consists in a descriptive statistical overview and a critical analysis of these key
variables and themes.
304 C. CHAPAIN AND D. SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

3. Trends in the literature: meta-analysis of the entire database (226

references)
3.1. The use of concepts over time
While the first document with the concept of ‘cultural district’ appeared in 1986 in
a German document looking at tourism and cultural district (Grahn 1986), only five papers
using this concept were published in the 1990s. The amount of literature on creative
clusters has only grown significantly after the mid-2000s, with 85% of the publications
having been published since 2007; and 60% since 2010. The first article including the
concept of ‘creative’ cluster, district or quarter did not appear before 2003 whereas the
concept of cultural or creative ‘cluster’ was introduced in 2002 (see Figure 1(a,b).
Nevertheless, since then, these two concepts – cultural cluster and creative cluster – have
grown in popularity and are present in 53% of all the references in the database.
A detailed analysis of the distribution of the six key concepts (Table 2) highlights
that while the word ‘cultural’ has been applied relatively evenly to quarter, district or
cluster, the word ‘creative’ tend to be associated with cluster mostly – this may be linked
to the popularity of both terms and their emergence at the same time i.e. at the
beginning of the 2000s. It may also be explained by the types of activities and analysis
considered. The term cluster being associated with more value chain oriented analysis,
which ties in with the increased economic focus that the shift from cultural to creative
tended to indicate (Flew and Cunningham 2010).

3.2. An apparent overlap in terminology

Forty-eight per cent of these references tend to include more than one term when
refereeing to the CCC concept suggesting some confusion and/or overlap in under-
standing between cultural and or creative industries and/or cluster, district and or
quarter. This overlap has increased over time with references using on average 2.5 of
our 6 key concepts since 2011 (with some displaying all six key concepts) compared to
an average of 1.5 until 2010.
Examining this terminology association in more details (Table 2), we notice that the
terms ‘cultural cluster’, ‘cultural quarter’, ‘creative district’ and to a lesser extent
‘creative cluster’ have a high degree of association with other terms. In more than
half of the references, the term ‘cultural quarter’, ‘creative district’ or ‘creative cluster’
are associated with the term ‘cultural cluster’ whereas two fifth of the time the term
‘cultural district’ and ‘creative quarter’ are associated with the term ‘cultural cluster’.
These strong associations raise questions as to whether these terms are used inter-
changeably or designate different phenomena.

3.3. Diversity of usage across geographical areas

The majority of publications on the topic come from Europe (62%), then North
America (14%), Asia (12%), Australia (8%), Latin America (2%) and the Middle East
(2%). Figure 2 shows that the most prolific countries are the UK and Italy, and then the
USA, Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, Spain, China, Germany and Hong Kong;
these countries account for more than two-third of all publications.
 URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE 305

Figure 1. (a) Cultural/creative district, cluster or quarter within the 226 academic references – 1986
to 2014. (b) Cultural versus creative district, cluster or quarter within the 226 academic references –
1986 to 2014.

Table 2. Association and overlap of our key terms within the 226 references.
Cultural Cultural Cultural Creative Creative Creative
district cluster quarter district cluster quarter Total
Cultural district NA 36% 29% 18% 18% 14% 23%
Cultural cluster 43% NA 55% 55% 59% 43% 27%
Cultural quarter 25% 39% NA 36% 32% 29% 20%
Creative district 2% 6% 5% NA 3% 0% 3%
Creative cluster 20% 55% 42% 27% NA 14% 25%
Creative quarter 1% 3% 3% 0% 1% NA 2%
Total of associations 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Ratio of overlap 91% 138% 132% 136% 113% 100%
the ratio of overlap is calculated by dividing the number of associations with any of the other five concepts by the
number of documents with the concept in question.
306 C. CHAPAIN AND D. SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

Figure 2. Publications by country of origin of the main author – 226 references.

Table 3. Usage of the key concepts by geographical areas.

Cultural Cultural Cultural Creative Creative Creative
district cluster quarter district cluster quarter Total
Europe 57% 66% 75% 45% 57% 71% 62%
UK and Ireland 9% 17% 43% 9% 12% 29% 20%
Italy 30% 19% 13% 0% 16% 0% 15%
Rest of Western Europe 13% 23% 13% 36% 23% 43% 21%
Central and Eastern Europe 4% 7% 6% 0% 6% 0% 5%
North America 26% 6% 6% 27% 5% 14% 14%
North Africa and Middle East 4% 1% 1% 0% 1% 0% 2%
Australia 0% 11% 8% 0% 17% 14% 8%
Latin America 1% 2% 0% 9% 3% 0% 2%
Asia 11% 14% 9% 18% 17% 0% 12%
Total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 4%

Some concepts seem to be geographically linked – see Table 3. For example, ‘cultural
district’ is much more associated with publications from Italy and North America,
‘cultural cluster’ with publications from Australia, ‘cultural quarter’ with UK and
Ireland, ‘creative district’ with North America, Asia and the rest of Western Europe,
‘creative cluster’ with Australia and Asia and ‘creative quarter’ with UK, Ireland and the
rest of Western Europe (except Italy) as well as Asia.
First, these associations can be explained by the origin and the more prevalent usage
of the term creative industries in Australia and the UK and then its later spread across
Europe and Asia (Flew and Cunningham 2010; Chapain and Stryjiakiewicz, 2017).
However, the European discourse had retained the terms cultural industries or cultural
and creative industries to insist on the cultural elements inherent to these industries
over the more economic and market driven approaches promoted in the UK and
Australia (Hartley 2005; Andres and Chapain 2013; Chapain and Stryjiackiewicz 2017).
Second, the apparent preference for the terms quarter, district or cluster across
different countries seem to be either associated with (1) the usage of distinctive
terminology to name a geographical/administrative section of an urban settlement
 URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE 307

(quarter/district) and/or (2) the influence of different discourses to explain and char-
acterise the agglomeration of economic activities in space and which term is usually
adopted to explain this agglomeration (Ortega-Colomer et al., 2016). For example, Italy
has had a long standing tradition of studying the concept of industrial district within
the economic geography literature to designate the agglomeration of firms within
a particular geographical area (ibid.) whereas the concept of quarter has been predo-
minant within the urban planning literature in the UK, resulting in the prevalent usage
of cultural district in Italy or creative quarter in the UK (Pyke, Becattini, and
Sengenberger 1990).
As such, our findings allude to a mix of overlaps and transfers between the terms
‘cultural industries’ versus ‘creative industries’ and between ‘quarter’, ‘district’ and
‘cluster’ and their association to designate the clustering phenomenon studied either
explained by the usual denomination of particular geographical/administrative areas or
in relation to the disciplinary understanding of this agglomeration phenomena depend-
ing on countries. The question is nevertheless whether authors use and study these
concepts interchangeably or define them in different ways to discuss different realities.
We discuss this in the section on definitions later on.

