This edited volume is a lively and timely appraisal of “ordinary cities” as they struggle to implement creative redevelopment and economic growth strategies to enhance their global competitiveness. The book is concerned with new and often unanticipated inequalities that have emerged from this new city movement. As chronicled, such cities – Cleveland (USA), Heidelberg (Germany), Oxford (UK), Groningen (Netherlands), Montpellier (France), but also cities from the Global South such as Cachoeira (Brazil) and Delhi (India) – now experience new and unexpected realities of poverty, segregation, neglect of the poor, racial and ethnic strife. To date planners, academics, and policy analysts have paid little attention to the connections between this drive in these cities to be more creative and the inequalities that have followed. This book, keenly making these connections, highlights the limited visions that have been applied in this planning drive to make these cities more creative and ultimately more globally competitive.

“This book offers a valuable insight into the discourse on urban inequalities. An outstanding network of urban researchers has done a remarkable job compiling case studies about the shadow sides of cities going creative.  Reading this book invites the readers to not only question the growth path of cities in the recent knowledge society, it also encourages us to invest more time into comparative analyses on cities across the globe.” (Peter Meusburger, Distinguished Senior Professor, Geography, University of Heidelberg, Germany)

“This thought-provoking book offers results and follow-up questions to the roots of inequality across cities in the Global North and Global South. Few works have critically and comparatively inquired into the ideological discourse of the “creative city” like this one. This book compiles original and up-to-date accounts that chronicle the cracks behind the claimed city of “diversity, creativity and sustainability.” (Carolina Sternberg, Assistant Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies, DePaul University, USA)

Covers a highly contentious area of current practical city-planning as well as academic theory-building Combines different methodological approaches in an innovative way, contributing thereby also to the development of new comparative methods for urban research Goes beyond the current debate on urban inequality by combining different aspects of social inequality and by focusing on medium-sized cities International in its content, authorship, and audience and adds a critical perspective to the creative-city discourse