The Creative Capacity of Culture between Lateral Proximity and New Creative Milieu

We are living in second modernity, a period of great changes, in which new technological, productive and consumption paradigms are establishing themselves, while uncertainty prevails along with the affirmation of globalization and the knowledge economy. Old and new economies are at work side by side on the same competitive scenario, and globalization is affecting the image of the world with its progressive urbanization. More and more frequently, multinationals and enterprise networks are tackling the competitive scene, while cooperation is taking the shape of a cultural confrontation among communities, in which the center of gravity of economic development is gradually moving from the so-called industrialized countries to those in transition, and to the developing ones. In these circumstances, scholars of local development are seeking to .nd new paths of development that stay in between novelty and renewal; in this logic, an interesting challenge may be represented by a few forms of contamination from culture – which is intended to be, .rst a productive factor having a high idiosyncratic value, and second a source of innovation. We have already examined the passage from conservation to economic enhancement of art and culture, by analyzing the process of cultural districtualization of cities of arts, seen as High Culture (HC) local systems qualified by two factors: the coexistence in a same place of a set of artistic, cultural, human and environmental resources with a high idiosyncratic value; and a network of economic, non economic and institutional actors who can improve their economy as well. Now, in this paper, we would like to focus the relationship between culture, creativity and innovation, which has not been explored enough so far. Creativity economy, with its contributions on the creative class, the creative cities, and the creative industries, is certainly an emerging paradigm, but creativity still remains a fuzzy concept, which is hard to define, hard to measure, hard to be given a geographical boundary. From the economic