After reading Richard Florida’s work (e.g. Florida, 2003) on the creative industry and on the importance of the creative class for urban development in post-industrial economies, many cities in Europe and the USA have started to invest in creativity in general and in design in particular. Much...

The degree and the way of upgrading differ widely per industry. This article tries to give some new insights in these differences by linking the concept of upgrading to that of the knowledge base. Moreover, we try to identify barriers to upgrading as well as the appropriate spatial scale on...

This paper reflects on a "cultural industry model" with important potential for local development, which is the network of independent cultural producers of Brazilian slums. The landscape of favelas is unique: plagued by poverty and crime, they have come to encapsulate the worst aspects of...