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NOTES
87. This trust also serves as a lubricant and can facilitate dealings that may not be strictly reciprocal at a
given point in time.
88. It is no longer a question of tinkering with some element of the production process, but rather of
immediately changing certain characteristics of products and of factors.
89. In the first case, shareholders must be created, in the second case, stakeholders. In the first case, the
accumulated trust between a limited number of partners will act as an unrecoverable cost, while in
the second case, there must above all the solid social recognition among all the firms.
90. We may distinguish two types of clusters: those that involve activities implying an existing division
of labour in producing cultural goods (e.g. concept and design, which are concentrated in major
centres), and those that flow more directly from a craft, where there is less if any division of labour
(found typically in smaller cities and especially in rural areas).
91. At once ancient and recently “re-created”, Babelsberg, near Berlin, offers an example of a cultural district
created largely by private initiative. The idea was not so much to create a district as a cluster of skills
and activities at a site that once played a key role in moviemaking but that, in the wake of German
reunification, found itself stranded. The site was initially renovated by French investors who rebuilt
the infrastructure, studio access roads and artists’ housing, and set up IT networks. At this point the
High Tech Babelsberg centre was set up, in recognition of the growing importance of the new audiovisual
production technologies for “special effects”, soundtracks, editing etc. Since these activities are
typically spread among small, independent firms, the principle is to provide a logical platform joined
by broadband networks so that all firms can be interlinked through their computers. 300 jobs have
already been created, and a thousand are expected. The centre does not exclude the big firms by
any means: in fact, they can find there the resources that they are unwilling or unable to provide
themselves. Finally, the centre is running training programs and creating an atmosphere that fosters
the dissemination of new skills, even ones that have yet to be identified by training institutes or
certification programs.
92. Rockwood in Cincinnati systematically publishes articles in the local and national press.
93. Florida R. (2002), p. 64.
94. idem, p.67.
95. idem, p. 66.
96. www.creativeclass.org
97. A good example of this phenomenon can be seen in the history of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine in Paris,
which had been a centre of European cabinetry since the 17th century. Hausmann’s grand reshaping
of the city in the 19th century scattered the district’s trades and its artisans gradually lost contact with
their clientele, who tended to patronize the merchants. Over time, the organization of the craft shifted
from one where independent cabinetmakers made and sold their own articles to one where they were
essentially suppliers to the merchants, a shift that was accelerated by competition among the
merchants. The change in the district’s layout disrupted and ultimately dissolved the Faubourg’s closeknit
cabinet-making community, as its numbers declined and the cohesion bred of its self-sufficiency
was undermined. In this way, projects to maintain these activities in city cores often pose issues that
go beyond land-use aspects and can transform the very nature of the activity concerned.
CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005 195