Triggered by the wide acceptance of the creative class theory in the decision making circles and its immense implications on urban policies and emerging city built forms, this paper will try to shed light on some of the risks in strictly conforming to such simplistic approach in understanding and responding to urban dynamics without the consideration of the other factors that contribute to the economical, social and environmental health of the city. Building on different arguments by influential scholars such as David Harvey and Saskia Sassen, the paper will try to answer the question of why creative class oriented developments normally materialise in disintegrated enclaves despite being mostly developed in highly centralised locations.

1. Urban Regeneration Projects and the Pursuit of the Creative Class
Yousef Taibeh
Triggered by the wide acceptance of the creative class theory in the decision making circles and its
immense implications on urban policies and emerging city built forms, this paper will try to shed
light on some of the risks in strictly conforming to such simplistic approach in understanding and
responding to urban dynamics without the consideration of the other factors that contribute to
the economical, social and environmental health of the city. Building on different arguments by
influential scholars such as David Harvey and Saskia Sassen, the paper will try to answer the
question of why creative class oriented developments normally materialise in disintegrated
enclaves despite being mostly developed in highly centralised locations.
Through focusing on the Docklands development in Melbourne, the paper highlights how this
development was largely led by the creative class hypothesis, exemplified in the new roles played
by the public and private sectors, in addition to the adopted marketing techniques and the
presented urban imagery used in ‘selling the city’. The paper argues that Melbourne Docklands
was doomed to face many challenges as soon as it started, being highly market-driven, and most
critically, being exclusive form the beginning as it was portrayed and structured to catch the
interest of certain end-users, i.e. the creative class, with little considerations for Melbourne’s
wider community spectrum.
The paper firstly introduces to the notion of ‘creative class’, linking it to the bigger context of
globalization and discussing its respective implications on the city and its management. Such
implications are mostly exemplified in the big regeneration developments similar to Melbourne
Docklands. In this regard, the paper tries to explore some of the reasons behind the inability of
these developments to live-up to the high expectations envisaged at the time of their initiation.
The last section of the paper concludes by highlighting the scope and limitations of Melbourne’s
recent endeavours to mitigate the many shortcomings of the Docklands development.
Accommodating the creative class
The creative class theory was originally formulated by the American professor Richard Florida in
the span of the previous decade to explain the recent rise and fall of many American cities. The
main premise of this theory is that the economic success of any city is conditioned by its ability to
attract and retain a certain type of population dubbed the creative class. This creative class is
identified by Florida to include those people who work in professions resulting in new innovations
and requiring high levels of education and creativity. He further subdivided this class into a
creative core of specified professionals and a supportive segment of others, arguing that the
members of this class in general have unproportional contribution in the success of the areas they
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2. choose to live in. Based on this initial premise, Florida developed number of indices to measure
the appeal of different cities for the creative class. These indices cover different aspects including
the availability of creative and high-tech industries and the city’s tolerance to difference (Florida
2002).
The creative class theory was heavily criticised by many academics for being too simplistic and for
building causality relations between diverse elements based on mere statistical correlations (Berry
2005, Perry 2011, Malanga 2004). The position of city mangers on the other hand was much
different, where the theory found large international acceptance in the governmental circles. This
official positive position can be attributed in large part to the theory’s ability to illustrate
governmental achievements in easily formulated figures. What possibly promoted the theory
further, is that it conformed to ongoing trends and agendas for building and managing cities (Perry
2011). These trends are characterised by a frantic competition between cities across the world to
allure and accommodate businesses necessary for their survival and prosperity, a notion that has
been highlighted several years ago in the writings of several scholars such as David Harvey and
Saskia Sassen.
It is argued that this new condition of unprecedented open competition between cities is one of
the many manifestations of globalisation. The advancements in communication technologies and
opening of national boarders facilitated the movement of capital and people, creating a new
geography and hierarchy of cities (Sassen 1996). The physical place has ironically gained increased
importance in this new reality, where the appropriately serviced ‘command and control’ centres
are now indispensable parts of the cross-continental mega businesses (Elsheshtawy 2010). These
types of businesses are currently enjoying high levels of freedom in positioning their centres with
the technologically facilitated accessibility, in addition to the increased easement in controlling
regulations and the many incentives governments all over the world are willing to offer (Robinson
2002).
