Taxonomy of Cultural Quarters based on the Relationship between Property Development and Cluster Formation: Some Theoretical Reflections

There is extensive literature on the urban dimensions of creative industries. However, only a limited number of studies have focused on property development’s contributions to the formation of cultural clusters. That oversight is unfortunate because property development lies at the core of governments’ and developers’ strategies for the promotion of creative industries and cultural clusters. The current study attempts to fill this gap providing a taxomony of cultural quarters based on the relationship between property development and cluster formation. After re-defining three well-known concepts (i.e., scene, quarter, and cluster), we use these concepts to explore four types of cultural quarters: 1) scene-consolidating quarter; 2) scene-displacing development; 3) scene-spatialising quarter; and 4) scene-imitating development.