3.4. A multidisciplinary field: trends in terms of journals and disciplines

The 226 references found spread across 131 publications, including books. The journal
articles, editorials and book reviews on cultural and creative cluster, district and quarter
span more than 120 journals indicating that this is a popular topic. 31 journals include
more than one reference and account for more than half of the references (Figure 3). Six
journals, City Culture and Society, European Planning Studies, Urban Studies, Journal of
Urban Design, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and Planning Research
and Practice have published 23% of all the references highlighting an apparent concentra-
tion around this topic. The academic foci of these journals suggest the multidisciplinary
nature of the concept of ‘cultural and creative cluster’ as they cover disciplines such as
planning, geography, urban and regional studies, architecture, cultural studies and policy
(see Figure 4). While 35% of the publications are associated with geography, 23% with
urban and regional studies and 21% with planning, more than 10% of publications are
published in journals associated with policy, cultural studies and economics and more than
5% with business, sociology and architecture. Other disciplines include information science,
tourism, environmental science, education, engineering…. These findings show how CCC
as objects of study cross various theoretical underpinnings. This multi-disciplinarity could
explain in part the conceptual overlaps and transfers discussed in the previous section.

4. In-depth analysis: the 48 most cited papers (>10)

The statistical overview offered in the previous section raise interesting findings and
questions that we explored in more depth by looking at the 48 most cited papers within
our database.
308 C. CHAPAIN AND D. SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

Figure 3. Journal with more than one publication on CCC – 226 references.

Figure 4. Disciplines of the publications – 226 references.

4.1. Year of publication, geography and disciplines of the papers

Among our database, 48 journal articles had been cited more than 10 times up to
April 2015. The distribution of the paper across time follows the distribution of the
main database with more than 60% of the papers having been published since 2007. The
earliest papers published in the 1980s and 1990s, despite their longevity, record between
20 and 80 citation whereas the most recent papers published after 2011 record between 10
and 50 citations; the latter can be explained partly due to the more limited time lag. The
 URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE 309

two most cited papers, however, date from the early 2000s: a paper by Graeme Evans in
the UK published in 2003 (cited 232 times) and another one by Hans Mommas in the
Netherlands published in 2004 (cited 196 times). Eight out of the 12 papers with more
than 50 citations originate from the UK – highlighting the British influence within the
CCC debate. This geographical dominance echoes the overall database but seems to be
more marked within the most cited papers. 80% of these papers originate from Europe;
half from the UK or Ireland and 17% from Italy. The rest comes from either North
America and Australia (14%) and then Asia (6%). This highlights the origin and pre-
dominance of this concept in the Western World and principally Europe with Asia
catching up and a marked absence of other countries and continents yet in terms of the
circulation and spread of ideas (as measured in terms of citation).
While the multi-disciplinary aspect of the debate is still present within these papers,
we observe more consistency in terms of disciplines with 42% of them having been
written by planners, 19% by geographers and 26% by economists or business academics.

4.2. Methodologies
These papers display various methodologies and research approaches even though
many are not always very explicit about their methods. Nineteen per cent of the papers
primarily consist in a review of the literature. The remaining papers are based on a wide
array of research epistemologies: 35% use an inductive approach, 25% a deductive one
and 21% use mixed methods; nevertheless, qualitative research design tend to prevail
(50%) with only 31% of papers adopting a quantitative approach. In addition, the great
majority of papers offer either a case study analysis (56%) or a comparative case study
analysis (27%). Most (90%) analyse secondary data with only 40% offering some
primary data gathering. Interestingly, these papers tend to study creative clustering
through a longitudinal perspective (73%); this is consistent with a case study analysis
approach but also with the focus of many papers on policy analysis. However, heur-
istically, a minority of papers offer a clear analytical and theoretical framework to
examine the CCC concept (42%) with only 63% making the effort to provide a clear
definition of the concept they study. This lack of clear theoretical underpinning may be
due to the high level of multi-disciplinarity displayed by the majority of authors. This
suggests a difficulty in comprehending CCC as an object of study in using only one
disciplinary perspective but may render more difficult the assemblage of theories from
distinctive fields. Indeed, only one quarter of the papers present some new theoretical
development with regard to the concept offering either new definitions (25%) and/or
a form of cluster typology (13%). Multi-disciplinarity is often a challenging exercise to
practice. However, we may deplore that many papers simply offer a recount of the
development of one cluster within a particular city with a focus on regeneration and
policy process, not always testing any hypothesis or offering any theorisation after-
wards. As a consequence, we tend to be in the presence of a collection of very disparate
stories which does not help in dressing a clear theoretical overview of the phenomenon
in question.
310 C. CHAPAIN AND D. SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

4.3. Scale and geographical location of the CCC studied

A look at the scale associated with the CCC studied show that 65% of the 48 most cited
papers tend to consider only one geographical scale with regard to their object of study;
the rest associating more than one scale. Among these, the most common ones are
either the neighbourhood scale (42%) or the city scale (30%); other scales include more
micro levels such as building (3%) and street (7%) or more macro levels such as sub-
regional (13%) or regional (5%) scales. This demonstrates that, in general, cultural and
creative clusters are understood as mostly happening within a restricted scale but that
they seem to cover very diverse geographical dynamics as well, with predominance for
neighbourhood and cities.
An examination of the creative cluster case studies examined within these papers also
indicates an over-dominance of Western examples, and thus some questions arise with
regard to the applicability of these papers’ findings across other geographical contexts.
Indeed, the great majority of creative clusters mentioned or examined in the 48 most
cited papers are either from the UK (46%) or the rest of Europe (44%). Nevertheless,
19% of the examples are from the Canada or the USA, 13% from Asia and there are
some examples from Australia (2%) and the Middle East (2%). These are overall located
within an urban area or constitute a city as a whole; the most frequent examples (at
least present twice) being in London, Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow, Birmingham,
Belfast, Dublin, Dundee, Berlin, Barcelona, New York, Toronto, Singapore and Beijing.
This suggests an over-dominance of medium or large metropolitan areas.

