Creative-based strategies in small and medium-sized cities: Key dimensions of analysis

The present article intends to contribute to the literature and research agenda regarding the importance of the creative economy as a driver for the revitalisation and development of small and medium-sized cities in Europe. Several studies argue that these territorial areas are necessarily doomed to failure and decline due to the lack of critical mass and density in terms of economic and institutional resources. However, some small towns are changing their development path towards a new ‘urban’ paradigm. The present research aims to identify and analyse a set of dimensions that have to be taken into consideration in the implementation of creative-based strategies in small and medium-sized cities, namely: governance factors, endogenous factors, and territorial embeddedness

Processos de elaboração de criatividade, inovação e capital social: O caso de Almada

Cities nowadays face many different pressures which are forcing them to become economically competitive by attracting investment and employment. This, in turn, demands increasingly sophisticated resources. Innovation and creativity have frequently been deployed for this purpose, but also as a means of introducing contemporaneity into lifestyles, urban spaces and cultural and artistic initiatives.The Almada – Laboratório de Ideias project not only challenges the demand for unrestrained territorial competition, alienated from the values of equity and social cohesion and fuelling the classic forms of leadership and cultural products isolated from socio‑local contexts, but also strengthens links between local actors, involving young people in creating projects that forge links between territory, innovation and technology, and fostering interaction with the local community, thus generating social capital

Creative-based strategies in small and medium-sized cities: Key dimensions of analysis

The present article intends to contribute to the literature and research agenda regarding the importance of the creative economy as a driver for the revitalisation and development of small and medium-sized cities in Europe. Several studies argue that these territorial areas are necessarily doomed to failure and decline due to the lack of critical mass and density in terms of economic and institutional resources. However, some small towns are changing their development path towards a new ‘urban’ paradigm. The present research aims to identify and analyse a set of dimensions that have to be taken into consideration in the implementation of creative-based strategies in small and medium-sized cities, namely: governance factors, endogenous factors, and territorial embeddedness