Three distinct but overlapping conceptions of the role of creativity are embedded in public practices designed to promote urban economic development (Murphy 2001). First, the ‘culture industries’ have been targeted as sources of jobs and business opportunities. Second, strategies to attract and retain members of the ‘creative class’ have been advocated as alternatives (or supplements) to attracting firms. Third, ‘community development’ has been coupled with the arts and related areas as a vehicle to underpin economic vitality and thus to promote social cohesiveness. This paper outlines the first two of these distinct but interrelated conceptions of the relationship between creativity and urban economic development and critically evaluates the prospects for mobilising creativity as a basis for development in each context. Given the title of the symposium reference is made to Sydney’s cultural economy using data from a study of which the author was a co-researcher (Gibson, Freestone and Murphy 2002) and other sources such as the recent collection of essays edited by Freestone, Randolph and Butler-Bowdon (2006) that contains a number of essays on Sydney’s cultural economy.
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Creativity and Urban Economic Development