4.4. Concepts and definitions

The usage of our key concepts across the 48 most cited papers confirm the predominance of
the terms cultural quarter, cultural district and cultural and/or creative cluster. However,
the majority of these papers (58%) tend to only use one term to designate CCC, suggesting
again more consistency in terms of terminology. In addition, we note a higher dominance
of the term cultural quarter (33% versus 20%) and a lesser presence of creative cluster (16%
versus 25%) compared to the main database. Part of these differences could be explained by
the fact that it is less likely that the most cited papers would be the most recent papers – as
such, the recent popularity of ‘creative industries’ and ‘cluster’ identified in the overall
database could be downplayed here. In addition, this may reflect the more importance
dominance of planning and geographic disciplinary perspectives within these most cited
papers versus economic or business compared to the overall database.
Only 60% of these most cited works make the effort to provide a definition of the CCC
concepts they use. Amongst these papers, only 40% offer new definitions, so only a quarter
of all these papers. This confirms the lack of theorisation within this literature mentioned
above, when looking at the preponderance of narrative description of particular case studies
in terms of methodology. Nevertheless, a detailed analysis of the papers that include some
definitional effort about their object of study reveals some interesting trends and insights on
the understanding of CCC and its various conceptual declinations.
Overall, this analysis shows that out of the three concepts there seems to be a greater
consensus around the term of cultural/creative district. Ten out of the 20 papers which
mention cultural/creative districts offer a definition of their concepts. Most of these
 URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE 311

works seem to derive from a transposition of the model of the 1970’s Italian industrial
district describing the industrial production system developed by small firms from
similar or related industry in specific places and their relationship with the local cultural
and knowledge. Within these publications, the work of Santagata (2002, 11) has been
quite seminal in defining the notion of cultural district i.e. ‘Cultural districts are defined
by the production of idiosyncratic goods based on creativity and intellectual property.
The movie industry, the audio-visual sector, the extensive domain of industrial design
and the production of arts and crafts, museum services and the eno-gastronomic
complex all draw their inspiration from some cultural link with their original commu-
nity.’ Similar understanding can be found in the definitions offered by Lazzerretti
(2003), Mizzau and Montanari (2008), Ponzini (2009), Bader and Sharenberg (2010),
Arnaboldi and Spiller (2010) and Markusen and Gadwa (2010) with some indicating
the work of Santagata as a starting point. A couple of works (Currier 2008; Zukin and
Braslow 2011) break apart from this relative homogenous understanding of the notion
of cultural district and characterise them as places where artists live or where they can
meet their audience or place where they can express their differences offering a less
economic and more cultural and social underpinning to their development. Finally,
cultural/creative districts can be either planned or organic initiatives.
The term of cultural quarter seems to also benefit from some relative coherent
understanding with a number of works providing some overlapping conceptual char-
acterisation (Brown, O’Connor, and Cohen 2000; Newman and Smith 2000;
Wansborough and Magean, 2000; Montgomery 2004; McCarthy, 2005, 2006a, 2006b;
Ponzini 2009; O’Connor and Gu 2010). The term quarter in itself denotes the impor-
tance of a geographical location of cultural activities within an easily delimited territory
or administrative unit. Initial popular definitions produced in the 2000s by urban
planners and designers such as Wansborough and Magean (2000) define these as
geographical concentrations of cultural activities with a number of key characteristics
i.e. a central and inner-city location, a mix of cultural facilities providing both cultural
production and consumption activities with ideally linkages between them, mixed usage
in terms of economic diversity of businesses, and the presence of public arts. O’Connor
and Gu (2010, 126) specify that the notion of cultural quarters emerged within the
regeneration agenda of the 1980s and that it may encompass various models but that
‘They stressed the benefits of colocation for both production and consumption; the mix
of public and private actors; diverse leisure, retail, and entertainment offers; and a wider
concern with their contribution to, and benefit from, the image of the city within which
they were located.’ Mc Carthy (2006a, 2006b and 2006), a prolific researcher in this
area, adds that these cultural quarters are expected to lead to long term economic
synergies. Montgomery (2004) insists on the role of educational institutions whereas
Ponzini (2009) focuses on the preservation of cultural heritage. Finally, Newman and
Smith (2000) emphasises that this local cultural production sits within global produc-
tion networks. In doing so, they situate cultural quarters within a more global dynamic
of attraction, branding and city positioning.
In contrast, the cultural/creative cluster notion seems to display a much wider array
of definitions and understanding. Within the nine papers which offer some definition of
cultural/creative cluster, many tend to associate this concept with the Porterian rhetoric
of economic cluster linked to the notion of economies of agglomeration and value chain
312 C. CHAPAIN AND D. SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

(Bayliss 2007; Evans, 2009b; Ponzini 2009; O’Connor and Gu 2010). As such, these
papers focus more on the cultural/creative production side. However, Evans (2009b)
highlights some confusion in this understanding between the spatial clustering of
cultural activities and the existence of actual economic relationships between them
whereas Zheng (2010) and Zhao (2010) suggest some issue in the transfer of this
concept in China with some potential overlap with the notion of ‘“cultural quarters”
referred to by Montgomery (2003, 2004) or the “cultural clusters” of Mommaas (2004)
found in Western countries’ (Zhao 2010, 76–77, 84). The paper from Stern and Seifert
(2010) also depart from the Porterian notion to something resembling more the notion
of cultural quarter i.e. favouring both cultural production and consumption and a wider
remit encompassing economic, cultural and social dynamics. In contrast, Gospodini
(2006) use the term creative cluster, more in a geographical and urban planning sense,
to characterise the emergence of redevelopment projects in the urban landscape either
in the centre, inner city or peripheries and including various economic activities
including cultural ones. Finally, while Mommas (2004) does not necessarily offer
a definition of cultural cluster per se, he constructs a detailed typology of what he
calls cultural clusters; his work has been quite influential in the field. Nevertheless, his
typology is based on specific types of cultural clusters i.e. local strategies of development
or redevelopment around cultural activities led by public and/or private actors. In this
sense, the concept of cultural clusters proposed by Mommas has more affinity with the
notion of cultural quarters mentioned previously.
Across the three concepts, while there is an acknowledgment that some of the
clustering phenomena studied are organic, many relate to public and top-down initia-
tives. In addition, while there seems to be a degree of coherence amongst some key
authors in terms of their understanding, others use these concepts in completely
different ways, sometimes, without necessarily explaining or justifying their choice of
terminology, thus generating confusion and overlap. At times, this can be explained by
their different disciplinary approaches (geography, urban planning or economics) or
geographical origins and thus the locational contexts within which they study these
clusters/quarters/districts. However, this contributes to the confusion surrounding
CCC. Addressing this contextual issue in a more systematic way would be an interesting
avenue for further research.

4.5. Main themes within these most cited papers

An analysis of the themes mentioned and analysed within these papers demonstrates
that they touch upon a number of dimensions from (1) conceptual and development/
typology; (2) economic value chain and the influence of the territory, milieu of
innovation and networks; (3) global positioning, city attractiveness, tourism (4) urban
regeneration, policy analysis, governance and policy evaluation and transfer . These
dimensions are not mutually exclusive and confirm that the CCC concept is at the
crossover of various avenues of enquiry and analytical dimensions.
More specifically, an overwhelming majority of papers (83%) tend to present a form
of policy analysis of cluster initiative and/or consider the production side of the cluster
i.e. how the cluster is the location of cultural and creative production in a wider sense
including heritage and museum activities. The rhetoric of creative clustering within
 URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE 313

these papers seems to be strongly related to urbanisation effects (71% of the papers) and
cultural idiosyncracies (69%) and on how public and private actors are organised in
terms of governance (69%). Other themes touch upon issues around urban develop-
ment i.e. how clusters are fostering local attractivity for residents, create gentrification,
or are part of large development or flagship projects or tourism. Around two-third of
papers consider a more economical approach studying issues of value chain, atractivity
and social networking. Interestingly, more than half of the papers focus their analysis
on process of regeneration, usually associated with a cluster policy analysis or examine
to what extent clustering is linked to cultural consumption and branding. Only 46% of
the papers include a global dimension in their analysis with as little as 23% looking at
global networking. This suggests that the local dynamic is quite crucial when looking at
creative clustering, confirming our findings on the scales associated with CCC.
Overall, despite a number of overlaps, two broad themes seem to emerge which we
discuss in the next two sections.