Under these new terms, the role of city managers is dramatically changing (Borja & Castells 1997).
Local governments all over the world are currently undertaking more active roles in major
projects, shifting from their original responsibilities as service providers and regulators to
entrepreneurial tasks and endeavours (Harvey 1989) aiming at marketing and face-lifting the
image of their cities. The image in this context becomes more important than the reality and the
surface more valid than the substance, while the city itself becomes another commodity to be
traded and consumed (Kearns & Philo 1993). These new trends are no more apparent than in the
big regeneration developments. Such developments normally require huge funding over the
capabilities of many local governments. To overcome this obstacle and to allegedly increase the
efficiency in delivering such projects, several governments seek partnerships with the private
sector and try to attract the international capital (Robinson 2002).
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3. The city of Melbourne is not far from the aforementioned shifts. A selected regeneration project in
the city, namely Melbourne Docklands will be presented in the following. It will be clarified how
this project represented a classical example of an endeavour formulated, developed and
portrayed through the aforementioned attitudes and mindsets. It will be then explained how the
many challenges the project faces today are largely attributed to these governing attitudes and
practices.
Melbourne Docklands, a regeneration project par excellence
The changing economy of cities form the industrial era to post industrialisation and to service
economy posed many challenges and brought several opportunities for city managers. One of the
direct implications of this recent transformation is that large tracts of land with centralised
locations are becoming available for redevelopment. This is highly exemplified in the many
waterfront locations previously utilised for docking and cargo functions that are becoming
increasingly obsolete. Especially with the new shipping technologies and the bigger sizes of vessels
that required larger areas and deeper waters (Hoyle et al. 1988). In this context, the nineteen
eighties included the early examples of cities changing their industrial image through promoting
new types of businesses and allowing other functions to take shape in waterfront reclaimed
locations (Hoyle et al. 1988). The success of many of these examples encouraged other cities to
undertake similar endeavours. What further accelerated this trend is the availability of a footloose
capital roaming for locations with high investment prospects (Elsheshtawy 2010). The waterfront
areas presented the perfect opportunity to capture this capital being characterised with
centralised locations, high amenities and impressive views (Harvey 1989).
The turn of Melbourne to its waterfront was initiated by the early nineteen eighties when
Melbournian journalist Michael Davie started a campaign to ‘save’ the Yarra River. Subsequently,
several governmental initiatives and infrastructure projects started; paving the way for private
developments to take place and to gradually replace the shrinking industrial zones in the central
areas of the city. These projects focused initially on redeveloping the southern bank of the river
and to linking it with the city centre. The availability of the Victoria Dock for redevelopment
(known later as Docklands) presented one of the biggest opportunities for the city (Dovey 2005).
The size of the available area and its prime location on the edge of the Central Business District
encouraged the government to envisage a large scale development targeting international
investments. The first development scheme for the area was actually a bid in 1987 for the 1996
Olympics. This scheme was in the form of a massive sport village, equipped with all the required
sport facilities. Though Melbourne lost the bid, it is noted that this opportunity had put the city for
the first time in its recent history in a competition with other major cities in the world (Dovey
2005).
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4. Soon after, Melbourne entered another competition for Docklands development. This time against
the Australian cities competing on the $12 Billion ‘Multi Function Polis’ project envisaged by the
Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (Dovey 2005). This project was in the form
of a new city of around 200,000 people to be located somewhere in Australia. The private sector
represented by the ‘Committee for Melbourne’ took the lead in pursuing this option for
Docklands. The ‘Committee for Melbourne’ project would have ticked all the boxes on Florida’s
indices. They proposed a concentration of high-tech industries and businesses, along with high-
end entertainment and leisure facilities catering for semi-residential community of highly skilled
national and international workers from Japan and other nations. In this proposal, the accessibility
to the International Airport and the closely shared time zones between Japan and Australia were
highlighted as advantages. The project raised high concerns for social reasons, and again it was
lost to Queensland then Adelaide before it was completely withdrawn (Dovey 2005).
