San Diego's Bioscience Cluster and Berlin's Club Scene

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Economic Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Frankfurt (Main) (Institut für Humangeographie), course: Cultural Geographies of Economy, language: English, abstract: This paper discusses the relation of Richard Florida's notion of creative cities, cluster economics, and urban policies towards creative industries. Two empirical cases, San Diego's bioscience cluster and Berlin's club scene, are examined in order to reconstruct their success, analyze corresponding factors, identify challenges and problems, and discuss recent developments. Conclusions will be drawn on what city governments' policies can or cannot as well as should not do to support creative industries. It will be argued that the scope of urban policies even in a Floridaesque age of creative cities is still wellrelated to ('traditional') cluster policies but therefore also limited by scale and dependent on private enterprises and cluster actors that have an active role in attracting other creative people.