Cultural Creative Industries and shrinking cities: The Italian case

The "shrinking city" is a multidimensional phenomenon regarding an urban area undergoing a strong economic, social and demographic decline (Bontje, 2005; Burkholder, 2012; Pallagst et. Al., 2014). The causes of the decline are complex, but they can essentially be traced back to globalization, deindustrialisation, and the emerging of new production models. Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI), as well as tourism (Della Lucia and Trunfio, 2018) have been recognized important levers to counteract the ongoing decline of shrinking cities and foster new development models . The research question we will try to answer concerns the relationship existing between the industrial and demographic decline of the city and the presence (with growth / decline) of CCIs and tourism, and whether there is a complementarity or substitution process between them. If CCIs play an anti-cyclical role in the cities that are experiencing decreasing phases of development, specific policies could be implemented to contain the negative effects of the decline by focusing on CCIs and tourism. Our research starts from the results of the Italian post-industrial economy of culture and tourism (Della Lucia and Segre 2017), based on the widest currently accepted and country specific definition of CCI (Santagata, 2006, 2009 e 2012), which identifies the main urban areas experiencing a culture-base development in Italy.). In the period 2009-2019, descriptive statistics or econometrics, are applied to socio-economic and demographic variables to examine the negative effects of the 2008 financial crisis on the economy of large urban contexts. Expected results include a map of CCIs and tourism in declining cities, in terms of numbers of firms, employment and turnover. Case studies will be carried out on the exemplary cities in literature (Turin, for example).