The actual kick-start of Docklands development was in 1991 with the beginning of construction
works in Melbourne’s new sport stadium. The whole site was then subdivided into a number of
sections that were released for tendering. The demarcation lines of these sections followed the
obsolete limits of the previous port. Their big areas dictated the types and sizes of companies able
to enter the tender (Dovey 2005). The sections were identified by neutral names such as Yarra
Waters and Batman’s Hill, allowing for the private developers to come up with their own
development programs and functions (Dovey 2005). The government initially envisaged no public
funding for the project, hoping that all the infrastructure and services be provided by the private
sector. However, as the project unfolded, the government found itself obliged to provide the
linking infrastructures and the required services to encourage private investments and to facilitate
meeting the strict deadlines (Dovey 2005).
With the government partnering with the private sector to deliver the requirements of the
project, Docklands demonstrated many of the new trends in managing cities. A quasi-public
authority was established to manage the project that was made deliberately flexible and allowed
to be highly market-led. There was no clear master-plan to begin with and it was up to market
forces to dictate the functions and arguably the built forms of the area. The first layout for the
development was prepared by Ashton Raggatt Macdougall (ARM). This layout was not a master-
plan as explained by the architectural consultancy ARM. It was just a tool to stimulate the
innovation of the developers and to please the public (Dovey 2005) see Figure 1. The actual
master-plan was a collage of the winning schemes of the different sections. These different
schemes were not perfectly integrated, as the areas in between were outside the domain and
interest of the private developers. On the other hand, the fictitious demarcating lines between the
sections based on the obsolete port zones prohibited the possibility of developing a central heart
for the whole site (Dovey 2005).
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5. Figure 1 Docklands ARM vision, Source: (A R M Architecture)
The layout was accompanied with several 3D images aiming at illustrating the potentials of the site
and selling its future possibilities without contemplating much on solving the spatial and
functional requirements (Dovey 2005). Such marketing agendas were persisting elements in
Docklands development. In general, these marketing schemes targeted specific audience, aiming
at recovering the high construction cost normally associated with this type of projects. The first
governmental announcement on the need for considering affordable housing in Docklands was in
2000 after all development parcels have been already committed (Dovey 2005). In 2005 Richard
Florida himself was selected for introducing to the project in the fancy marketing publication
‘Waterfront Spectacular’ (Keeney et al. 2005), given the aforementioned context, this can hardly
be a coincidence.
The title selection of the marketing publication is also not a coincidence. In such projects,
marketing is normally considered on different levels. Besides the necessity for high-quality
publications and advertising materials, architecture and urban imagery have major roles to play in
creating an ‘Urban Spectacle’, a wowing effect that would attract the sophisticated international
businessmen along with their big corporations (Elsheshtawy 2010). This highly explains why such
projects are usually associated with ‘Signature Architects’, a trend commonly labelled as the
‘Bilbao Effect’ in reference to the role of Frank Gehry’s landmark building of Guggenheim Museum
in vitalizing the city of Bilbao and improving its image (Elsheshtawy 2010). In these projects the
chosen descriptions of the different buildings are also part of the marketing agenda. These
descriptions mostly come in superlative compositions such as the largest, the biggest and the
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6. tallest (Elsheshtawy 2010). In this context, it is worth mentioning that Docklands was indeed to
hold the tallest building in the world before the negotiations collapsed with its developer Bruno
Grollo (Dovey 2005).
Whose Docklands is it?
After more than two decades of its instigation, Melbourne Docklands is still facing many
challenges. Apart from the monotony of many of its buildings, the development in general
materialised in physically and socially isolated islands. This is easily understandable as the
development focused on narrow population sector without the consideration for the wider
spectrum of the community (Dovey 2005). Development zoning maps may have reflected fair
mixes of uses. However, the different recommended functions were tailored to accommodate
certain type of users. In consistency with many other waterfront regeneration developments
around the world, Docklands resulted in expected set of functions. Harvey (1989) attributes this
tendency of having universal architectural programs in such projects to the growing global
competition on the same end-users. Sassen (1996) on the other hand, labels these areas as ‘urban
glamour zones’ that are multiplying all over the world with the same structuring components
necessary for the convenience of the global citizens. She further warns from the negative
implications of this trend, as places are eventually losing their special identities that were the
reasons behind their development in the first place.
