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2014/2015  KAN-CSOCV1010U  Creative and collective citizenship: Exploring the entrepreneurial city

English Title
Creative and collective citizenship: Exploring the entrepreneurial city

Course information
Language English
Course ECTS 7.5 ECTS
Type Elective
Level Full Degree Master
Duration One Quarter
Course period Fourth Quarter
Timetable Course schedule will be posted at calendar.cbs.dk
Study board
Study Board for MSc of Social Science
Course coordinator
  • Anne Sofie Fischer - MPP
  • Timon Beyes - MPP
Administrative contact: Karina Ravn Nielsen, 3815 3782, electives.mpp@cbs.dk
Main academic disciplines
  • Innovation and entrepreneurship
  • Organization
  • Methodology
Last updated on 19-02-2014
Learning objectives
  • Analyze and interpret contemporary urban transformation and its effects
  • Identify and reflect upon concrete manifestations of entrepreneurship in so-called creative cities (such as Copenhagen)
  • Apply creative and performative methods of exploring and intervening into urban life
  • Link theories and concepts to the empirical case
Course prerequisites
Full and active participation in the course is strongly recommended, including theoretical and methodological workshops and group fieldwork.
Examination
Creative and collective citizenship: Exploring the entrepreneurial city:
Exam ECTS 7,5
Examination form Oral exam based on written product

In order to participate in the oral exam, the written product must be handed in before the oral exam; by the set deadline. The grade is based on an overall assessment of the written product and the individual oral performance.
Individual or group exam Group exam, max. 4 students in the group
Individual oral exam.
Size of written product Max. 10 pages
If written individually, the synopsis must be of maximum 5 pages.
Assignment type Synopsis
Duration
Written product to be submitted on specified date and time.
20 min. per student, including examiners' discussion of grade, and informing plus explaining the grade
Grading scale 7-step scale
Examiner(s) Internal examiner and second internal examiner
Exam period May/June
Make-up exam/re-exam
Same examination form as the ordinary exam
Course content and structure
The twin notions of the creative city and the entrepreneurial city have found their way into urban planning and political agendas in many large cities across the globe in their aspiration to become attractive and successful. As the British Council puts it: “Creative Cities are successful cities. They succeed culturally, economically, socially and environmentally. They are good places to live: they attract talented people, who attract investment and create jobs. By finding innovative solutions to the problems such as crime, traffic congestion, they make life better for citizens.“
 
Great cities have always been places of creativity, innovation and emancipation, yet in contemporary post-industrial cities, creativity and entrepreneurship are emphasized as the ‘heart’ of urban development. Consider, for instance, the stories and images of Berlin, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Manchester, and related ‘Creative Cities’.  What constitutes a major shift is the substantial focus on urban cultural vitality - on sensual atmospheres and spectacles, on cultural heritage and consumption and on the image of the creative city. In this sense, Western cities currently seem to be observed, portrayed, and discussed more in terms of their cultural value than, traditionally, their industrial or political value.
 
This development is mirrored in urban politics and design. Broadly put, the ‘functional city’ was the paradigm of city development into the 1970s, with industry, administration and functional organization as central themes. With the advent of deindustrialisation and the rise of the so-called postfordist economy, we have seen a wide-ranging culturalisation of urban development with culture, creativity, and entrepreneurship at its core. In simple terms, one could argue that the functional city equals the managerial city, while the creative city equals the entrepreneurial city. Accordingly, creating creative cities and attracting the ‘creative class’ is presented as the major task for today’s urban designers and developers.
 
Yet, what does it actually mean to be(come) a creative city? Where and how do creativity and entrepreneurship happen? Can you plan, control, and domesticate creativity? These are central questions to this course. To look for creativity and urban entrepreneurship, we need to explore where the conceived space of planners, architects, and designers meet the spatial routines of living and working in the city, and where this conceived space and these spatial routines meet the ‘lived space’ of experimental use and appropriation. How are cities used and used differently? How are urban spaces appropriated and reorganized? How are urban practices performed and transformed? Exploring the entrepreneurial city also means broadening the understanding of entrepreneurship beyond economic rationales to include cultural, social, and environmental ones. Entrepreneurship, in this view, can be seen as a process “where people are invited to practice creative citizenship and to bring collectivity into the public space, the social is understood as collective investments in desiring images that are transformed in public spaces (..)”(Steyeart & Hjorth, 2006: 14). Examples of such initiatives could be public urban gardening projects, carpooling schemes, or ‘Poverty Walks’, where homeless people are giving guided tours to experience Copenhagen through their eyes.  
 
In this course, the city will therefore be looked at as a ‘potential space’ with surprising possibilities and perpetual uncertainties where creativity and entrepreneurship become realized. We will inquire how the ordering and organization of urban life is continuously forged and challenged and where new possibilities for work, citizenship, and lifestyle emerge. Students are asked to engage with the relevant theories, concepts, and opinions of urban creativity and entrepreneurship; and they are challenged to venture out into the city and encounter the urban everyday themselves, enacting stories of Copenhagen as a potential city.
Teaching methods
The course will consist of (brief) input lectures, text-based discussions (seminars), methodological trainings (workshop) and the students’ hands-on explorations (fieldwork).
Expected literature
Amin, A. and N. Thrift (2002) Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
 
Beyes, T. (2012) ‘Organizing the Entrepreneurial City’, in D. Hjorth (ed.) Handbook on Organisational Entrepreneurship (pp. 320-337). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
 
Beyes, T., Krempl, S.-T.and A. Deuflhard (eds.) 2009 Parcitypate:Art and Urban Space. Zurich: Niggli.
 
Cronin, M. and K. Hetherington (eds.) Consuming the Entrepreneurial City: Image, Memory, Spectacle. London: Routledge.
 
Evans, G. (2009) ‘Creative Cities, Creative Spaces and Urban Policy’, Urban Studies 46(5&6): 1003-1040.
 
Florida, R. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class.Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.
 
 
Harvey, D. (1989) ‘From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism’, Geografiska Annaler B 71(1): 3-17.
 
Lefebvre, H. (1996) ‘Right to the City’, in E. Kofman and E. Lebas (eds.)Henri Lefebvre: Writings on Cities (pp. 63-184). Oxford: Blackwell.
 
Pratt, A. C. (2008) ‘Creative cities: the cultural industries and the creative class’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 90(2): 107-117.
 
Zukin, S. (1995) The Culture of Cities. Oxford: Blackwell.
Last updated on 19-02-2014