Pub Date : 2025-11-14DOI: 10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100674
Carlo Genova
This article investigates how graffiti writers perceive, interpret and use urban space. Drawing on qualitative interviews with writers conducted in Italy, it proposes and substantiates the notion of a distinctive “graffiti gaze”: a situated way of seeing that reworks both individual places and the city as a whole. Place selection is guided by four criteria – materiality of surfaces, visibility, architectural accessibility and social accessibility – combined through search strategies that include vigilant everyday observation, targeted exploration (including virtual surveys) and exchanges of information within social networks. The practice generates evolving mental maps composed of painted spots, prospective sites and preferred routes, which anchor personal memories and scene infrastructures. The findings refine the analogy with the “skater's eye” and “parkour vision”, showing family resemblances yet outlining specificities of writing. Comparative glimpses across cities highlight variations in competitive climates, morphologies and institutional arrangements, without undermining shared patterns. The article then provides new insights into how unconventional uses of space challenge dominant perceptions of urban territory and contribute to its re-signification.
{"title":"Graffiti gaze. The writers looking at urban territory and its places","authors":"Carlo Genova","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100674","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100674","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article investigates how graffiti writers perceive, interpret and use urban space. Drawing on qualitative interviews with writers conducted in Italy, it proposes and substantiates the notion of a distinctive “graffiti gaze”: a situated way of seeing that reworks both individual places and the city as a whole. Place selection is guided by four criteria – materiality of surfaces, visibility, architectural accessibility and social accessibility – combined through search strategies that include vigilant everyday observation, targeted exploration (including virtual surveys) and exchanges of information within social networks. The practice generates evolving mental maps composed of painted spots, prospective sites and preferred routes, which anchor personal memories and scene infrastructures. The findings refine the analogy with the “skater's eye” and “parkour vision”, showing family resemblances yet outlining specificities of writing. Comparative glimpses across cities highlight variations in competitive climates, morphologies and institutional arrangements, without undermining shared patterns. The article then provides new insights into how unconventional uses of space challenge dominant perceptions of urban territory and contribute to its re-signification.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100674"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145525673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-31DOI: 10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100671
Lizzie Richardson
Tours of offices in English cities for those who are not working in them have risen in popularity since the growth of co-working spaces in the 2010s. In contrast to workplace tours of industrial sites, in these contemporary office tours the tourist is neither clearly distinct from the worker, nor are they necessarily undertaking the tour to see work taking place. The contemporary office tour therefore enacts a process of “de-differentiation” between work and leisure spaces. Yet simultaneously though and somewhat countering this thesis of de-differentiation, it is flexibility that is the attraction displayed in these office tours, understood as the capacities to make micro-distinctions in activity in a given space. Contemporary office tours frequently stage a proximity and even interchangeability between work and leisure, one that highlights abilities to both make and dissolve the boundaries between the two, creating a flexible workplace structure that has been typically associated with urban cultural economies that foreground entrepreneurialism and passion for work. The article argues though that office flexibility is itself part of processes of urban cultural production that are intended to create value both within and beyond the work in the office itself. The production of flexibility in the office tour is an indicator of contemporary urban cultural economies in which value is produced in the present through the promise of future adaptable usage of space.
