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Abstract

This thesis explores how Creative Economy discourses are translated, adapted, and institutionalised at the district scale in non-Western contexts. Challenging the assumption of universal applicability, it examines how two state-led Creative Districts, Bogotá’s Bronx Distrito Creativo (BDC) and Seoul’s Changdong·Sanggye New Economic Centre (CSNEC), to show how global policy scripts are reworked under divergent political, institutional, and spatial conditions. Rather than evaluating success or failure, the study treats these districts as situated testbeds that expose the structural limits and scope conditions of CE policy transfer.

Grounded in institutionalism and employing a case study design, the thesis identifies four key axes of divergence, mandate and spatial pairing, governance and participation coupling, sequencing and device fit, and finance grain and access locks, as diagnostic tools to assess how Creative Economy concepts are embedded in law, land, budgets, and governance routines. The analysis reframes Creative Districts not as downstream applications of Creative Economy policy, but as sites where its meaning is redefined through practical translation.

Key findings show that identical CE frameworks yield contrasting outcomes depending on how instruments are sequenced and mandates defined. These differences reflect divergent understandings of culture and creativity: in Colombia, culture is linked to memory, repair, and civic cohesion; in Korea, creativity is mobilised for innovation, export, and global branding. BDC functions more as a Cultural District, revealing strategic translation; CSNEC exemplifies hybrid-phased development, where state investment de-risks phased PPP engagement. Both reject policy isomorphism and produce context-authored rewritings that reinterpret CE’s global vocabulary.

Conceptually, the thesis mobilises internalised soft power and hybrid-phased development as analytical lenses to interpret how symbolic legitimacy is materially organised, and how policy handovers evolve from temporary to permanent structures. By moving beyond model-first transfer and advocating for mandate-first translation, the research contributes a portable framework for analysing policy adaptation in ambiguity-rich settings and offers new insight into how Creative Economy discourses are made locally operable in diverse developmental contexts.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity > Department of Media, Culture & Creative Industries School of Communication & Creativity > School of Communication & Creativity Doctoral Theses Doctoral Theses

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