4.5.1. Economic dynamics of clusters, globalization and urban change

The question of the economic foundations and the dynamics of cultural clusters is
discussed in 17 of the 48 papers but it is rarely the central objective of the article. With
few exceptions, these articles make little reference to the economic theory of industrial
clusters. This is probably due to the fact that our database did not take into account the
articles including in their title, summary or keywords expressions like ‘media clusters’,
‘music clusters’, etc. These works may have a greater tendency to use analysis inspired by
business economics (see Karlson and Picard (2011) for an example about media clusters);
if they were included, this could change our results slightly. However, this denotes that
CCC as a field of study may need a more multidisciplinary approach to reflect the variety
of cultural and creative sectors involved and their distinctive relationship with the
territory as demonstrated in in-depth analysis of their geographical concentrations (see
Chapain et al. 2010, for example). As such, many papers, while examining these economic
dynamics, also study associated cultural and social dynamics.
Most of these articles are based on case studies, using existing documents and/or
qualitative interviews. Some mobilise quantitative data to measure cluster dynamics and
evaluate their performance but they are few in number. For example, in a Krugmanian
perspective (1991), Lazeretti et al. (2008) analyse the concentration of cultural and
creative industries in Spain and Italy and demonstrate the strong attractiveness of large
cities for these activities. Alternatively, studying the case of Philadelphia, Stern and
Seifert (2010) distinguish neighbourhoods in terms of their high concentration of
cultural activities and test the relationship between these concentrations and neighbour-
hoods’ economic performance across the city. In a more targeted way, Hellmanzik
(2010), using art prize auction databases, shows that artists who have worked in large
art scenes tend to benefit from an earlier career than more isolated artists.
The papers using qualitative or mixed methods approaches can be split in three
categories. A first series of articles analyses the conditions of appearance and development
of CCC. They mainly adopt a Porterian perspective, by analysing the production and value
chain of these CCC in a context of globalisation. They highlight the territorial factors that
encourage an agglomeration process (history, social structure, shared values …) (Van Heur
2008; Bader and Scharenberg, 2010). The development of such clusters in metropolitan
314 C. CHAPAIN AND D. SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

areas of various sizes are the subject of numerous papers either looking at one industry for
an entire city such as Basset et al. (2002) on Bristol or particular neighbourhoods within
a city such as Vang and Chaminade 2007) on Liberty Village in Toronto. A few authors
focus more particularly on rural areas such as Mizzau and Montanari (2008) on the
Piedmont district in Italy.
Beyond strictly economic dynamics, several articles adopt a systemic approach to
analyse the relations between the agglomeration of creative enterprises and the overall
dynamics of a territory (Crewe and Beaverstock 1998; Brown, O’Connor, and Cohen
2000; Lazzeretti 2003; Chapain and Comunian 2010). ‘Rather than only considering the
importance of the clustering dimension of creative firms, it seems more important to
focus on the wider system that enables and supports the development of creative
individuals and their activities in a specific urban and regional context’ (Chapain et
Comunian, 2010, 721). Studying the case of the Lace Market Quartier in Notthingham,
Crewe and Beaverstock (1998) examine the links between cultural production and
consumption and lifestyle in such creative neighbourhoods while Brown, O’Connor,
and Cohen (2000) point out, using the examples of Manchester (Northern Quarter) and
Sheffield (Cultural Industries Quarter), how networks and third places – where innova-
tion may be tested – play an important role in the economic development of these
neighbourhoods, more than public policies and facilities: ‘It is these `scenes’, `milieus’,
`happening places’ which are the real context for a local music industry rather than
`facilities’. The exchange of knowledge and information is accompanied by a validation,
a testing of product’. (ibid.: p446).
A second group of qualitative or mixed methods contributions insist on the trans-
formation of artistic districts into places of attractiveness for the ‘creative class’ or
tourists. They highlight the transformation of organic cultural clusters dominated by
logics of production in ‘cultural quarter’ marked by logics of consumption. Zukin and
Braslow (2011) in describing the life cycle of creative neighbourhoods in New York,
reveal a dynamic that sees artistic production gradually replaced by creative consump-
tion services such as luxury shops, art galleries, trendy cafes …) in some gentrification
process. Pratt (2009) finds the same evolution in the Hoxton district in London whereas
a similar dynamic is observed in some Asian cities such as Beijing (Currier 2008) but
with some distinctive features linked to the Chinese context. The potential conflicts
between locals and tourists that these processes may generate are pointed out by Teo
and Huang (1995, 611) early on who studied the development of the Civic and Cultural
District in Singapore: ‘The museumization of places may cater to tourist taste and
preferences, but Singaporeans feel alienated from erstwhile vernacular places’. From
this point of view, the article appears as a forerunner of works that compare develop-
ment strategies based on the attractiveness of tourists or new residents and those more
biased towards the needs of residents.
A third group of qualitative and mixed methods contribution has as main objective
a reflection on the contemporary city as a ‘milieu’ of innovation and creativity in the
new knowledge economy and study the place of artistic activities in these cities and
economies. They partially overlap the papers that propose a systematic approach of
CCC. These works are mainly theoretical and often take the form of a critical survey of
the literature (Richard 2011; Stock, 2011; Pilaty and Tremblay, 2007). They present the
genealogy of city theories, define and compare different concepts mobilised to describe
 URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE 315

the contemporary city or the transformations of contemporary economies and tend to

deepen one in particular within their papers: Advanced Cultural District (Pilaty and
Trembaly, 2007), City of Arts (Lazzeretti 2003), Informational City (Stock, 2011), value
chain (Pratt 2008), creative tourism (Richard 2011), etc. These papers mobilise three
theoretical corpuses: the information city inspired by Manuel Castells (1989, 2010), the
creative cities in line with the works of Jane Jacobs (1961) and Richard Florida (2002) or
the creative clusters in reference to Michael Porter (1998).

