| Cultural industries are becoming more important as sources of employment and income in postindustrial cities. Successful cultural industries tend to cater to an international market, but derive their competitive edge from their local embeddedness. The social, cultural and institutional context is crucial in generating products with unique qualities, which help to escape competition on price. These local contexts tend to have deep historical roots and are products of complex coevolutionary processes. The aim is to explore the relationship between the local embeddedness and the global connectedness of three selected Dutch cultural industries (architectural design, visual arts, and publishing) from a long-term comparative perspective. By comparing the evolution of these three key cultural industries with developments in, on the one hand, leading cities in the global urban hierarchy, and on the other, cities with a similar current status in that hierarchy as Amsterdam, the relationship between the local and the global can be systematically explored. |
