Salvador and João Pessoa – Creative Cities for the Common Good?

• In Event: Brazil's Creative Cities: Challenges and Opportunities for Social Inclusion in the Americas

Abstract

Salvador and João Pessoa are the two state capitals in Northeast Brazil included on UNESCO’s list of creative cities. While Salvador builds on its rich Afro-Brazilian heritage of music, João Pessoa promotes its long traditions in craft and folk art. The paper discusses two types of tensions in the efforts of branding the two cities as creative cities.

First, there is a tension in the management of the popular cultures providing the platforms for the creative city program. There is an inherent tension between, one the one hand, securing these popular cultures and their knowledge bases as Common Goods accessible for all people at any time and, on the other hand, exploiting these popular cultures for commercial development, international tourism and job- and wealth creation. The paper discusses how the program managers in the two cities perceive these tensions and respond to them with their strategies. It also assesses to what extent, and how, the tensions are coped with in practice.

Connected to the tensions in the management of popular cultures, there are tensions in the overall political and strategic direction of the two cities as to how they follow up the federal constitution and City Statute in promoting a participatory governance system and the agenda of The Right to the City.

Authors

• Einar Braathen, Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR)

• Geraldo Adriano G Campos