4.5.2. Urban regeneration policies, place making, branding, governance and

gentrification
More than half of the papers focus on issues linked to urban regeneration, place making
and branding policies as well as their governance implications. Amongst these, the great
majority focus on this topic only. The remaining papers also discuss some of the other
economic and/or cultural and social dimensions mentioned in the previous section.
While some CCC emerged organically and are then supported by some policies, many
have been implemented and developed through public initiative as a main tool for the
regeneration or redevelopment of some former industrial or derelict areas.
Some papers (Montgomery 1995, 2003, 2004; Evans 2009b; Markusen and Gadwa
2010) offer more systematic overview of CCC policies or their use in fostering cultural,
economic and urban planning development with some effort at classification and
theorisation, emphasising some specific issues. Other authors either describe or exam-
ine particular initiatives by looking at single case studies (Newman and Smith 2000; De
Franz, 2005; Mc Carthy 2005; Bayliss 2007; Porter and Barber 2007; Cartier 2008;
Mizzau and Montanari 2008; Sabate and Toroni, 2008; Catungal, Leslie, and Hii
2009; Gwee 2009; Ponzini 2009, 2011; O’Connor and Gu 2010; Wansborough and
Mageean, 2000; Zheng 2010;; Zhao 2010) or comparative case studies (Montgomery
2004; Hemphil et al., 2004; Mc Carthy 2005, 2006a) with various degrees of
theorisation.
CCC initiatives have been used as a tool within many local cultural industries
policies across the World (Evans 2009b). Evans (2009b, 1013) notes that these policies,
however, tend to focus on ‘emergent and still dependent on public expenditures’
clusters and to be part of urban regeneration, conservation/heritage or cultural tourism
strategies. However, some authors distinguish between ‘building-centred approaches’
where cultural quarters are mostly associated with developing infrastructure and flag-
ship projects versus ‘people-centred approaches’ which reconcile cultural production
and consumption around some key activities (Newman and Smith 2000). Both
approaches can also be combined.
Many contributions come from an urban planning perspective and examine how
CCC contribute to urban regeneration mechanisms. In a series of seminal papers,
Montgomery (1995, 2003, 2004) examines what makes cultural quarter’s strategies
successful and develops an analytical framework to characterise their necessary condi-
tions and success factors with regard to (1) their constituting activities, (2) their built
form and (3) the meaning attached to them. How to design the built environment
(urban design, public art…) to support cultural regeneration and the development of
cultural quarters is also the focus of Wansborough and Mageean (2000), Mc Carthy
(2005, 2006a), Sabate and Tironi (2008)… Some argue, however, that the cultural image
316 C. CHAPAIN AND D. SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

promoted through these interventions may not always correspond to the local identity
of the area in question if it does not take into account its heritage and history (Mc
Carthy 2005, 2006a). Within this literature, the development of CCC around major
flagship projects is also debated both in terms of the reconciliation of the newly local
image promoted with the area original characteristics but also in terms of the potential
conflicts between this local image and global city positioning (De Frantz 2005; Sabate
and Tironi 2008; Ponzini 2011).
Many papers clearly illustrate the issues and conflicts that such projects can generate
and analyse the policy processes and the mechanisms put in place to support the
convergence of the interests of the actors involved in their development. This is why
Ponzini (2009) points towards the need to recognise the role of existing cultural policy
networks within the implementation of these projects and why a majority of contribu-
tions examine the related governance arrangements put in place i.e. Newman and Smith
(2000), Catungal, Leslie, and Hii (2009), etc. Some like Porter and Barber (2007) discuss
the types of strategies that the public sector can adopt in this process i.e. ‘hands-off’ or
‘hands-on’ and what these could look like in practice in terms of planning governance.
They recommend an inclusive governance, i.e. the involvement of a wide spectrum of
creative and local actors, within ‘people-centred approaches’. O’Connor and Gu (2010)
suggest the creation of specific intermediary agencies to mediate between creative
people and policy makers within these processes. Finally, Mc Carthy (2006b) recom-
mends, like other authors, (1) some flexibility in the forms that cultural quarters’
strategies are implemented to better accommodate local needs and circumstances and
(2) an acknowledgment that both formal and informal/organic forms can work.
Nevertheless, while many contributions describe and analyse CCC policies, some
authors point towards the need for more evaluation of these policies from the start.
Markusen and Gadwa (2010), for example, argue that more research should be carried
out to estimate the costs, risks and impacts of these policies before they are implemen-
ted and suggest that their outcomes should be monitored more closely with regard to
their implicit and explicit original intents to better inform policy makers. In this vein,
some papers take a more evaluative stance and either develop evaluative framework
(Hemphill, McGreal, and Berry 2004) or examine in details the failure of specific policy
induced cluster (Bayliss 2007). Findings from these contributions suggest that such
policy initiatives need to better build on the creative capacity on the ground, be realistic
in terms of their objectives and recognise the complexity required in fostering such
creative milieu while also acknowledging the role of luck in the success of such projects.
Finally, a number of papers study the development of cultural/creative quarter, district
and cluster in Beijing (Currier 2008; Zhao 2010) and Shanghai (Zheng 2010) in China, and
in Singapore (Gwee 2009). Interestingly, these papers demonstrate some similarities in the
way some of these organic initiatives emerged and are then supported by policy makers but
may lead to some distinctive redevelopment processes, notably in terms of gentrification as
discussed above (Currier 2008). Finally, CCC initiatives implemented by local governments
in China tend to be marked by a more ‘entrepreneurial’ approach of the state where these
public initiatives are designed to generate revenue, leading the local government to play the
role of a market player (Zheng 2010; Zhao 2010). In addition, some of these policies are
conceived with a wider economic remit i.e. to support creativity and innovation with some
amalgamation with the development of knowledge-based clusters, like in Singapore (Gwee
 URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE 317

2009). These papers suggest a need for further research on the transfer of these concepts
and policies within the Asian context but also in the emerging literature from Latin
America and the Middle East.

5. Discussion and conclusion: developing a clearer research framework

and approach to study CCC and a renewed research agenda
This systematic review and analysis of the literature on the CCC phenomenon offers
a thorough understanding and critical overview of the Anglophone (mostly) literature
published on this topic since the mid-80’s. This SLR reveals an important lack of
coherence in terms of the various concepts used to study this object of study and
a great variety of understandings, themes and dimensions associated with CCC pointing
to some weaknesses and gaps in terms of its overall theorisation. These gaps and
weaknesses are often accompanied with a lack of clarity in the methodological approach
put forward to analyse CCC.
Some of these findings can be explained by the high degree of multi-disciplinarity
characterising the researchers examining CCC and the theories and analytical themes
they mobilised as well as the increasing spread of the CCC concepts to a variety of national
contexts, adding to the complexity of its application. We could argue that the use and
combination of various disciplines can be relevant to study a social sciences phenomenon
such as CCC. Indeed, the various themes and issues touched upon by CCC’s researchers
have helped shed some light on its multiple facets. Nevertheless, we feel that the lack of
precision and preamble to a number of multidisciplinary studies about their approach and
the loose borrowing of concepts from one discipline to another with little explanations and
clear boundary settings observed in many contributions has rendered the CCC field
confusing and lacking in continuity, ultimately hindering its progress. This is why, based
on this SLR, we propose a research framework that we suggest researchers who wish to
study CCC should follow to support a more coherent development and a better theoretical
understanding and underpinning of this object of study in the future. This research
framework is presented in Figure 5 and includes four main components that researchers
should clarify in their studies while examining CCC: (1) concepts and definitions (2)
disciplinary approach (3) themes studied and (4) research methods. While these four
components are intrinsically linked as they influence each other, we will discuss them in
turn below and indicate avenues for further research within each of them.

