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This chapter looks at the changing politics of urban redevelopment in a politically divided democratic regime following the end of state socialism in 1989. It contrasts the emergence of two cultural institutions of national importance, the Palace of Arts and the National Theatre, as part of a megaproject in Budapest. They emerged almost at the same time as part of the Millennium City Center, a large-scale urban redevelopment project, but have come to stand for two radically opposed worlds dividing the nation and pitting against each other – the cosmopolitans and the nationalists. The research design is that of incorporated comparison; the two case studies are embedded in the analysis of the larger redevelopment project. The study mixes primary and secondary sources; draws on interviews, extensive discussions with architects and planners, as well as an analysis of planning documents, expert reports, and media coverage. It describes the dynamics of private–public partnerships in urban politics pointing to the changing role of the post-socialist state and the new power relations among the various groups involved in urban development in a newly democratizing regime. On the one hand, the analysis shows how local and national-scale political fights make sense from a larger political–economic perspective of waterfront regeneration; on the other, it argues that party politics in politically divided regimes have serious implications on the processes of large-scale urban development, ultimately making them even more under-determined than suggested by the literature. The chapter breaks the assumed unity of the state in studies of urban megaprojects and demonstrates the usefulness of both a scalar analysis and that of the changing political content of the state, which ultimately account for much of the variation in this global genre.

While the theoretical interaction of the creative and cultural industries and entrepreneurship in business is gaining attention in the literature, such entrepreneurial practices are extending their role and position in the economy and in urban areas undergoing transformation. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to that literature by generating a model that links creative entrepreneurship with urban transformation as places see and expect continuous change and development.

The authors adopt a conceptual approach, embedded in a triple helix model, of creative entrepreneurship and urban transformation of the Baltic Triangle area of Liverpool, England. The authors inform this through a case study analysis, including qualitative interview data relating to the Baltic Creative.

The authors demonstrate the need for interdisciplinary research to assess value creation, value delivery and innovation as contributors to urban transformation based on creative entrepreneurship, while at the same time resulting in creative placemaking.

This is a conceptual paper that will be used to frame future empirical research on generating additional insight by interviewing key actors to heighten understanding of innovation, value creation and value delivery process of placemaking, creative change and urban transformation.

This work can help inform creative policymaking, planning and development to achieve both social and economic impacts for a place and the wider region.

The authors both contextualize and show the transferability of the model, using the example of Liverpool’s Baltic Creative in Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle area of the city, highlighting the impact of creative change.

This study explores the influence of cultural heritage tourism perception on China's tourism image. It analyzes the role of the spiritual bond established between overseas Chinese youth and the motherland during their visit to the cultural heritage sites in China. This study constructs a theoretical model with 350 overseas Chinese youth as samples based on the identity theory, Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) theory, and Howard-Sheth model. The results show that cultural heritage tourism perception directly and positively promotes cultural identity among overseas Chinese youth. It is also indirectly and positively associated with their cultural identity through enhancing the tourism image. Cultural intelligence plays a positive moderating role between cultural heritage tourism perception and cultural identity. The results provide significant implications for developing cultural heritage tourism and cultural communication.

The rise of arts and culture is transforming citizen politics. Though new to many social scientists, this is a commonplace for many policy makers. We seek to overcome this divide by joining culture and the arts with classic concepts of political analysis. We offer an analytical framework incorporating the politics of cultural policy alongside the typical political and economic concerns. Our framework synthesizes several research streams that combine in global factors driving the articulation of culture into political/economic processes. The contexts of Toronto and Chicago are explored as both enhanced the arts dramatically, but Toronto engaged artists qua citizens, while Chicago did not.

Currently, urban social movement studies pay much attention to the emergence of ‘new’ anti-racist and post-colonial transnational urban protest networks and protest formations. Drawing on ethnographic research, I illustrate such developments with reference to autonomous/anarchist Left-wing urban protest in Vienna during the last decade. I thereby combine (Neo-)Marxist critical urban theory and the discursive and cultural studies' inspired approach of radical democracy. I argue that this perspective on urban protest allows for an integrated analysis of its material and discursive groundings. Such an approach would point to material/ist, spatial and cultural aspects of urban protest politics and could thus be fruitful for further discussion, political analysis and political action.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to provide a critical assessment of the trajectory and nature of the production of knowledge on cultural heritage on the Arab world. This evaluation of the discipline or field of cultural heritage will focus on both a historic evolution and on current practices in order to understand the nature and politics of that evolution.

The approach and research methodology adopted for this paper depends primarily on a long-term critical literature review and content analysis that took place over the past 25 years concerning key reports, journal articles, books and other publications on cultural heritage on the Arab world.

