The Expansive Creative City as Dynamic Post-Covid Recovery

In this paper, an expanded view of the creative city is offered to explain the differences in performance and recover of different creative locales in the Global North. Covid-19 is presented both as a structural shock for creative cities and an opportune space to review the creative city model, develop new readings of the city, as well as provide new opportunities for post-Covid recovery. The paper argues that creative cities should be viewed as a creative life-cycle with 4 distinct phases, rather than a static model, with each city requiring very different policy support. Also, a wider view of creative stakeholders as not just producers and consumers but also investors, policy makers and universities provides a broader basis for designing different recovery strategies, which consider the different areas in which value might be derived. In this different approach, wider sets of creative skills are viewed as driving economic growth, much of which occurs in non-creative and civic areas of the economy.