Abstract
This chapter draws attention to the ‘shadow spaces’ of the creativity paradigm: Small and mid-size cities at the fringes of the Global South that are constructed as irrelevant places in the branding circus of the universal creativity phantasm, and can therefore not compete with cities in the Global North. However, most of the global population growth will take place in these urban spaces of the Global South. Speaking with Fernand Braudel’s famous statement that the ‘fate of the world is decided in cities’, attention has to be shifted to small cities. By presenting the case of Cachoeira, Northeast Brazil, we show that the establishment of an academic knowledge institution is shaping profoundly the urban milieu to a creative bourgeois life-world and that the socio-spatial arrangements of medium cities are the main ‘boost’ for implementing the creativity paradigm and will therefore ‘cement’ inequality.
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- 1.
For the UN (2014), considering the population, the global standards to define an urban settlement as small or medium are less than 500.000 and less than 5 million inhabitants, respectively. However, we must consider that these numbers do not represent some urban networks. In Brazil a small city has less than 50.000 and the medium-sized city less than 500.000 inhabitants. In Germany small cities range between 20.000 and 50.000 inhabitants, medium-sized cities between 50.000 and 100.000.
- 2.
But small and medium-sized cities are neglected in a two-fold manner by the academic world because of their size and also the fact that they are ordinary and ‘fancy-less’. Furthermore, most small- and medium-sized cities are located in the Global South, in the periphery and in the semi-periphery of the capitalist world system (Wallerstein 1979, pp. 95ff.).
- 3.
Further readings about Brazilian Inequalities see: Da Matta, R. Carnivals, Rogues and Heroes: An Interpretation of the Brazilian Dilemma. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991; Freyre, G. The Masters and the Slaves (Casa-Grande & Senzala): A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization. Oakland: University of California Press; 2 revised edition, 1987; Ribeiro, D. The Brazilian People: The Formation and Meaning of Brazil. Gainesville: University Press of Florida; 2000, Santos, M.; Silveira, M. L. O Brasil. Território e Sociedade no início do século 21. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2001; Skidmore, T. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2nd edition, 2009.
- 4.
After the creativity package has been implemented in policies in the global cities, it is now entering the countryside, transforming the ordinary city into a creative one. It inserts these cities in the globalized urban network through the introduction of new functions, services, business and the production of a creative milieu and will hopefully promote a high position for these cities in the global rankings of creativity.
- 5.
Cachoeira must be understood with its twin city São Félix. It has 14,098 inhabitants (IBGE, 2015), with 9265 in the urban area and 4833 in the rural area. The population estimative to 2015 (IBGE) indicates 15,091 inhabitants to São Félix and 34,535 inhabitants to Cachoeira. Once the cities have a very integrated socio-spatial structure, we can consider the agglomeration of these two cities a mid-size city in the interface of small and middle-sized cities of the Brazilian urban network in the Northeast of Brazil.
- 6.
In addition, Cachoeira is one of the birthplaces of the Candomblé (an Afro-Brazilian religion) and has several festivities, which promote this Afro-Brazilian culturalheritage.
- 7.
Bahia state (almost the same size than France), where Cachoeira is located, has a very good example to understand late creation and the concentration of superior course in the state’s capital—Salvador. The first superior course in Brazil was created only in 1808 in Salvador (the first universities just in the decade of the 1930s). In Bahia, in 1946 the University of Bahia (now Federal University of Bahia—UFBA) was created with a campus in Salvador. In 1977, UFBA installed a campus in a countryside city to established courses related with agriculture. After 2005, there were created more Federal Universities: the Federal University of West of Bahia—UFOB, the Federal University of South of Bahia—UFSB, the University for the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony Integration—UNILAB, the Federal University of the São Francisco River Valley—UNIVASF and the Federal University of Recôncavo (UFRB). This last one has a campus in Cachoeira.
- 8.
Film and Audiovisual Arts Courses by Brazilian’s Regions: 10 South; 24 Southeast (SP and RJ); 5 Central West; 12 Northeast; 3 North.
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Baumgartner, W.H., Rothfuß, E. (2017). Creative Inequality in the Mid-sized University City. Socio-spatial Reflections on the Brazilian Rural–Urban Interface: The Case of Cachoeira. In: Gerhard, U., Hoelscher, M., Wilson, D. (eds) Inequalities in Creative Cities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95115-4_9
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