OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

3. PROMOTING LOCAL DEVELOPMENT BY CREATING CULTURAL PRODUCTS
• Finally, the image of the place is another important factor in differentiating
products — this is nothing new. In the past, many American products tried to
look more like English goods, in order to benefit from a more important image
of industrial prowess and comfort. The success of Paris fashion products had
at least as much to do with the image of luxury and excellence traditionally
associated with that city as it did with their functional utility. Detroit automakers
are constantly making references to California or the Mediterranean in their model
names in order to resonate images of holidays, relaxation and fun 84 .
The trend to territorial clustering of cultural products industries
In Chapter X of his Principles of Economics, entitled “The Concentration of
Specialised Industries in Specific Localities”, Alfred Marshall showed that some
territories were characterised by the coexistence of many firms of varying size that
seemed to establish among themselves relationships both commercial and noncommercial
(Marshall, 1890). These territories engaged in invisible or non-market trading
based on mutual trust and they allowed entrepreneurs to upgrade their technologies
and to gain a better knowledge of markets. Just as it was said of German cities in the
Middle Ages that “city air makes you free”, one could say of these districts that “the
local air breeds growth”. Yet in describing these districts, Marshall was thinking less
of capitalist clusters than of the survival of medieval districts where guilds, masters
and journeyman would commonly pool certain assets, even while drawing private
advantage from them.
Data from the global economy support this industrial cluster approach.
- For many industries doomed to ever-shorter life cycles, it is a good idea to produce
new goods constantly and to assemble the conditions that allow for constant
adaptation. Their owners will be well advised to set up shop close to each other
and to share information on new markets and potential new factors of production.
- Workers with specific skills will do better if they are close to such enterprises
and contractors.
Far from appearing as a holdover from medieval production methods, the cluster
can be seen as a mode of spatial organisation for coping with the constraints of a global
economy in which new products promptly drive out old ones.
The nature of cultural activity
This constant renewal of goods and services offered is one of the constraints that
cultural products face. Although everyone agrees that it is difficult to define cultural
CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005 103