5.1. CCC concepts and definitions

Our findings indicate how the usage of the various concepts used to describe CCC have
varied over time with some unequal distribution across countries. These two trends
may be explained by (1) the popularity of either the cultural industries versus creative
industries’ terminology within the country considered and/or (2) the dominance of
economic or planning approaches and related theoretical underpinnings to apprehend
the spatial clustering of cultural and creative activities. This, in turn, can influence how
this clustering is mostly apprehended and labelled within each specific country i.e.
‘quarter’, ‘district’ or ‘cluster’. In addition, over time, we notice a shift from ‘cultural’ to
‘creative’ and from ‘quarter’ and ‘district’ to ‘cluster’ in the terminology to designate
318 C. CHAPAIN AND D. SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

1. CCC concepts and definitions

1. Coming back to tried and consensual 2. Disciplinary approach

definitions
- Quarter [Urban planning, see Montgomery (2003)]
1. Be clear about the positioning of the
- District [economic geography, see Santagata (2002) or research in terms of uni-, multi-, trans- and
cultural studies/planning such as Zukin and Braslow
(2011)] post-disciplinarity
- Cluster [economy and economic geography inspired by 2. Discuss the interdisciplinary challenges of
Porter (1998)] studying CCC in a more systematic way both
- Other [administrative terminology, etc.] epistemologically and methodologically
2. Testing and applying these definitions and
concepts in new contexts in a more systematic
way
3. Better associating concepts, disciplines and
research questions when doing so

Towards a
clearer research
framework to
analyse CCC and
a renewed
research agenda

4. Main research themes

1) Conceptual and development/typology
- Need to expand on existing typologies
3. Methodology
2) Economic value chain and the influence of
1. More clarity on the methodological the territory, milieu of innovation and
approach chosen to study CCC and the networks
theoretical implications of their work
- Need to develop more systematic methodology and
2. Identifying and evaluating the different indicators and their replication across studies as well as
methods used by scholars and by discipline longitudinal analyses as well as impact studies of CCC
(quantitiative or qualitative) 3) Global positioning, city attractiveness,
3. Developing more quantitative and tourism
comparative works - Need to develop more works on the tourism challenges
4. Going beyond single case study approach of CCC
and issues of generalisation 4) Urban regeneration, policy analysis,
governance and policy evaluation and transfer.
- Need for more evaluative works on CCC policies and on
the conflicts between actors (creative workers, real
estate, politics, inhabitants...) and objectives (Economic,
social, urban planning, cultural)

Figure 5. Towards a clearer research framework to analyse CCC and a renewed research agenda.
 URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE 319

CCC. This reflects the rise of both the creative industries and the cluster discourses
across the World and the increasing popularity of development strategies based on an
economic understanding of the role of culture within society.
At times, a shift in terminology to qualify an object of study may be the sign of
greater conceptual clarity and understanding of this object. However, this does not
seem to be the case in this instance as the emergence of new CCC concepts has not
often been associated with proper definitions or conceptual discussion and some new
concepts are used interchangeably with old ones. As such, we seem to be in the presence
of an increasing conceptual fuzziness. Considering this, we would suggest that research-
ers should be more stringent in their use of specific CCC concepts and in the devel-
opment of new ones. To do so, we would argue that it would be important to build on
the few contributions in the field that have offered concrete and recognised definitional
and conceptualisation exercises or at least take them as point of departure for future
changes, elaboration and discussion. The issue seems to be less related to the usage of
either the terms ‘cultural’ or ‘creative’. While the term creative tend to be more
encompassing but also more vague, the adoption of either of these terms has been
associated with specific national understandings and definitions of what the cultural
and creative industries encompass. While still debated, these definitions and under-
standings have more standing today as discussed previously in the article. Alternatively,
the increasing usage of the term cluster instead of ‘quarter’ or ‘district’ seems to have
generated much more confusion.
Through our SLR, we have broadly identified that, historically, two main schools of
thoughts have primarily studied CCCs, starting in the 1990s and spreading in the 2000s.
In the United Kingdom, the industrial decline provoked earlier on the appearance of
wastelands on the outskirts of city centres quickly then invested by artists and later on
subject to urban redevelopment strategies focusing on cultural activities. Urban plan-
ners have then started to study the cultural and social dynamics driven by the redeve-
lopment programs of some of these areas whereas economists have begun to measure
the economic weight of cultural industries to support these developments. London,
Manchester, Sheffield and other UK core cities have been the subject of numerous
studies examining the planning processes and the governance associated with these
programs/strategies and/or highlighting the effects of attractiveness, economic renewal
and at times gentrification associated with this new artistic/cultural specialisation. These
studies tend to echo earlier works from Jacob (1969) and Zukin (1982) on economies of
urbanisation. These contributions use the concept of ‘cultural quarter’ and tend to be
more planning oriented. Looking across these works (see Section 4.4.), cultural quarters
can overall be understood as easily delimited physical concentrations of cultural
activities with the aim to foster cultural production and/or consumption through the
advantages of economies of urbanisation (i.e. diversity and mixed usage); as such they
mix a variety of cultural activities and public and private actors as well as other related
activities such as entertainment and leisure and can be associated with regeneration,
urban design, branding and tourism strategies. Amongst these studies, we would
suggest that the work by Wansborough and Mageean (2000) and a seminal series of
papers by Montgomery (2003, 2004) stand out in offering some key factors and detailed
indicators to characterise these quarters applied and tested on UK, Irish and Australian
320 C. CHAPAIN AND D. SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