In the above context, the businesses envisaged in such projects are normally from certain calibre
too. The specific job requirements for these businesses are mostly fit for the ‘cosmopolitan
citizens’, who are also becoming more mobile (Abed 2004) as highlighted in part by Richard Florida
(Florida 2002). In this context, the sheer benefit of such businesses to local areas is highly
questionable given their high service cost, in addition to the lack of a credible cost- benefit analysis
for their overall contribution to the local community as argued by Jennifer Robinson (2002).
Robinson further warns, that too much focus on entertainment and leisure activities in cities open
for globalisation may put these cities on the other end of the ‘command and control’ relation
(Robinson 2002). On another level, the concentration of the specific employees with their
unparalleled scale of wages will largely contribute in polarising the society. In an extreme
condition, Sassen (1996) sheds light on the developing parallel world of misery in the highly
globalised cities, where a large percentage of the population is in the form of law wage service
employees necessary for facilitating for and sustaining the big businesses.
Based on the above arguments, the various problems in Docklands are believed to be inherited in
its structuring schemes and uses programs. These schemes and land-uses are dominated by the
time schedules and the living styles of the targeted population, which is not necessary in
consistence with the rest of the community (Sassen 1996). This highly explains why the area feels
separated though it is fairly physically connected to adjacent locations. What adds more to this
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7. since of separation is the unavailability of quality open areas and public spaces that normally form
the melting pot for the various community sectors (Martinez-Garrido 2008). The best open spaces
in the development are those semi-private areas next to office buildings. The residential buildings
on the other hand are negatively impacting the public amenity, where the high rise residential
apartments for instance are overshadowing the waterfront promenade. The location and urban
form of these buildings was highly dictated by market forces valuing the short term financial profit
over the long term public benefit (Dovey 2005).
Other deficiencies in Docklands’ built form can also be easily attributed to its development history
and to the prevailing market trends. Subdividing the site into big development parcels and
distributing them on private developers encouraged those to focus on their own zones avoiding
adding any value to the surrounding areas (Dovey 2005). This attitude in addition to the ambiguity
in the responsibilities for constructing the major infrastructure and connections, forced the area to
develop into highly disintegrated parts. The sheer sizes of the committed development parcels
also contributed to this end, as they created introverted and low density developments against
the overall area of the site (Dovey 2005). The reluctance in devising a comprehensive master-plan
for not to constrain the private developers, unexpectedly had an adverse effect on the pace of
development process. The unclarity in development expectations coupled with the ambiguous
governmental responsibility represented high risks for the private developers. This accordingly
increased the tendering and contracting times, in addition to slowing down the design and
construction works. Several projects in the development were in form of private deals with the
government controlled by secrecy agreements. The negotiations failed in many incidences despite
the many incentives and the several infrastructure projects funded by the government (Dovey
2005).
Concluding notes
It is acknowledged that a development in the size of Melbourne Docklands needs many years
before maturing and delivering its benefits. What this paper tried to illustrate is that certain
attitudes and approaches excreted in developing and managing Docklands prevented the area
form growing to its full potentials and may seriously affect its future evolution. The government is
sincerely trying to mitigate many shortcomings of the development since the publication of the
‘Integration and Design Excellence’ booklet in 2000. This document aimed at facilitating the
integration of Docklands parts and of Dockland and its surrounding areas (Dovey 2005). There are
also other efforts aiming at social integration through providing the needed community facilities
and public open spaces, and in this regard the municipality is currently preparing the ‘Docklands
Public Realm Plan’ through proper public consultancy (City of Melbourne 2012). The Docklands
management was also recently reformed into a full public authority. All these endeavours will
hopefully improve Docklands and better link it with the rest of the city, but needless to say that
with little space lift over and existing non-contributory built forms, these endeavours are highly
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8. restricted, and Docklands missed what Kim Dovey (2005, p. 125) rightly describes as: ‘the greatest
waterfront opportunity Melbourne would ever see’.
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