The Problem of Democracy in the ASEAN Creative City: the Cases of Chiang Mai, Bandung, Cebu, and George Town

- 43 - The problem of democracy in the ASEAN Creative City: the cases of Chiang Mai, Bandung, Cebu, and George Town Phitchakan Chuangchai Article Information Issue 24: 2019: Special Issue ‘Development, Democracy and Culture’, Clammer, J. and Vickery, J., eds. This article was published on: 20th January 2020. Keywords: cities; urbanism; urban cultural policy; ASEAN; creative city movement; cultural democracy Journal ISSN: 1467-0437 Article DOI: https://doi.org/10.31273/LGD.2019.2403 Abstract The ‘Creative City’ is a global policy trend that has, evidently, been adopted by many cities around the world. At the beginning of the putative post-industrial era (early-1970s) major cities across the Europe and USA faced significant economic and social transition, specifically when their economic core was progressively hollowed out as industrial production migrated to Asia or to other, cheaper, regions. There were demonstrable urban impacts of this transition, including poverty, crime, and a generalised underdevelopment. The Creative City discourse dates to this period in the UK, when cultural consultants like Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini recognised the conditions of urban change and the potential role of culture as a framework for policy intervention. They proposed new strategic approaches, which evolved and became influential within international policy spheres — British Council, UNESCO, and regional networks, such as ASEAN. In the Southeast Asian region, the Creative City discourse was welcomed by the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and a significant number of the major cities of the associated ten countries are currently using the Creative City as a model or framework for economic growth, social progress and cultural development (and as a broader means of internationalisation, cultural diplomacy and benefitting from UN-level development framework participation). This paper serves to consider the specific strategic manifestations of the Creative City idea and investigate its policy and ideological function in specific exemplar ASEAN cities. Author Phitchakan Chuangchai is a Lecturer at College of Innovation, Thammasat University (Bangkok, Thailand): [email protected] Copyright: Journal of Law, Social Justice & Global Development, University of Warwick, UK http://www.lgdjournal.org/article/issue-24-article-03 44 Introduction: the geo-political framework policy for culture). This article thus asks if the In April 2017, ASEAN held the first ASEAN Creative Creative City discourse has become a veritable Cities Forum and Exhibition in Manila (Philippines) Trojan Horse of neoliberalism in ASEAN, and in as a part of ASEAN 2017 Business Event. It was converting culture to economics, there are convened to discuss the use of culture and consequences. These consequences typify the creativity as a driving force of sustainable implications of withdrawing or exploiting ‘culture’ development (principally through urban in any society — that the development of regeneration and infrastructure development, democracy and civil society (of public life broadly) growth and innovation, but also ASEAN’s socio- will be adversely impacted. Brenner and political aims of promoting social cohesion, citizen Theodore’s (2002) framework of 'Actually Existing well-being and inter-cultural dialogue. Key parties Neoliberalism' is useful in providing a range of already interested in the policy areas of Creative specific criteria for the veritable ‘neoliberalisation’ Economy were present, and through of culture and society, specifically as facilitated by presentations and networking they shared their urban policies. This article’s purpose is to assess experiences and initiatives. How then did ASEAN neoliberalism as a process in four ASEAN cities actors adopt the Creative City as a development and determine whether a substantive model for the region, and meet the expectations interconnection (not necessarily causal) can be of the general political consensus on sustainable posited between neoliberal processes and the and inclusive development? Though ASEAN features of urban life as they have emerged within members (and not all) have just started using the the Creative City context. This is then discussed in Creative City discourse formally, some ASEAN the context of democracy and democratisation, or cities have made huge progress. This paper looks the general horizon of political expectation in each at four exemplar cities: Chiang Mai (Thailand), of these cities’ host countries (Thailand, Bandung (Indonesia), Cebu (Philippines), and Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia) as each national George Town (Malaysia). These four cities formed government does progressively confirm (and a network within ASEAN in 2014 called the purport to conform) to the normative Southeast Asian Creative Cities Network international principles of social and well as (SEACCN), aiming to become the platform for economic sustainability as defined by the United policy development in the region. Nations. The argument of this article is that the Creative The research literature formative of the Creative City has become a ‘fast’ policy for ASEAN, City discourse is broad and cannot be summarised regarded as a user-friendly tool for other, non- here. Nonetheless, Charles Landry’s The Creative creative, policy aims. The fact remains, however, City: A toolkit for urban innovators (2000, 2008) that cities are socially complex, and different, and must be cited as a seminal reference point. Landry so pertinent to this situation is the many scholars (2000), argued that creativity was a necessary who have assessed the travel of such Western framework for post-industrial urban development, policy notions, (as ‘fast policy’ (Peck, 2005), and, like his younger American counter-part ‘Xerox’ approach (Pratt, 2009), ‘cookie-cutter’ Richard Florida, knowledge, problem-solving, (Oakley, 2004), and so on). As a phenomenon of education, information and new technology were the now well-researched broader policy ‘transfer’ central. However, both Landry and Florida (the process, the Creative City has paradoxically been former arguably more than the latter) posited deployed without a thorough approach to culture social and ‘human’ development as central to itself — to a cultural audit of local assets, to urban and city development (i.e. economic cultural infrastructure, participants and producers, development more broadly). facilities and funding, and so on; and so this raises For Florida, his controversial notion of the creative the suspicion that it has been co-opted as another class has a high impact on the Creative City notion policy instrument in the spectrum of urban as he argues that the creative people are drawn to economy development tools, hollowing out its places with certain characteristics which he terms actual purpose (and thus ultimate efficacy as a ‘the 3T’s’, which includes technology, talent, and 45 tolerance. With this, Florida (2002) argues that predominate in each ASEAN country, they each place has become crucial than ever as it enables (i) became open to Western market-based the clustering of creative industries, and (ii) the innovations, such as the use of new technologies, densification of creative people. When firms and the spillover effects of small-scale innovative cluster, it provides the positive benefits of co- firms, cultural heritage and tourism, and, location or ‘spillovers’ (Florida, 2005, p.29); and specifically, the ‘creative industries’. The four case creative industries, more than most, require face- studies in this article considers this latter to-face contact and a diversity of individual talents adaptation. (Florida, 2008). Both Landry (2008) and Florida Each of these cases is based on primary empirical (2002, 2005, 2008) maintain that such are now research. For each city, desk research was essential for post-industrial economic growth, conducted on the socio-economic history of the which is centred in cities, and cities are the most city, under what economic conditions each city effective environments for individual ingenuity, has adopted and adapted the Creative City development and collaboration. Landry’s (2008) paradigm, and what rationales, developments and concept ‘creative milieu’, while largely policy-facilitated actions have emerged. untheorised, is effective in representing the social Information has been garnered from various conditions for urban culture of creativity (why news, government and investment agencies’ some cities are stimulating places of possibility, websites, official publications (of government and and others are not or are even the opposite). its agencies, or public institutions), and secondary Why Asia? sources such as academic journal articles. These The emergence of the Creative City discourse in sources were assessed within a narrative critique Asia was, in one sense, precipitated by one of the on the evolution of neoliberalism, to explain and biggest crises in Asian history — the Asian link the urban changes that cohere with Creative financial crisis of 1997. In the 1990s, the City paradigm. The research material was adapted government of Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, to a tabulation of neoliberal impacts – that is, South Korea, and the Philippines, gradually from the aforementioned article ‘Actually Existing relaxed control over the domestic movement of Neoliberalism’ by Brenner and Theodore (2002). capital in order to attract foreign direct This allowed the argument a trajectory, in terms investment (Steger and Roy, 2010).

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