{"title":"Workplace tours and the cultural production of flexibility","authors":"Lizzie Richardson","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100671","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100671","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Tours of offices in English cities for those who are not working in them have risen in popularity since the growth of co-working spaces in the 2010s. In contrast to workplace tours of industrial sites, in these contemporary office tours the tourist is neither clearly distinct from the worker, nor are they necessarily undertaking the tour to see work taking place. The contemporary office tour therefore enacts a process of “de-differentiation” between work and leisure spaces. Yet simultaneously though and somewhat countering this thesis of de-differentiation, it is <em>flexibility</em> that is the attraction displayed in these office tours, understood as the capacities to make micro-distinctions in activity in a given space. Contemporary office tours frequently stage a proximity and even interchangeability between work and leisure, one that highlights abilities to both make and dissolve the boundaries between the two, creating a flexible workplace structure that has been typically associated with urban cultural economies that foreground entrepreneurialism and passion for work. The article argues though that office flexibility is itself part of processes of urban cultural production that are intended to create value both within and beyond the work in the office itself. The production of flexibility in the office tour is an indicator of contemporary urban cultural economies in which value is produced in the present through the promise of future adaptable usage of space.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100671"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145424627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-30DOI: 10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100651
Zachary Hyde
In recent years local governments in expensive cities have attempted to offset the displacement of arts spaces by funding new cultural infrastructure. One of the key policy tools they have turned to is land value capture, which allows greater height and density on new high-rise developments in exchange for social benefits. This study takes up the case of Vancouver, Canada where land value capture has been used to fund the arts through the city's Community Amenity Contributions (CAC) program. To examine the impact and evolution of Vancouver's CAC program, I use qualitative case studies of three major redevelopments in the 2010 decade that leveraged CACs to fund the arts, alongside planning documents and community reports. My findings show that the city helped arts organizations secure increasingly stable infrastructure, approving funding to purchase their buildings, cover long-term operating costs, and to build artist housing through a community land trust. At the same time, the arts community reported a significant loss of space in the private market, often in areas experiencing intense development pressure. Through the case of Vancouver, I show that land value capture leads to a paradoxical outcome—the same policy mechanism that protects artists from the market, relies on increasing property values that contribute to arts displacement. I conclude by suggesting that land value capture should be paired with protective policies for arts spaces that intervene on real estate speculation to avoid a net loss.
{"title":"What's gained, what's lost? The paradox of using land value capture to fund arts spaces in Vancouver","authors":"Zachary Hyde","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100651","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100651","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In recent years local governments in expensive cities have attempted to offset the displacement of arts spaces by funding new cultural infrastructure. One of the key policy tools they have turned to is land value capture, which allows greater height and density on new high-rise developments in exchange for social benefits. This study takes up the case of Vancouver, Canada where land value capture has been used to fund the arts through the city's Community Amenity Contributions (CAC) program. To examine the impact and evolution of Vancouver's CAC program, I use qualitative case studies of three major redevelopments in the 2010 decade that leveraged CACs to fund the arts, alongside planning documents and community reports. My findings show that the city helped arts organizations secure increasingly stable infrastructure, approving funding to purchase their buildings, cover long-term operating costs, and to build artist housing through a community land trust. At the same time, the arts community reported a significant loss of space in the private market, often in areas experiencing intense development pressure. Through the case of Vancouver, I show that land value capture leads to a paradoxical outcome—the same policy mechanism that protects artists from the market, relies on increasing property values that contribute to arts displacement. I conclude by suggesting that land value capture should be paired with protective policies for arts spaces that intervene on real estate speculation to avoid a net loss.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100651"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145424686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-29DOI: 10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100672
Tamsyn Dent, Roberta Comunian, Sana Kim
What sustains creative and cultural entrepreneurship in a city? This paper questions the sustainability of urban policies focused on attracting knowledge-based human capital as a strategy to foster entrepreneurial and creative-driven growth. It acknowledges that the literature on entrepreneurial cities, while connecting with the creative city approach, has commonly imposed growth-led agendas without fully considering the local cultural infrastructure, including creative practices, amenities and the wider resources that enable citizen engagement. Using the capability approach, the paper considers what resources and opportunities are available, and to whom, within a specific urban location to facilitate sustainable creative and cultural entrepreneurship. Based on research conducted in the Dutch city of Enschede, we explore how resources for sustainable creative and entrepreneurial development are fostered at the local policy level. Drawing on qualitative data collected from a wide range of citizens; the paper questions the sustainability of policies focused on expanding higher education and the commercially oriented creative industries in order to foster regional entrepreneurial activity. We conclude that a better understanding of how citizens can be empowered to engage with the city's creative and cultural entrepreneurship might offer more fruitful and sustainable results.