case studies. These more systematic conceptual works would be worth reinvesting and
tested today in new contexts.
Parallel to these works, as discussed in Section 4.4, a second school of thoughts has
developed around the concept of cultural district, hugely influenced by the Italian
notion of industrial district introduced in the 1970s. The initial objective of the
industrial district concept was to analyse the specific economic dynamics created by
the embedding of organisational networks of firms and individuals within variable-scale
economic spaces called districts, with reference to Alfred Marshall’s economic founding
works. The assumption was that these geographically situated networks were based on
economies of scales and mostly resulted from private dynamics. This approach has then
been transposed to the cultural industries and has resulted in a very economical
approach to CCCs as cultural districts i.e. places of cultural ‘production of idiosyncratic
goods based on creativity and intellectual property’ that ‘draw their inspiration from
some cultural link with their original community’ as defined by Santagata (2002,11).
Much of the works on cultural districts tend to focus on value chain analyses and
economic performance even though, as with the research on industrial district over
time, there has been an increasing recognition of the influence of both public and
private actors within them. Amongst this school of thought, the work of Santagata
(2002) does in fact stands out by its real effort at theorisation and typologisation of
cultural districts both organic and planned and, as such, should be taken as a point of
departure for further research aiming to examine CCC using a more economical
approach. Alternatively, more social and cultural analysis of the notion of cultural
district could build on the work of Currier (2008) and Zukin and Braslow (2011)
even though their conceptual discussion is more limited.
We would argue that these two long-standing principal schools of thoughts and their
manifestations have historically produced two relatively coherent approaches to the
analysis of CCC, still relevant today. The emergence of the concept of cultural/creative
cluster within the field of CCCs seems to be more the result of the fashionable use that
the term cluster and the economic Porterian approach of competitive advantage has
had in economic discourse in the past 20 years rather than an heuristic breakthrough
with regard to the understanding of CCCs in general. Our detailed analysis of the most
cited works produced on cultural/creative cluster highlights that authors have indeed
used this concept to label what was either understood as a quarter or as a district
previously in the literature without necessarily adding more to either of these original
concepts. Obviously, it is important to acknowledge and recognise the growth in the
usage of ‘cultural and creative clusters’ terminology and the popularity of the Porterian
rhetoric in the policy discourse and to analyse what these clusters are from an academic
point of view and if they are really a new phenomenon. Nevertheless, we feel that, in
doing so, researchers should make more of an effort to build on and refer back to the
more established notions of ‘district’ and ‘quarter’ to understand the extent to which
this new concept is more useful or relevant in characterising and understanding the
‘new’ agglomeration of cultural and creative activities, be they organic or planned. At
the moment, only a couple of the most cited works in the field have offered some
elements of conceptual distinction between cultural/creative quarter, district or cluster
(Ponzini 2009; O’Connor and Gu 2010; Zhao 2010). Overall, Ponzini (2009) and
O’Connor and Gu (2010) tend to amalgamate the terms of ‘district’ and ‘cluster’
 URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE 321

under the same banner i.e. an economic understanding and characterisation of the
agglomeration of cultural/creative activities in space and contrast it to the notion of
‘quarter’ understood within a planning perspective as discussed above. In contrast,
Zhao (2010) implies that what are labelled as creative clusters in Beijing may actually
have more connection with the notion of cultural quarters as defined by Montgomery
(2003). Therefore, it is clear that the CCC field would truly benefit from more works
offering detailed theoretical and conceptual discussions of the three terms based on
empirical evidence reflecting the increased number of CCC examples across the World.
These works may need to address the challenges of interdisciplinary and comparative
methodologies that such studies require nevertheless.

5.2. Disciplinary approach

Our discussion in the previous section suggests that researchers who wish to study CCC
should: (1) be more stringent in their usage of the terminology that they use i.e. quarter,
district, cluster, (2) be clearer about their definitions of such concept and (3) take as
points of departure the two more established and coherent approaches developed so far
in the field i.e. the one developed around the concept of ‘cultural/creative quarter’ and
the one around the concept of ‘cultural/creative district’. However, as mentioned, these
two more coherent and established concepts can be broadly associated with particular
disciplinary approaches and analysis. This mono-disciplinarity may actually be an issue
and may explain the intent to develop new terminology using the cluster concept in
recent years. As both our statistical and in-depth analysis suggest, CCC as an object of
study covers a numbers of cultural, economic, social and political dimensions which
require the mobilisation of various disciplinary understandings to fully comprehend its
manifestations. Taking this into account, some would even argue that a post-
disciplinarity approach as put forward by Jessop and Sum (2001) i.e. one which ‘rejects
disciplinary conceptualisation of knowledge by surmounting disciplinary boundaries
and limitations to examine social phenomena from philosophical beginning to logical
ends, rather than to the border of a particular, or even multiple, disciplines.’ (Pocock n.
d.: 4) maybe more appropriate to understand and study CCC given its complexity.
However, the apparent increasing post-disciplinarity of the field in recent years
seems to have created more confusion and to hinder the development of a unified
and coherent domain of study with the borrowing of terms whose initial theoretical
foundations are then forgotten or used with little depth. Given this increasing confusion
but in the presence of historical coherent disciplinary approaches, we would argue, that,
in studying CCC, researchers should embrace an interdisciplinarity approach. However,
they would need to be more explicit about it and make the effort to explain clearly
where they are starting from and which form of interdisciplinarity approach they are
using in doing so: from the juxtaposition of disciplines (multidisciplinarity), sharing,
combination or integration of disciplinary tools and principles (cross-disciplinarity) to
their transcendence (transdisciplinarity) – see the useful work of Miller (1982). Indeed,
in most works published on CCC, few authors actually discuss or deal with the issue of
intersdisciplinarity even though many of them assemble or bring together concepts and
theories from various disciplines. A more open and rigorous reflection and discussion
on how these authors approach interdisciplinarity and their needs to do so to
322 C. CHAPAIN AND D. SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

understand CCC would be much more valuable and helpful in the development of the
field. Multidisciplinarity and cross-disciplinarity approaches would be particularly help-
ful in contrasting, comparing and adding to the current conceptual discussion around
the terms of cultural/creative quarter, district and cluster and to their applications in the
real world. More rigorous multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary studies could then
lead to a more coherent understanding and theorisation of CCC as a recognised
complex object of study, potentially leading to some more transdisciplinary explana-
tions. Considering this, it would be interesting if some future contributions aim to
explore in depth the challenges of multidisciplinarity both epistemologically and meth-
odologically when exploring and analysing CCC.

