Cultural Clusters and the Post-industrial City: Towards the Remapping of Urban Cultural Policy

This paper explores and discusses the fairly recent phenomenon of cultural clustering strategies in the Netherlands. Amongst other things based on ideologies of 'enterprise culture', the quest for urban imagery and positioning strategies, the changing spatial fabric of cities and a search for economic and cultural revitalisation, for the past 5-10 years, the formation of cultural clusters has turned into something of an urban cultural development hype. However, what at first glance appears as a common model, often accompanied by boldly expressed slogans concerning the new role of culture and creativity in the physical and economic revitalisation of cities, in more detail unfolds as an ambivalent and…