{"title":"Entrepreneurial capability? Understanding the resources needed for sustainable cultural and creative entrepreneurship in cities. A case study of Enschede, The Netherlands","authors":"Tamsyn Dent, Roberta Comunian, Sana Kim","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100672","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100672","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>What sustains creative and cultural entrepreneurship in a city? This paper questions the sustainability of urban policies focused on attracting knowledge-based human capital as a strategy to foster entrepreneurial and creative-driven growth. It acknowledges that the literature on entrepreneurial cities, while connecting with the creative city approach, has commonly imposed growth-led agendas without fully considering the local cultural infrastructure, including creative practices, amenities and the wider resources that enable citizen engagement. Using the capability approach, the paper considers what resources and opportunities are available, and to whom, within a specific urban location to facilitate sustainable creative and cultural entrepreneurship. Based on research conducted in the Dutch city of Enschede, we explore how resources for sustainable creative and entrepreneurial development are fostered at the local policy level. Drawing on qualitative data collected from a wide range of citizens; the paper questions the sustainability of policies focused on expanding higher education and the commercially oriented creative industries in order to foster regional entrepreneurial activity. We conclude that a better understanding of how citizens can be empowered to engage with the city's creative and cultural entrepreneurship might offer more fruitful and sustainable results.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100672"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145424626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-23DOI: 10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100669
Justin Lewis
The article draws upon an analysis of Clwstwr - a place-based innovation programme for the creative and cultural sectors and industries. Clwstwr attempted to shift power away from large cultural conglomerates towards local, smaller independent companies, while tackling issues such as environmental sustainability, diversity and inclusion.
The article argues that universities are well placed to be active cultural intermediaries in this form of critically-informed cluster-building. To make this case, this article will propose moving beyond the current dichotomy between a focus on/celebration of the economic power of the CCSIs - the dominant strain in policy circles - and an anti-economic critique that stresses cultural and social values – an increasingly dominant strain in the academy.
Using findings from the Clwstwr programme, it demonstrates how universities were able to:
•
Draw on a critical literature of the market-based model of the CCSIs to develop alternative economic models of innovation, designed to improve social, cultural and economic outcomes.
•
Leverage research and innovation expertise in a sector dominated by small companies and freelancers.
This enabled small creative companies in the Welsh creative cluster to develop and grow, economically and culturally, while promoting equality, diversity and inclusion and environmental sustainability.
{"title":"Rethinking innovation in creative clusters","authors":"Justin Lewis","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100669","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100669","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The article draws upon an analysis of Clwstwr - a place-based innovation programme for the creative and cultural sectors and industries. Clwstwr attempted to shift power away from large cultural conglomerates towards local, smaller independent companies, while tackling issues such as environmental sustainability, diversity and inclusion.</div><div>The article argues that universities are well placed to be active cultural intermediaries in this form of critically-informed cluster-building. To make this case, this article will propose moving beyond the current dichotomy between a focus on/celebration of the economic power of the CCSIs - the dominant strain in policy circles - and an anti-economic critique that stresses cultural and social values – an increasingly dominant strain in the academy.</div><div>Using findings from the Clwstwr programme, it demonstrates how universities were able to:<ul><li><span>•</span><span><div>Draw on a critical literature of the market-based model of the CCSIs to develop alternative economic models of innovation, designed to improve social, cultural and economic outcomes.</div></span></li><li><span>•</span><span><div>Leverage research and innovation expertise in a sector dominated by small companies and freelancers.</div></span></li></ul></div><div>This enabled small creative companies in the Welsh creative cluster to develop and grow, economically and culturally, while promoting equality, diversity and inclusion and environmental sustainability.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100669"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145362477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-16DOI: 10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100668
Artur Rubinat-i-Lacuesta , Roger Soler-i-Martí , Nicolás Barbieri Muttis
Recent empirical evidence within the framework of the creative city has reproduced a narrow view of cultural participation. To better understand diversity and new and more complex logics of inequalities, this paper proposes an alternative multidimensional framework: the right to participate in urban cultural life. Using data from the Survey of Cultural Rights of Barcelona (2022), we analyse evidence of not only cultural access, but also the dimensions of practice, community engagement and governance, including both legitimate and non-legitimate cultural activities. This study considers how relevant are individual socioeconomic and spatial factors in explaining inequalities and diversity in the right to participate in urban cultural life. We conclude firstly that, as previous research has shown, socioeconomic individual resources (such as education) play a significant role in explaining inequalities in levels of participation in legitimate culture. The impact of these factors is significantly reduced when community and governance dimensions, and above all, non-legitimate cultural activities are considered. Second, neighbourhood has its own role in explaining inequalities and diversity. Being from a well-off neighbourhood is more related to accessing legitimate culture but less related to non-legitimate cultural activity and other cultural rights dimensions.
