Culture-led local development processes: The Wynwood Arts District

The thesis aims to analyze the importance that cultural and creative dimensions are assuming as catalysts and engines for local development processes and the growing complementarity between culture and local assets in promoting the improvement and development of the economic, social and environmental dimensions. The introductory chapter illustrate the complicated relation between globalization and the urban sphere. Globalization and the changing economy have influenced every single states around the world, each one differently but all are searching for ways and actions to support high-growth industries, stimulate innovation, promote entrepreneurial activity, face unemployment, build human capital, and revitalize distressed areas. The closely interconnected processes and forces of globalization, post-Fordism, postmodernity and neoliberalism have given rise to innovative changes in the urban reality. The issue of culture-led renovation processes for urban areas and regions and the emergent role that creative dimension is assuming as a driving force for local development processes takes particular attention. Culture and creativity are assuming a more fundamental role in the production of social and economic value, and consequently in local development models also implies that rather than merely spatial agglomeration, they tend to gain social centrality in all kinds of everyday contexts and activities, having the capacity to promote system-wide integration of diverse practices. In the second chapter, after the analysis of the notion of agglomeration, explaining how and why firms might want to agglomerate into a specific location, the variety of forms and type of agglomeration and the shift from industrial to cultural district, will be presented a variety of observed cases of successful culture-driven local development in the United States of America that are taken as interesting prototypes. These phenomena of spatial concentration of cultural, creative or culture-related activities in specific areas of a city are working as a sort of social and creative hub. The third and last chapter is about the creative district situated in Miami, State of Florida, the so called "Wynwood Walls". The chapter analyzes and examines the evolution of the initiative of the real estate developer Tony Goldman and the key factors that have allowed the development of the District, reconstructing the history from the neighborhood's birth and the first steps immediately after the credit crunch, the housing bubble of 2007-08, to the establishment of the Wynwood Business Improvement District.