Place-making strategies of culturepreneurs. The case of Frankfurt/M., Germany

The paper describes the emergence of a new hybrid cultural and entrepreneurial agent in the context of the local cultural industries of Frankfurt on Main (Germany). The thesis of the paper is, that the culturepreneur is responsible for new place-making strategies apart the most visible and dominant one, such as the skyline in Frankfurt/M. The understandings of his place-making strategies offer insights in new forms of negotiation of an urban renewal process. Despite this it provides a new and important evaluation of the yet underestimated spatial category place in the process and formation of scenes, recently brought into discussion by sociologist R. Hitzler (2001). Places are the terrain of the post-industrial city where different and heterogeneous scenes are struggling. The analysis of the use and significance - out of the perspective of culturepreneurs - provides a new, yet in the field of social sciences unclear, reading of the existing urban condition. The context of the emergence of the type culturepreneur is framed by neoliberal governmental and political approaches, urban marketing campaigns such as the self-promotion as being a young and a cool city like Frankfurt/M. (or Berlin) are practicing it, in order to encourage individuals to launch ones own enterprise: The first results can best be seen in the field of the growing numbers of workers in the socalled creative (service-industry-related) sector. Besides that, the growing numbers of creatives, such as web-, fashion-, music and arts and crafts designers as well as club organizers are - viewed from an institutional perspective - an expression of complex changes of the role of the arts and media sector as growing mediator between the subsectors of culture and economy. Based on comparable results of A. McRobbie´s studies (1999) in the creative sector of London (GB), this research shows that the agents of creative work are - especially since 1998 - on the one hand considered to be a symbolic forerunner and a pioneer of the politics of the new middle in Germany ('Politik der Neuen Mitte'). Thereby on a micro level we can observe agents, who reflect increasing values such as individual entrepreneuralism, bringing to light un-embedded as well as flexible labour situations. Besides their escalating sharp existential situation, they show a rising dependency of subsidies of different sponsors. Thereby creative work is squeezed and brokered by growing influences of venture capitalists using trendy popular culture products of the culturepreneurs as signs and symbols of their holistic idea serving the society. On the other hand, the growing numbers of relatively young and creative workers struggle to regain social and institutional embedding by setting up and creating new temporary and flexible alliances with different agents in the urban context, such as city governments as well as corporate firms. In sociological terms we cannot consider these actors as members of a completely individualized society anymore (Beck 2000), but as members of post-traditional communities or, like Hitzler proposed, new scenes (Hitzler 2001) amongst the culturepreneur plays a key and ma-jor formatting role, which is yet from the scientific perspective so far undefined. The paper argues that the analysis of the local cultural industry as a key factor in the creation of new labour forces in the metropolitan regions such as the Rhine-Main as well as stimulating atmospheres for service-related industries has to be connected to micro-spatial analysis of the emergence of new scenes. Sociological analysis provides valuable insights in the formation of new communities, but micro-geographical analysis can conceptually and methodologically provide a spatial understanding of complex place-making strategies of new post-traditional communities. Space is a yet an underestimated variable in the analysis of the emergence of new agents - such as the culturepreneurs - in the field of the local cultural industries. The conducted field research shows not only the fact that - from the perspective of individual agents (culturepreneurs) - place matters, but that the processes of professional socialisation is closely linked to a complex creative and necessarily practice with place in order to create a spatial network, that means a new socially-defined space. This process can first be seen as a necessary attempt in order to regain a professional place in the labour market, but second as a practice to get economic, social, and network-related attention by acting, staging and using (with) the variable place. Culturepreneurs develop - with new forms in the field of the economy of attention - these new geographies that can be read as a post-modern counterstrategy to the dominant place-making strategies, applied most visible with the geography of centrality in the case of Mainhatten (sic!), Frankfurt on Main.

Can medium-sized cities become Creative Cities? Discussing the cases of three Central and Western European cities

This paper aims to explore the concept of Creative City from the points of view of three medium-sized cities in Central and Western Europe: Birmingham (UK), Leipzig (Germany) and Poznań (Poland). The concept of Creative City has risen in popularity in the last 15 years but its meanings and its policy application display important variations. In an attempt to clarify conceptual issues and policy approaches around the term of Creative City, Scott (2006) states that policy makers should focus on specific key variables when attempting to build viable Creative Cities: the presence of inter-firm networks of producers combined with a flexible local labour market. Infrastructural facilities and social capital are also crucial in this process. Even though these variables may be mostly found in largescale metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles etc., Scott (2006, p. 9) argues that “there are also many small and specialised creative agglomerations all over the world” due to the process of increased differentiation. In addition, Hall (2004) argues that building a truly Creative City is possible but is a long-term process, and historical favourable preconditions are important

Paradoxes of the Creative City. Contested Territories and Creative Upgrading - the Case of Berlin, Germany

The paper emphasises the rising interest in creativity as a consequence of late-modern cultural economic change and as a means of urban regeneration. Based on a critical appraisal of related strategies, the case of Berlin, the German capital, is investigated empirically. Against the background of so-called “paradoxes” of creativity, two local areas of conflict are being discussed in more detail: first a riverside area that is under pressure of globalisation and gentrification (“Mediaspree”), second an inner-city street corridor (“°m-street”) with creative occupation that currently suffers from urban degradation. The two cases demonstrate the different ways in which the new cultural economy is going to be spatialised. In this context, the paper draws some general conclusions on urban governance for the creative city

