The creative city does not exist by Marianna d'Ovidio

Author:Marianna d'Ovidio [d'Ovidio, Marianna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, Urban
ISBN: 9788867053995
Google: jykmDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Ledizioni
Published: 2016-04-01T04:09:53+00:00

5 Functioning social networks with an uncertain future

The aim of the research was providing an analytical exploration of the capacity of the Milanese context in supporting the cultural economy. The research is based mainly on interviews to managers and operators in the most innovative cultural sectors, such as fashion industry, design, advance services for companies, web-design and so on. From the interviews’ analysis, it emerges that the classical factors and the path-dependency of the Milanese economy are extremely important. The past economic success of the city is certainly at the bases of the development of the creative and cultural economy today: many firms are attracted on the Milanese context by the presence itself of other companies, infrastructures and the local labour market are also a reflection of the past, rather than the consequences of targeted economic policies. The same can be said about the image of the city, which, as we will see in the next chapter, is attracting many foreign professionals.

Milan has always been called the “moral capital” of Italy. It has always been considered one of the most important national industrial hubs, as well as the most international and one of the most innovative and progressive Italian cities. However, from the empirical material, we can also claim that, at least in the interviewees’ perception, the city has declined at the turn of the century, and that it has lost its supremacy in Italy and its competitive edge at the European level. The picture emerging is that of a successful context where public local institutions have been extremely weak, on many different sides11.

Yet, where public institutions are lacking, the social capital emerges, as in a sort of auto-organization of the economic actors, using a strong local relational capacity (Trigilia, 2007) to pursuit their goals. The local social connectivity of the Milanese economic system (the capacity of making network and organizing business though that) is at the basis of the economic success of the city today. We agree with Dente claiming that the city, at least in the past, has always been “under-institutionalized” and “under-governed” and that “most of all the excellences which we are proud of, happened without a real political actions12” (Dente, 2005, p. 329). Therefore, we could ask which effects can have this lacking of direction on the architecture of social networks and on the creative and cultural economy as a whole. The open questions are a lot, but here we limit on two very urgent issues.

Firstly, a problematic issue is represented by the dynamics of accessing the networks, which are strategic for the working of the creative and cultural economy in Milan, but they are also extremely close and inaccessible for the outsiders. Researches demonstrated that networks’ strength depends also by their degree in accepting newcomers: it is therefore urgent to think about local policies aimed at “opening” the creative and cultural economy to external contaminations.

The second matter is strictly linked to the first one and it is inspired by Trigilia (2007) who claims that both cultural and social capitals need to be reproduced, or they decay.

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