Rethinking Place Branding and Place Making through Creative and Cultural Quarters

Cultural and creative quarters—from historic districts to new digital hubs—feature heavily in economic development and cluster studies, but their role in place making and branding is only recently being discovered. Essentially production based, they also tend to locate in industrial areas of cities which are also the subject of regeneration and transformation. As cities seek to widen their brand offer and diversify the range of destinations to a discerning visitor and residential market (local, domestic and international), these areas, which combine work and play, represent a distinct place brand. Through city case studies from several countries, this chapter critiques the emergence of the creative quarter through organic place making and their value as a place brand in areas of the city which have not traditionally been considered a destination. How far policy and planning can support and protect these post/new industrial quarters is also discussed, including the concomitant risks of gentrification and commodification that branding can infer.