Le rôle de la culture et des industries créatives dans la reconversion territoriale de Detroit : la production d’un espace adapté au capitalisme cognitif-culturel

Abstract

For the past ten years, the city of Detroit in the United States has gone through a large-scale territorial reconversion. Culture has played a pivotal role in the process and, as almost everywhere else, it has been reshaped by discourses and policies on creativity and so-called “creative” industries and cities. This article resituates the transformation of discourse and policy within the broader framework of the transition towards cognitive-cultural capitalism. Next, it proposes to describe and explain the role of culture and creative industries in the recent social and spatial transformations taking place in Detroit. First, it focuses on the creativity narratives that have permeated local discourse since the end of the 2000s in Detroit and facilitated the convergence of various urban revitalization projects. Second, it examines the role of culture and the creative industries in changing the image of the city and prompting different modes of spatial production. The result is the creation of a new space, “Greater Downtown Detroit” which now seems to be separated from the rest of the city.

Keywords

• Detroit
• creative city
• cognitive-cultural capitalism
• city branding
• creative reuse