Acceso usuarios
Johannes Novy, Claire Colomb
In cities across the globe there is mounting evidence of growing mobilization by membersof the so-called ‘creative class’ in urban social movements, defending particular urbanspaces and influencing urban development. This essay discusses the meaning of suchdevelopments with reference to the hypothesis made by David Harvey in Spaces ofCapital about the increasing mobilization of cultural producers in oppositionalmovements in an era of wholesale instrumentalization of culture and ‘creativity’ incontemporary processes of capitalist urbanization. After briefly reviewing recentscholarly contributions on the transformations of urban social movements, as well asHarvey’s hypothesis about the potential role of cultural producers in mobilizations forthe construction of ‘spaces of hope’, the essay describes two specific urban protests thathave occurred in Berlin and Hamburg in recent years: the fight for Berlin’s waterfrontin the Media Spree area, and the conflict centred on the Gängeviertel in Hamburg. Inboth protests artists, cultural producers and creative milieux have played a prominentrole. The essay analyses the composition, agenda, contribution and contradictions of thecoalitions behind the protests, discussing whether such movements represent the seeds ofnew types of coalitions with a wide-ranging agenda for urban change. The essay finallyproposes a future research agenda on the role of artists, cultural producers and the‘creative class’ in urban social movements across the globe.
