Creativity, Urban Regeneration and Sustainability: the Bordeaux case study

Creative cities are currently working on how to improve the interaction between regeneration building, economic development and social renewal in order to achieve more comprehensive development of the city (Carta, 2004; Florida, 2005). In recent decades, the role of culture has become a major and often driving factor for the process of urban regeneration. The focus on culture as a factor in regional transformation has been particularly extensive in response to competitiveness among cities, but also to the needs of sustainability of the cultural sector. In the same perspective of this approach, culture in its broadest sense assumes a decisive role in constructing a system of interventions where employment, tourism, and social and sustainable development become the product of the integration of places, people, economies and traditions (Scott, 2000). Indeed, there are ever more types of different visitors and relative demands and cities need to provide for new types of cultural uses, suitable for tourists as well as citizens and visitors in general. Looking at the experiences of creative cities, we can observe that they revolve around the design, promotion and activation of urban areas established because of their particular local characteristics. Such areas become creative clusters as a result of economic and structural innovations, related to the realization of innovator projects achieved with the help of local development strategies based on the economies of excellence, culture and territorial quality. Two main types of clusters may be recognized within the creative city. The first type are the cultural clusters, which are created around activities such as fine arts, music, cinema, architecture and design, and whose start-up is encouraged and planned by local administration. The second is the cluster of events, whose development has its origins in the organization of great events or different kinds of recreational and cultural manifestations (Bagwell, 2008; Carta, 2007; Maitland, 2009). Starting from these premises, this article aims to investigate the concept of the creative city, what are the factors conditioning creativity in cities - with particular attention to place identity, sustainability of development, suitable policies and participation- and how do they stimulate sustainable urban regeneration and innovation. In the framework of the cultural clusters, we illustrate the case study of the "Bordeaux Les deux rives" in which these factors play a fundamental role. The urban transformation offered by “Les deux rives” project and the other projects are for Bordeaux the driving force for planning and producing new social, cultural and economic change for the city’s image. In this regards, it is important not to place too much stress on tourist development where the term "cultural" is an instrument rather than a quality: for sustainable development, a real engine of change, the “cultural” element must offer quality to tourism not vice versa (Sepe, 2009). The more value is given to the local cultural peculiarities – such as cultural heritage and place identity – the more the operation of urban regeneration may be embedded within the local fabric and be attractive for residents and cultural tourists (Evans, 2001; Richards, 1996; Unesco 2006). The paper is organized as follows: section 2 introduces creative concepts applied to cities; 3 describes sustainable development according to the three aspects i.e. socio, economical and environmental; 4 discuss the results of the case study; 5 presents our conclusions.