{"title":"From the creative city to the city of cultural rights. Analysing inequalities and diversity in the right to participate in urban cultural life. The case of Barcelona","authors":"Artur Rubinat-i-Lacuesta , Roger Soler-i-Martí , Nicolás Barbieri Muttis","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100668","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100668","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent empirical evidence within the framework of the creative city has reproduced a narrow view of cultural participation. To better understand diversity and new and more complex logics of inequalities, this paper proposes an alternative multidimensional framework: the right to participate in urban cultural life. Using data from the Survey of Cultural Rights of Barcelona (2022), we analyse evidence of not only cultural access, but also the dimensions of practice, community engagement and governance, including both legitimate and non-legitimate cultural activities. This study considers how relevant are individual socioeconomic and spatial factors in explaining inequalities and diversity in the right to participate in urban cultural life. We conclude firstly that, as previous research has shown, socioeconomic individual resources (such as education) play a significant role in explaining inequalities in levels of participation in legitimate culture. The impact of these factors is significantly reduced when community and governance dimensions, and above all, non-legitimate cultural activities are considered. Second, neighbourhood has its own role in explaining inequalities and diversity. Being from a well-off neighbourhood is more related to accessing legitimate culture but less related to non-legitimate cultural activity and other cultural rights dimensions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100668"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145332914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-15DOI: 10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100670
Komorowski Marlen , Fodor Máté Miklós
Universities are increasingly recognized as key actors in regional innovation ecosystems, yet their role as “innovation agents” for the creative industries remains underexplored. While previous scholarship highlights universities’ contributions through research, skills provision, and technology transfer, little empirical evidence exists on how they amplify the innovation capacity of creative firms. This article addresses this gap through an exploratory quantitative study of 385 firms in Wales, drawing on data from the Clwstwr programme (2019–2021), a university-led initiative. We develop an analytical framework focusing on four major innovation drivers - skills and knowledge, networking, training, and funding - and examine whether university engagement enhances their effect on firm innovativeness. Employing econometric modelling, we find that firms engaged with the university exhibit significantly stronger relationships between each driver and overall innovativeness than firms outside the university-programme. Notably, university engagement magnifies the marginal effects of networking, training, and funding on innovativeness, with funding showing particularly large gains. These results provide novel evidence that universities can act as effective innovation agents, going beyond traditional roles of knowledge creation to actively shape firm-level innovation processes in the creative industries. The findings have implications for firms, which can leverage university partnerships to strengthen innovation outcomes; for universities, which can expand their role in local creative economies; and for policymakers, who can design targeted support mechanisms to embed universities within regional innovation strategies. By situating the Welsh case within broader debates on creative clusters and university–industry collaboration, this study contributes to understanding how universities drive innovation in under-researched sectors such as the creative industries.
