Suburban creativity: The geography of creative industriesin Johannesburg

Abstract

Creativity is an increasing scholarly focus for urban and economic geographers. The aim in this paper is to contribute to what is so far mainly a Northern literature around the locational characteristics of creative industries. The results are analysed from a comprehensive audit undertaken of creative industries in Johannesburg, South Africa’s leading economic hub. In common with certain other investigations of creative industries the largest component of enterprises in Johannesburg is creative services involving the production of goods or services for functional purposes. An aggregate picture emerges of the geography of creative industries in Johannesburg as strongly focused in suburban areas rather than the inner-city and its fringe areas. Nevertheless, certain differences are observed across the eight categories of creative industries. The evidence concerning the spatial distribution of creative industries in Johannesburg provides a further case for re-positioning the suburbs in post-Fordist debates around creative city economies and for re-examining neo-liberal cultural policies that preference inner-city areas.

Cultural Clusters as a Local Economic Development Strategy in Rural Small-Town Areas: Sarah Baartman District in South Africa

“…This is especially true for post-industrial cities where CCIs are used to promote urban renewal (Florida, 2003;Landry, 2012). Accordingly, most academic and industrial research focuses on cities in developed countries (Gregory and Rogerson, 2018). There is however, a growing interest amongst developing countries in the potential of CCIs as new growth engines, although this has mainly been focused on urban areas (Flew and Cunningham, 2010).…”

“…However, there is a growing body of literature on CCIs in non-metropolitan spaces within developed countries including the United Kingdom (Bell and Jayne, 2010) and Australia (Waitt and Gibson, 2009;Daniel, 2014;Daniel et al, 2018). The research seeks to contribute to, and expand, the scope of the literature with a developing-world, small-town perspective, following on from recent work by Gregory and Rogerson (2018) that analyses cultural industry clustering in a large South Africa city (Johannesburg).…”

Re-creating slum tourism: Perspectives from South Africa

“…It is argued that one basis for expanding township tourism in South Africa is through maximizing the potential for creativity and the development of new innovative creative tourism products. The limited existing research on creative tourism in South Africa suggests that it is mainly concentrated outside of the townships, at least in the documented cases of Johannesburg and Cape Town (Rogerson, 2006;Booyens & Rogerson, 2015;Gregory & Rogerson, 2018). This said, there is a historical record on the cultural vibrancy of township life and its importance, especially for arts, music, and entertainment in South Africa (Coplan, 2008).…”

How do various types of regions attract creative industries? Comparison of metropolitan, old industrial and rural regions in Czechia

“…There is a general consensus that CI tend to cluster in four types of locations: large urban agglomerations (Boix, R. et al 2015;van Winden, W. and Carvalho, L. 2016) and their centres or inner cities (Spencer, G.M. 2015;Wood, S. and Dovey, K. 2015), metropolitan hinterlands (Felton, E. et al 2010;Gregory, J. and Rogerson, C. 2018), smaller towns concentrating cultural heritage (Lazzeretti, F. et al 2012), touristic centres/environmentally and residentially attractive regions including some rural and peripheral areas (Cruz, S.S. and Teixeira, A.A.C. 2015;Escalona-Orcao, A.I.…”

“…At the same time, routine and standardized lower value-added functions are expected to concentrate in hinterlands rather than skilled jobs and high value-added functions requiring face-to-face contacts with customers or suppliers (Merino, F. and Rubalcaba, L. 2013). Nevertheless, in some hinterlands creative jobs may flourish (Gregory, J. and Rogerson, C. 2018) and "the geography of creative industries is more complex than simple concentric-circle models -in which inner cities are the hub of creative industries activity, and in which that activity diminishes with distance from the inner core -suppose" (Felton, E. et al 2010, 67).…”