Paper session at Annual Association of American Geographers Conference (Las Vegas, 22-27 March 2009)
Organisers: Mark Jayne (Geography, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, UK) and Bas van Heur (Maastricht Virtual Knowledge Studio, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, NL).

The last decade in particular has seen the emergence of a discourse that understands creative production as central to the economic development of urban spaces. The `urban’ in this context, however, has almost invariably referred to large global or capital cities such as London, New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam or Berlin. With a few exceptions (e.g. Christopherson 2004; Bell and Jayne 2006), small cities have been ignored and remain under-investigated. This session tries to counter this bias in urban geography by focusing on the following questions:

In what ways are policy strategies developed for large cities applicable to small cities?

Are creative entrepreneurs such as artists, designers and musicians - i.e. those actors analytically privileged in most studies on the creative economy and the cultural industries - the most relevant actors in the case of small cities? Or should we be looking for other creative and innovative actors (and actor constellations) in other fields?

Large cities tend to dominate the surrounding landscape through their concentration of media, jobs and governmental institutions. How does this urban hierarchy shape the very attempts of small cities to develop and promote local creative economies?

To what extent do the dynamics of small cities necessitate a rethinking of dominant theories and concepts used to explain the creative economy?

Authors that address these - and other relevant - questions are invited to submit a brief abstract (not more than 250 words) to the session organizers Mark Jayne (mark.jayne@manchester.ac.uk) and Bas van Heur (b.vanheur@vks.unimaas.nl) by October 1st at the latest.

Text from Impacts 08