Place-identity, integration and sustainability: exploring the creative city concept

Creative city is a city able to generate economies of innovations, cultures, research and artistic production and strengthening its own identity capital. It deals not only with boosting the economies of culture but also producing new economies, having as a starting point the cultural capital, which is understood as an element of the maximum synthesis of the identity of places and making a system together with the other urban capitals. In this context, new and alternative strategies and urban politics should be considered. The most mature experiences of creative cities show us two types of creative clusters. The first type are the cultural clusters, which are created around activities such as fine arts, music, cinema, architecture and design, and whose start-up is encouraged and planned by local administration. The second are the clusters of events, whose development has its origins in the organization of great events or different kinds of recreational and cultural manifestations. Starting from these premises, this article is aimed at investigating the concept of the creative city, who are the drivers and what are the factors conditioning the creativity in cities, and how they stimulate sustainable urban innovation. Furthermore, the case-study of the Milla Digital project in Zaragoza (Spain), in the framework of the clusters of events, is illustrated. The urban transformation offered by Expo 2008 is for Zaragoza the driving force for planning and producing a new social, cultural and economic change for image of the city.