The Problem of democracy in the ASEAN Creative City: The cases of Chiang Mai, Bandung, Cebu, and George Town

Abstract

The ‘Creative City’ is a global policy trend that has, evidently, been adopted by many cities around the world. At the beginning of the putative post-industrial era (early-1970s) major cities across the Europe and USA faced significant economic and social transition, specifically when their economic core was progressively hollowed out as industrial production migrated to Asia or to other, cheaper, regions. There were demonstrable urban impacts of this transition, including poverty, crime, and a generalised underdevelopment. The Creative City discourse dates to this period in the UK, when cultural consultants like Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini recognised the conditions of urban change and the potential role of culture as a framework for policy intervention. They proposed new strategic approaches, which evolved and became influential within international policy spheres — British Council, UNESCO, and regional networks, such as ASEAN. In the Southeast Asian region, the Creative City discourse was welcomed by the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and a significant number of the major cities of the associated ten countries are currently using the Creative City as a model or framework for economic growth, social progress and cultural development (and as a broader means of internationalisation, cultural diplomacy and benefitting from UN-level development framework participation). This paper serves to consider the specific strategic manifestations of the Creative City idea and investigate its policy and ideological function in specific exemplar ASEAN cities.