{"title":"Universities as innovation agents for the creative industries – An exploratory quantitative study from Wales","authors":"Komorowski Marlen , Fodor Máté Miklós","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100670","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100670","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Universities are increasingly recognized as key actors in regional innovation ecosystems, yet their role as “innovation agents” for the creative industries remains underexplored. While previous scholarship highlights universities’ contributions through research, skills provision, and technology transfer, little empirical evidence exists on how they amplify the innovation capacity of creative firms. This article addresses this gap through an exploratory quantitative study of 385 firms in Wales, drawing on data from the <em>Clwstwr</em> programme (2019–2021), a university-led initiative. We develop an analytical framework focusing on four major innovation drivers - skills and knowledge, networking, training, and funding - and examine whether university engagement enhances their effect on firm innovativeness. Employing econometric modelling, we find that firms engaged with the university exhibit significantly stronger relationships between each driver and overall innovativeness than firms outside the university-programme. Notably, university engagement magnifies the marginal effects of networking, training, and funding on innovativeness, with funding showing particularly large gains. These results provide novel evidence that universities can act as effective innovation agents, going beyond traditional roles of knowledge creation to actively shape firm-level innovation processes in the creative industries. The findings have implications for firms, which can leverage university partnerships to strengthen innovation outcomes; for universities, which can expand their role in local creative economies; and for policymakers, who can design targeted support mechanisms to embed universities within regional innovation strategies. By situating the Welsh case within broader debates on creative clusters and university–industry collaboration, this study contributes to understanding how universities drive innovation in under-researched sectors such as the creative industries.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100670"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145332916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This positioning paper reflects on the idea of ‘the university’ as a creative industries intermediary, through a case study of the Creative Informatics programme. It asks where ‘the university’ fits within the context of the creative industries and creative economy, and its value in that ecosystem. Creative Informatics was a five-year R&D programme (2018–2024), part of the UK-wide Creative Industries Clusters Programme (CICP) funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to encourage innovation in and through the creative industries. The programme was a partnership between two universities, The University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh Napier University; creative industries support organisation Creative Edinburgh; and startup incubator Codebase. Creative Informatics leveraged and mediated university structures, while also attempting to position itself as embedded in the Edinburgh and South-East Scotland ‘Cluster’ through its networked relationships with non-academic partners. As well as funding creative industries activity, the programme included supporting activities designed to develop and maintain connections between practitioners and organisations, beyond the time-limited operation of the CICP. As such, this paper frames Creative Informatics as a temporary organisation and creative industries intermediary that operates both within and without the permanent construct of ‘the university’ and asks what happens next to the community of creative practitioners it has supported. In considering these intermediaries through the lens of a value constellation, this paper explores if and how the balance of power between cities and regions were challenged by or reproduced through the CICP.
{"title":"Creative Informatics: the role of ‘the university’ in Edinburgh and South East Scotland's creative cluster","authors":"Vikki Jones, Inge Panneels, Frauke Zeller, Melissa Terras, Nicola Osborne","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100664","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100664","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This positioning paper reflects on the idea of ‘the university’ as a creative industries intermediary, through a case study of the Creative Informatics programme. It asks where ‘the university’ fits within the context of the creative industries and creative economy, and its value in that ecosystem. Creative Informatics was a five-year R&D programme (2018–2024), part of the UK-wide Creative Industries Clusters Programme (CICP) funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to encourage innovation in and through the creative industries. The programme was a partnership between two universities, The University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh Napier University; creative industries support organisation Creative Edinburgh; and startup incubator Codebase. Creative Informatics leveraged and mediated university structures, while also attempting to position itself as embedded in the Edinburgh and South-East Scotland ‘Cluster’ through its networked relationships with non-academic partners. As well as funding creative industries activity, the programme included supporting activities designed to develop and maintain connections between practitioners and organisations, beyond the time-limited operation of the CICP. As such, this paper frames Creative Informatics as a temporary organisation and creative industries intermediary that operates both within and without the permanent construct of ‘the university’ and asks what happens next to the community of creative practitioners it has supported. In considering these intermediaries through the lens of a value constellation, this paper explores if and how the balance of power between cities and regions were challenged by or reproduced through the CICP.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100664"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145332917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-13DOI: 10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100667
