Articles | Volume 72, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-72-157-2017
Special issue:
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-72-157-2017
Standard article
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21 Apr 2017
Standard article |  | 21 Apr 2017

“Creative city” policy mobilities as transformation of dispositives – arrangements of “networking” in the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg

Moritz Ortegel

Abstract. Following the calls for context-sensitive policy mobility research, I propose to analyze policy mobilities as transformation of dispositives. Michel Foucault's context-sensitive notion of dispositive stresses the context-specific, heterogeneous relations between linguistic and non-linguistic practices, subjectivities and materialities as well as the influence of power/knowledge and sedimented features in policymaking. These sensitivities are valuable contributions to policy mobility research.

I draw on empirical research on creative city policies, which are re-embedded in the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg, to illustrate that line of argumentation. I reconstruct and compare related (sub-)dispositives: the mobile creative city policies, the historical and current contexts of the policies' re-embedding. Consequently, I use arrangements of networking as an empirical lens to understand the differing logics that shape the re-embedding of creative city policies in the European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg and the mutual transformation of policies and their contexts.

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Short summary
I ask how creativity-based ideas of regional development are applied in the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg (EMN). The paper focuses on the different ways of "networking" related to "creatives" in the EMN and on the former brownfield called On AEG, because this allows for understanding the logics of the application. Drawing on a mix of methods including walking and photo interviews and coding, I reconstructed a bias towards a technology and business orientation in networking.
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