Transnationalisation of development strategies in East Central European cities: A survey of the shortlisted Polish European Capital of Culture candidate cities

Abstract

The level of integration of a city into transnational networks has become widely interpreted as the decisive factor of urban development in a globalising world. Hence, the building of transnational links has become a vital aspect of city development strategies. This applies in a particular way also to the "latecomer" cities in East Central Europe aspiring to overcome marginality. Here, the analysis of final European Capital of Culture applications allows for definition of the state-of-the-art of such transnationalisation strategies in this part of Europe. As the cases of the five cities shortlisted in the contest to become the Polish European Capital of Culture 2016 show (i.e. Gdańsk, Katowice, Lublin, Warsaw, and the eventual laureate city of Wrocław), transnational networking on the level of innovative regions, metropolitan areas or cross-border regions is rather poorly developed. The cases also show that the lack of transnational urban societies, which is interpreted as a disadvantage in the quest to build and market attractive and creative cities, can be compensated for by the rediscovery of a multiethnic past.

A part of the world or apart from the world? The postsocialist Global East in the geopolitics of knowledge

“…The scholarship on postsocialist cities is just one example of many where Eastern scholars now drive the debate and we see an increasingly lively exchange (see Ferenčuhová 2016 for an overview). Books and papers have focused on suburbanization (Ioffe and Nefedova 1998;Krisjane and Berzins 2011;Stanilov and Ludĕk 2014;Grigorichev 2015;Breslavskii 2016), urban landscapes and representations (Shlipchenko 2008;Czepczyński 2008;Ilchenko 2020, this issue), the links among urban space, population and municipal funding (Salukvadze and Golubchikov 2016;Hudeček et al 2019), diverse trajectories of urban growth (Tölle 2013;Ianoş et al 2015;Valiyev and Wallwork 2019), urban identities (Saar and Unt 2008;Velikonja 2009;Vendina 2012;Bissenova 2017;Kuhar, Monro, and Judit 2017), urban infrastructures (Gibas 2013;Tuvikene, Sgibnev, and Neugebauer 2019;Salukvadze and Sichinava 2019), mega-events (Gogishvili 2018;Gogishvili and Harris-Brandts 2019;Trubina 2019bTrubina , 2019a, marginalized populations in the urban environment (Chelcea 2006(Chelcea , 2019Neugebauer 2015;Gogishvili and Harris-Brandts 2019), nuclear towns and small towns (Gunko 2014;Liubimau 2019), climate change (Haase et al 2019;Ferenčuhová 2020, this issue). Comparative work on urban development in the postsocialist countries has gradually expanded (Bodnar andMolnar 2010, for example, Tuvikene 2016;Kährik et al 2016).…”

The European Capital of Culture and Transnational Networks

“…Established in 1985, the ECOC is at the core of the EU's cultural action and one of the most visible manifestations of the EU policy's dual focus on cultural and transnational spaces (Patel 2013a). Europe can be viewed as a transnational space whose underlying concept is to promote the richness and diversity of European cultures while demonstrating common European values at the grassroots (Griffiths 2006;Lähdesmäki 2012;Tölle 2016). However, despite growing research interest in the ECOC, existing literature tends to ignore or marginalize any link between the ECOC and EU's cultural policy.…”

“…Cities in Europe are becoming more involved in transnational organizations and networks. Building transnational ties has become integral to city development strategies, as there is a clear correlation between the degree to which cities are integrated into transnational networks and urban development in a globalized world, especially for 'latecomer' cities in Central and Eastern Europe that are eager to overcome marginalization (Tölle 2016). However, whether theoretically or practically, the transnational networks among ECOC host cities have not received much attention from academia.…”

Young artists and the development of artistic quarters in Polish cities

“…Many such companies, often with foreign capital, bring the experiences of Western European and American investors to Poland. In the case of Katowice the development of an artistic quarter in the broadly understood city centre and on its northern edge is also to a large extent linked to action taken by public authorities in a continuation of the ideas and projects initiated during the bid for the title of European Cultural Capital 2016 (Tölle, 2013). The spatial preferences of young artists and the directions of development of artistic quarters are thus the outcome of two parallel forces.…”

“…The context in which they function is thus not only post-socialist but also increasingly neoliberal (Sagan, Szmytkowska, 2012), which is reflected in challenges connected with urban planning and market-driven, competition-oriented urban policies, among them the instrumentalisation of cultural and leisure policies as a means of urban development (e.g. the Cultural Capital of Europe bid in Katowice or the Winter Olympics bid in Krakow, rejected in a referendum by the residents of the city) (Tölle, 2013). This study therefore seeks to examine the spatial preferences expressed by artists in such a post-socialist and neoliberal urban laboratory.…”