The Geography of Design in the City

The rise of a cultural economy and its constituent industries, institutions and labour has generated a new phase of growth in the metropolis, underpinning what Allen Scott has termed the ‘resurgent city’ in the early 21st century (Scott 2007). While this experience of culture-led growth is jurisdictionally selective, and generates an uneven distribution of benefits and costs, it does appear to offer a robust platform for economic development across a growing number of cities among advanced and transitional societies, although its universal potential is routinely exaggerated. There are also definitional issues to consider, as the cultural economy comprises complex systems of production and consumption, and features strong interdependencies with residential markets and urban lifestyles (see Zukin 1989, 1998 in this connection). That said, central to each of these facets of the cultural economy is the concept of design: as a defining attribute of specialized production; as a marker of consumption and social class distinction; as a shaper of contemporary urbanism and as a key characteristic of housing preference among affluent social actors, notably the ‘creatives’ and others within the new middle class (Hamnett and Whitelegg 2007).