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Executive Summary
We have been facing the emergence of a new era characterized by the growing relevance of
knowledge, innovation and creativity, and the rising importance of regions and cities as arenas for
territorial competitiveness.
Building creative ecosystems is possible in small and medium-sized cities
This growing relationship between creativity and territory leads to the introduction of the concept
of ‘creative ecosystem’ which is an environment of excellence based on creative assets that
generates socio-economic growth and development, and comprises three interlinked
components: economy – creative industries, place – creative spaces, and people – creative talent.
Such interaction depends largely on the specific governance systems and institutional
arrangements of the territories – governance, and that of their position in the spatial system and
urban hierarchies, and their level of access to information and communication technologies –
connectivity.
According to different academic studies and public policy documents, such as the Florida’s
Creative Capital model, the concept of ‘creative ecosystem’ is oriented to big cities and
metropolises that cause the marginalisation of smaller territorial areas. Either they are considered
irrelevant in the creative economy movement and devoted to failure, or they tend to extrapolate
the concepts and models of metropolitan creative imaginaries with inappropriate results, the socalled
fast policy transfer. Moreover, these studies have been tested essentially in the reality of
“liberal market economies”, such as the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK, it being questionable
if some of their ingredients are universally applicable, namely in the remaining European
countries.
In fact, the European spatial system has specific characteristics compared to other territorial
areas, alongside the internal differences between countries and regions, such as territorial
diversity materialized in diverse spatial settlements, dense regional networks and a rich historical,
natural and cultural heritage. In this context, small and medium-sized cities, despite some
limitations, have potentials that must be explored, like the diversification of the local economy,
the position in a polycentric spatial system, the integration in regional and global networks, the
trends towards urban exodus and counter-urbanisation and a unique territorial capital.