The Creative City of Venice

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Recommended: Understanding the concept of creative cities

The exploration of the topic of a creative city in the Venetian context uncovers a complex picture. The case of Forte Marghera clearly combines the contradictions of Venice as a creative city. Artists, workers in creative sectors, policy-makers, opinion makers, and operators share a physical space composed by a natural and historical heritage and former military buildings. Top-down governing rules engage with bottom-up initiatives through a language that is still unknown to the two parties. The production ambition of the creative class inhabiting the area goes against the entertainment vocation of bars and restaurants, which are increasingly expanding in the site. In this study, Forte Marghera is explored as the Venetian case where controversial positions meet in the same place. It is also the case that best demonstrates how different understandings of the creative city model can give birth to different processes of creativity-led regeneration.
The article proposes three approaches for the development of the creative city model in Forte Marghera that could be found elsewhere in Italy and beyond Italy. First of all, from a general overview of the situation, Forte Marghera emerges as a self-organizing system where cause and effects cannot be mapped linearly. In the theory of social self-organization a key role is played by humans as creative beings (Fuchs, 2003). In fact, structures do not act, they only exist within and through social actions, and the term social-self-organization refers to the dialectical relationship of structures and actions, which result in the overall reproduction of the system (Fuchs, 2003: 147). This approach is critical to governance intended as collective action by private, public and corporate agents reg...

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...d the relative roles of government policy and strategy, non-governmental groups, private forces of capital, and citizens in shaping the artistic, cultural, social and economic character of Forte Marghera.
Governmental actors through weak and disorganized policies have attempted to define the future development of the Fort without succeed. At the same time, despite the efforts of non-governmental organisation, i.e. the Marco Polo System, to shape the course of development of the Fort, the outcomes remain uncertain. Free play of market players, such as restaurants and bars, and individual choices of residents and local communities embody the actual shape of Forte Marghera as a creative and cultural park. In the end, the growth of Forte Marghera’s was largely caused by the availability of material and immaterial space: politically, physically, socially, and culturally.

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