Between working class and creative city: culture-led urban development in Mannheim

One notices a significant trend and attitude: cities have to be creative and want to be creative. A suitable strategy seems to focus on the cultural and creative industries as a resource for the cities' regeneration process and development. The powerful influence of culture and creativity cannot be denied; they make life in the cities more enjoyable and illustrate a high value for society. With rising popularity, there is also an increasing number of opponents who caution from the risk of the creative cities' hype in the discourse of urban development, like gentrification. However, the academic literature and research mainly focuses on popular cities and metropoles, whereas small to medium-sized creative cities are underrepresented. In order to give voice to cities outside of the spotlight, the research was built on the case of the German city of Mannheim, a post-industrial medium-sized city, which holds the title UNESCO’s Creative City of Music since 2014. Enqueueing in contemporary discourse, this research explores the extent to which creative and cultural industries influence urban development in Mannheim and cultural policy’s role within the process. The research draws on a qualitative strategy based on semi-structured interviews with a diverse set of voices of Mannheim’s cultural and creative industries and the municipality as well as secondary data. The findings have demonstrated that the cultural and creative sectors play an essential role in Mannheim’s urban development, particularly as part of the district regeneration of areas that are structurally weak. Furthermore, the interviews have emphasized the importance of urban society’s participation and integration within the development processes and how placemaking and the provision of open areas for cultural activities present facilitating approaches for this aspiration.