Ambiguous avant-gardes and their geographies: on blank spots of the postgrowth debate

In the following article, the focus is on the transformative potentials created by so-called persistence avant-gardes and prevention innovators. The text extends Blühdorn’s guiding concept of narratives of hope (Blühdorn 2017; Blühdorn and Butzlaff 2019) by considering those groups that are marginalized within debates on socio-ecological transformation. With a closer look at the narratives of prevention and blockade that these actors engage, the ambiguous nature of postgrowth avant-gardes is carved out. Their discursive, argumentative, and effective inhibition of transitory policies is interpreted as a pro-active potential, rather than a mere obstacle to socio-ecological transformation. Adding a geographical perspective, the paper pleads for a more precise theoretical penetration of the ambivalent figure of avant-gardes when analyzing processes of local and regional postgrowth

Classification of Micromobility Vehicles in Thermal-Infrared Images Based on Combined Image and Contour Features Using Neuromorphic Processing

Trends of environmental awareness, combined with a focus on personal fitness and health, motivate many people to switch from cars and public transport to micromobility solutions, namely bicycles, electric bicycles, cargo bikes, or scooters. To accommodate urban planning for these changes, cities and communities need to know how many micromobility vehicles are on the road. In a previous work, we proposed a concept for a compact, mobile, and energy-efficient system to classify and count micromobility vehicles utilizing uncooled long-wave infrared (LWIR) image sensors and a neuromorphic co-processor. In this work, we elaborate on this concept by focusing on the feature extraction process with the goal to increase the classification accuracy. We demonstrate that even with a reduced feature list compared with our early concept, we manage to increase the detection precision to more than 90%. This is achieved by reducing the images of 160 × 120 pixels to only 12 × 18 pixels and combining them with contour moments to a feature vector of only 247 bytes

Flexible geographies of new working spaces

The emergence of new working spaces (e.g. coworking spaces, third places, makerspaces, fab labs) is a phenomenon reflecting a broader change in the current digital economy from predominantly traditional offices and hierarchical structures to a more fluid way of working based on projects, networks, and collaborations. The articles published in this special issue reflect on the flexible geographies induced by these new working spaces, focusing on a variety of perspectives relating to (i) location patterns and determinants of new working spaces and coworking spaces in both urban and rural areas; (ii) their economic viability, liveability, and competitiveness; and (iii) members’ lifestyles and work-life balance

Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft

Unter dem Begriff Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft als Branchenkonglomerat werden seit den späten 1990er Jahren in Deutschland Akteure und Unternehmen sowie öffentliche Träger der Symbolproduktion subsumiert. Die Praktiken der Kulturunternehmen sind in der Lage, Standorte zu transformieren und attraktiv zu gestalten. Neben positiven Agglomerationseffekten und städtischen Imagegewinnen zeigen sich aber auch nachteilige Effekte, wenn entweder kulturelle Homogenisierungsprozesse oder Mietpreissteigerungen zwischenzeitliche soziale und kulturelle Mischungen in einem Stadtteil nicht mehr zulassen

Fablabs und Hackerspaces

Maker-Communities sind der soziale Resonanzraum, in dem erprobt, repariert, gedruckt und gehackt wird. Können daraus nachhaltige Wirtschaftsprozesse entstehen? Nein sagen einige, denn ein Teil der Maker haben nur Spaß daran, 3-D-Drucker mit Daten zu füttern, egal was raus kommt. Doch wenn man die wiederentdeckten zeitlichen und sozialen Produk tionslogiken zu honorieren weiß, ist die Rolle der Maker nicht zu unterschätzen

Ist eine Kulturpolitik der Nachhaltigkeit möglich?

Im März 2022 richtet das Haus der Kulturstaatsministerin ein Referat „Kultur und Nachhaltigkeit“ ein. Mit fünf Millionen Euro Etat ausgestattet, soll es einen Green Culture Desk als zentrale Anlaufstelle einrichten und ausbauen. Kann dieses Vorhaben die ökologische und nachhaltige Transformation des Kultur- und Medienbetriebs entscheidend voranbringen

Kreativwirtschaft international: Schnittmengen zur Auswärtigen Kulturpolitik

Die Studie analysiert international ausgerichtete Kreativwirtschaftspolitiken verschiedener Länder Europas, Nordamerikas und Asiens. Ziel ist es, daraus Empfehlungen und Hinweise für eine weitere Integration und zeitgemäße Berücksichtigung der Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft in der Auswärtigen Kultur- und Bildungspolitik (AKBP) vorzulegen. Während Länder wie Großbritannien und Österreich wachstums- und exportorientierte Kreativwirtschaftspolitiken betreiben, haben andere Länder Europas querschnittsorientierte Politikansätze entwickelt. Die Niederlande, Frankreich und skandinavische Länder verbinden Kreativwirtschaftspotenziale mit kulturellen und gesellschaftlichen Attributen. Die Erweiterung der AKBP durch die Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft kann laufende Internationalisierungsprozesse erneuern: Vor allem cross-sektorale Transfereffekte der Kultur und Kreativwirtschaft prädestinieren sie als Ideengeber, Brückenbildner und Transmissionsriemen für die AKBP. Es bedarf verlässlicher Kommunikations- und Stützungsstrukturen seitens der öffentlichen Hand, wenn Internationalisierungspolitiken mit Kultur- und Kreativakteuren entwickelt werden