The paper's main findings centers on presenting current practices/production on cultural heritage which are divided into two categories in terms of production of knowledge: an abundant engagement with a technical sphere dominated with concern for documentation and conservation technology of cultural heritage; and a scarce engagement with epistemological and theoretical spheres that delves into processes of cultural heritage definition, consumption and continuity in the Arab world.

The paper attempts to engage in and commence a much-needed wider discussion on the historical transformation concerning knowledge production on cultural heritage in the Arab world and its related practices and processes. The paper emphasizes the significance of this engagement with theoretical spheres of conservation and calls for an expansion of such engagement in order to elevate the discourse and debate on cultural heritage in the Arab world.

The purpose of this paper is to understand urban sculpture venues that emerged in the recent decade and their connections to the on-going entrepreneurial urban policies and urban strategies in Shanghai. How does this phenomenon relate to Shanghai’s urban policies? How does urban sculpture development reflect the nature and characteristics of the urban sculpture authority?

Case study is the major research method used to achieve an in-depth understanding of the developmental processes, mechanisms and characteristics of urban sculpture projects. Three cases were selected and studied using purposeful sampling methods, including Duolun Road Sculpture Project (2002), the Shanghai International Sculpture Center (2006) and the Jing’an Sculpture Park (2009).

A twofold main argument is established in this paper. Urban sculpture venues emerged as a new type of instrument to advance urban entrepreneurial policies; the use of this instrument, however, also involves politics in that art politically transforms the features and functions of open spaces in Shanghai.

Although scholarly interest in exploring cultural development through urban planning in the Chinese context is evident, urban sculpture planning (termed as “urban sculpture” in the Chinese ideological context) in Chinese metropolitan cities, in particular, is an unexplored topic, and thus leaves a gap in the knowledge. This paper introduces a new conceptual model, i.e., “aesthetic regime,” to describe the role of the urban sculpture authority in the development of the urban sculpture scene. It looks at the artistic representation of artworks, design of the sculpture venues, functionality of the artworks and social mechanisms for the actualization of these projects. An evolutional trend of the three sites across the decade is concerned.

What are the consequences of urban life in an ethno-nationally contested city? How do everyday practices confront municipal strategies that attempt to control such urban situations? Focusing on urban life in which daily negotiation of ethno-national differences occurs, this chapter considers the nuances of urban politics and the use and meaning of the urban space, i.e., the micro-politics and the social dynamic of place-making, and their role in the struggle for urban citizenship in an ethno-nationally mixed city. Discourse analysis and ethnographic encounters define the annual Holiday of Holidays festival in the Israeli–Palestinian neighborhood of Wadi Nisnas as integral to Haifa's strategy for promoting itself as a site of coexistence. The neighborhood serves the entire city in that its “Arab” urban space has become the emblem of that coexistence. This manipulation by the municipality is, however, not reinforced by urban regeneration and heritage management of the local Palestinian community. Nonetheless coexistence discourse is also employed by the residents themselves, suggesting a more nuanced understanding of the role of urban space in promoting the city, as well as of concepts of local identity and citizenship.

This study aims to investigate consumers’ construction of food localness through the politics of belonging in a regional context.

Following a socio-spatial lens and considering the “realm of meaning” of place, this research focusses on local consumers’ lived meanings of “local” food choice, and hence adopts a phenomenological approach to the data collection and analysis of 20 in-depth interviews with residents of the Italian region of Marche.

Drawing on Trudeau’s (2006) politics of belonging, this study reveals three interconnected themes which show how local consumers articulate a local food “orthodoxy” and how their discourses and practices draw and maintain a boundary between local and non-local food, whereby local food is considered “autochthonous” of rural space. Thus, this study’s participants construct a local food landscape, conveying rural (vs urban) meanings through which food acquires “localness” (vs non-“localness”) status.

There exists further theoretical opportunity to consider local consumers’ construction of food localness through the politics of belonging in terms of non-representational theory (Thrift, 2008), to help reveal added nuances to the construction of food localness as well as to the complex process of formulating place meaning.

The findings provide considerable scope for food producers, manufacturers and/or marketers to differentiate local food products by enhancing consumers’ direct experience of it in relation to rural space. Thus, enabling local food producers to convey rural (vs urban) meanings to consumers, who would develop an orthodoxy guiding future choice.

The findings enable regional promoters and food policymakers to leverage the symbolic distinctiveness of food autochthony to promote place and encourage consumers to participate in their local food system.

By using the politics of belonging as an analytical framework, this study shows that the urban–rural dichotomy – rather than being an obsolete epistemological category – fuels politics of belonging dynamics, and that local food consumers socially construct food localness not merely as a romanticisation of rurality but as a territorial expression of the contemporary local/non-local cultural conflict implied in the politics of belonging. Thus, this study advances our theoretical understanding by demonstrating that food “becomes” local and therefore, builds on extant food localness conceptualisations.