5.3. Research methods

As for the lack of discussion on how each paper addresses the question of multidiscipli-
narity, many of the most cited papers give very few information about their methodology
as discussed in Section 4.2. Indeed, our SLR revealed clear methodological issues and
weaknesses to address to enhance the development of the field. Few papers offer clear
analytical framework or discussion with many relating the development of one case study
with little effort at theorisation afterwards. Much works are not necessarily offering
primary evidence and the field tend to be dominated by qualitative analysis.
Considering this, we would suggest that researchers working on CCC need to make
a particular effort, in addition to defining their concepts and terms, to justifying their
methodology and to providing the theoretical implications of their works more clearly.
In addition, it would be helpful to have researchers building on each other methods or
methodological approaches to ease comparison across papers and data. Alternatively, it
would be helpful if more comparative works were undertaken in the future as the field
tend to be dominated by single case studies; this would be particularly helpful to assess
the extent to which CCC concepts can be applied across distinctive national contexts.
Given the over-dominance of qualitative research in the field, we would recommend
that some effort be made to develop more quantitative approaches. While qualitative
approaches allow an in-depth understanding of particular phenomenon and provide as
such a depth of understanding of the CCC manifestations they examine, more quanti-
tative analyses could lead to the development of transposable indicators and a greater
degree of comparison across research. We would argue that more work is needed to
develop precise indicators to analyse the development of CCC taking into account
dimensions related to all the actors involved (residents, artists, creative enterprises,
other economic activities, tourist…). Among our database, the work of Stern and Seifert
(2010) is an interesting avenue for future research for example. Using different statis-
tical resources, they focus on indicators of the intensity of the cultural scene in
a neighbourhood and analyse the links between these indicators and the neighbourhood
economic, socio-demographic and housing development. They then discussed the
implications for urban planning policies. In a same way, several papers focusing on
gentrification dynamics but not using CCC concepts also propose quantitative methods
trying to correlate cultural amenities with different aspects of urban development (Ley
2003; Grodach, Foster, and Murdoch 2014). Such quantitative work could also support
a more evaluative understanding of the development of CCC over time, taking into
 URBAN RESEARCH & PRACTICE 323

account their life cycle, and potentially unveiling distinctive trajectories and the influ-
ence of policy makers within them in a more systematic way. Obviously, research
methods go hand in hand with the research questions and the themes studied.
Nevertheless, a greater clarity in the choice of these methods and an effort at more
comparative works would greatly benefit the field and its advancement.

5.4. Research themes

The findings from our in-depth SLR have shown that a number of overlapping research
themes have been explored when looking at CCCs (1) conceptual and development/
typology; (2) economic value chain and the influence of the territory, milieu of
innovation and networks; (3) global positioning, city attractiveness, tourism 4) urban
regeneration, policy analysis, governance and policy evaluation and transfer. As dis-
cussed in Section 4.5, some of these themes tend to overlap and some have been
developed quite extensively while other may need further development.
We have already discussed at length the need for further conceptual development
and understanding as well as clear multidisciplinary works, especially looking at con-
ceptual and policy transfers of CCC terms. In addition, the need for greater methodol-
ogy clarity and comparative research could benefit most of the works produced across
the various themes discussed. Nevertheless, a few more recommendations could be
made with regard to some further research needed.
Many of the most cited papers mention the economic dynamic of CCC but only
a few examine in depth this dynamic using a purely economic or economic geographic
perspective, especially using quantitative approaches. Indeed, a great majority tend to
discuss the various policy initiatives associated with CCC and how they have been used
to regenerate deprived and derelict areas or promote urban development within what
Scott (2008) calls the new cognitive-cultural economy. However, more works could be
undertaken exploring in-depth the economic dynamic of CCC and their economic
performance in relationship with their territory, especially in a longitudinal perspective.
There does not seem to exist one type of methodology for doing such analysis and more
comparative and systematic works would be helpful to assess the impact of CCC. This
type of works could also be combined with the development of precise indicators in the
development of CCC as discussed in the previous section. Such quantitative evaluative
framework could help with the lack of clear evaluative frameworks when looking at
CCC policies that we found and as already highlighted by Markusen and Gadwa (2010)
when discussing the use of arts and culture in urban or regional planning.
Our findings also suggest that more systematic analysis and evaluation could be done
on the development of flagship and the potential impacts/conflicts they create for residents
versus visitors or between local identity and global branding. The tourism challenges are
indeed little developed within the most cited papers on CCC even though they are
mentioned in passing, mainly linked with gentrification questions. Some questions to
address could be: is it possible to reach an equilibrium or a more balanced development
between the interests of residents and tourists or find ways to counteract associated
gentrification processes and displacements? It also seems necessary to explore how artists
could benefit more from arts-led regeneration urban programmes. From this point of
view, as Matthews (2010: 673) writes, ‘ It is critical that future research explores the art
324 C. CHAPAIN AND D. SAGOT-DUVAUROUX

world beyond its economic measures, and that pressure is placed on ensuring that the
incorporation of art in the urban provides an opportunity for local (and contested)
meaning production and expression (surrounding where art is placed, how it is selected
and by whom, and what meanings are attached to the works and their producers.)’
To conclude, our SLR has clearly shown the exponential interest in CCC as object of
research in the last 10 years, reflecting the popularity that the creative industries, their
agglomeration and the tools to support them as generated as discussed in our introduc-
tion. Our in-depth SLR of the field demonstrates that despite some clear weaknesses in
terms of conceptual development and methodology, there is a richness of key contribu-
tions to build on to address the remaining questions to answer to fully comprehend this
expanding area of research. We strongly hope that researchers who wish to study CCC in
the future will follow our call for a renewed conceptual, methodological, thematic and
multidisciplinary research framework to support the development of the field.

Note
1. See, for example, Hofstede, Geert (December 1983). ‘Culture’s Consequences: International
Differences in Work-Related Values’. Administrative Science Quarterly. Johnson Graduate
School of Management, Cornell University. 28 (4): 625–629.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by the Regional Council Pays de la Loire, France [1] and the Regional
Studies Association [2].

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Appendix Themes mentioned and analysis in the 48 most cited papers

Mentioned and
analysed
Is the paper offering a policy analysis of the cluster? 83%
Does the paper analyse the production side of the cluster? 79%
Are the urbanisation effects (diversity of activities) of the cluster analysed in the paper? 71%
Are cultural idiosyncrasies associated with the cluster (i.e. importance of local culture, 69%
knowledge, ways things are done…) analysed in the paper?
Is the notion of governance (relationship and institutional arrangements) between actors of the 69%
cluster analysed in the paper?
Are the value chain and agglomeration effects (economies of scale) of the cluster analysed in 67%
the paper?
Are social networks associated with the cluster analysed in the paper? 63%
Is the attractivity of firms associated with the cluster analysed in the paper? 60%
Is a regeneration phenomenon associated with the cluster analysed in the paper? 60%
Is the type of governance approach (bottom-up, top-down or mixed) of the cluster analysed in 60%
the paper?
Does the paper analyse the consumption side of the cluster? 56%
Is the notion of branding associated with the cluster analysed in the paper? 50%
Does the paper look at the global dimension of the cluster in its analysis? 46%
Are artists’ dynamics and leadership associated with the cluster analysed in the paper? 44%
Is the question of a large urban project development associated with the cluster analysed in 38%
the paper?
Is the attractivity of residents associated with the cluster analysed in the paper? 35%
Is the tourism dimension associated with the cluster analysed in the paper? 29%
Does the paper look at the networking dynamics of the cluster with actors outside of the 23%
cluster in its analysis?
Is a gentrification phenomenon associated with the cluster analysed in the paper? 23%
Is the role of flagship associated with the cluster analysed in the paper? 21%