Making the Future of the City

Abstract

Recent discussions on the priorities of more regenerative and socially-just creative city policies have highlighted the potential contribution of small-scale urban manufacturing, crafts and making practices, aligning with the productive city discourse. This chapter sheds light on the experiences of two European port cities: Rotterdam and Athens, exploring how the creative economy and cultural manufacturing relate to each other and (co)locate within each, as well as the implications of colocation for Productive City policy. Drawing on firm-level data in the Orbis database, this chapter compares the spatial clustering of the diverse creative economy sub-sectors in both cities, with a particular focus on the location of cultural manufacturing relative to knowledge and service-based creative activities. Consistent with previous research, knowledge- and service-based creative activities in both Rotterdam and Athens are concentrated in city centers. Cultural manufacturing, by contrast, occurs in both central and peripheral areas, with clusters more fragmented in Rotterdam and more centralized in Athens. Manufacturing activities also differ: In Rotterdam, furniture and interior goods production are prominent, while in Athens, apparel, printing, and media reproduction play a central role. This comparative exploration offers a useful lens for examining how post-industrialization processes unfold through urban creative economies, a critical dimension to consider for advancing the agenda for urban manufacturing in productive creative cities.