Cheryll Ruth Soriano , Jeremy Tintiangko , Joy Hannah Panaligan
Over the past decade, scholarship on digital nomadism and co-working spaces has grown substantially, with much of it focused on the socio-technical infrastructures that enable remote workers—especially from the Global North—to pursue mobility and leisure in the Global South. In the Philippines, this global trend intersects with local dynamics. While the state promotes policies to attract foreign digital nomads and builds a cultural economy around their presence, digital nomadism is also emerging as an appealing path for Filipino online freelancers. As one of the world’s largest providers of labor to cloudwork platforms, the Philippines offers a critical vantage point for understanding how digital nomadism is locally practiced and reimagined, and the dynamics of their social relations. This paper explores the social infrastructures -- both lifestyle and transactional -- that sustain and are shaped by the interactions between foreign and local digital nomads in the Philippines. It pays attention to the racialized and classed dynamics that structure these communities, revealing how global mobility and local precarity coexist in shared spaces. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with Filipino digital nomads, field observations in physical hubs across the country, and analysis of digital nomad content on social media, this study contributes to broader conversations on the socio-technical ecosystems underpinning digital labor.
{"title":"Social infrastructures of mobility: Relational encounters between foreign and local digital nomads in the Philippines","authors":"Cheryll Ruth Soriano , Jeremy Tintiangko , Joy Hannah Panaligan","doi":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100667","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100667","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Over the past decade, scholarship on digital nomadism and co-working spaces has grown substantially, with much of it focused on the socio-technical infrastructures that enable remote workers—especially from the Global North—to pursue mobility and leisure in the Global South. In the Philippines, this global trend intersects with local dynamics. While the state promotes policies to attract foreign digital nomads and builds a cultural economy around their presence, digital nomadism is also emerging as an appealing path for Filipino online freelancers. As one of the world’s largest providers of labor to cloudwork platforms, the Philippines offers a critical vantage point for understanding how digital nomadism is locally practiced and reimagined, and the dynamics of their social relations. This paper explores the social infrastructures -- both lifestyle and transactional -- that sustain and are shaped by the interactions between foreign and local digital nomads in the Philippines. It pays attention to the racialized and classed dynamics that structure these communities, revealing how global mobility and local precarity coexist in shared spaces. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with Filipino digital nomads, field observations in physical hubs across the country, and analysis of digital nomad content on social media, this study contributes to broader conversations on the socio-technical ecosystems underpinning digital labor.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":39061,"journal":{"name":"City, Culture and Society","volume":"43 ","pages":"Article 100667"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145332181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-10DOI: 10.1016/j.ccs.2025.100666
Marina Pera
This article offers a nuanced exploration of the notion of social infrastructure and its capacity to foster encounters and strengthen social ties in urban contexts. Focusing on Civic Management Facilities in Barcelona—municipally owned and funded spaces managed by local non-profit associations that offer cultural, youth, and leisure activities accessible to all residents—this study examines their potential as central neighbourhood hubs. It addresses the gap in understanding how these facilities enable spaces of encounter in contexts characterised by social fragmentation, inequality, and diversity. Employing a mixed-methods case study approach, the findings reveal how social inequalities and power dynamics shape the use of Civic Management Facilities, often resulting in the underrepresentation of neighbourhood diversity. The study underscores the importance of agency in enhancing inclusive participation by vulnerable groups within social infrastructures. Facility managers, through sustained efforts, implement mechanisms to promote user diversity and cultivate public familiarity—understood as the recognition of the facility and unfamiliar individuals as integral parts of the community. By analysing the relational dimension of social infrastructure, this research provides a deeper understanding of how these spaces can promote encounters and inclusion in urban settings marked by inequality and socio-cultural diversity.
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