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This research was conducted to seek answers to these questions: 1. To what extent could historic properties in the city represent a place brand image of that city in the early twenty-first century? 2. Could historic preservation be an effective tool for place branding? Contemporary cities in the world fiercely compete with others nowadays, so cities have wanted to distinguish themselves from others. This phenomenon has encouraged cities to use a conventional commercial marketing strategy, branding. When branding is used to promote a place, we call it place branding. If a fundamental aim of place branding is to distinguish one city from another, the notion of place branding would be closely related to the discussion on contemporary historic preservation's role in urban development. The common target market of twenty-first-century cities is talent, who, in turn, will be a magnet for global industry. As the talent tends to seek diverse urban life, cities have actively made efforts to revitalize and market their downtowns. In this regard, historic preservation can help cities retain their unique character and diversity of urban fabric in downtown areas. Consequently, historic preservation can provide cities a foundation upon which they can develop their unique place brands that attract talent. At the same time, historic properties can be used as a marketing resource for place branding. In addition to the theoretical discussion on the potential for historic preservation as a place branding tool, this thesis incorporates an empirical study on relocation guides officially published by Texas cities, including Austin, Houston, Fort Worth, and San Antonio. This study aims to investigate where, how, and to what extent historic properties are represented in the official marketing publications. / text

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This thesis investigates the hypothesis that creative social entrepreneurs facilitate collaborative governance in the Saskatoon city-region by being the primary creators of social capital. Governance, both its quality and form, is essential in facilitating social, cultural, and economic development at the city-region level. Collaborative governance is a form of governance that enables a community to mobilize all of its assets (individuals, associations, and institutions) in all sectors of society (industry, government, and civil society) to address issues of need and to create new growth. The quality of governance at the city-region level is directly influenced by the level of social capital in the city-region. It is widely acknowledged that members of Richard Floridas creative class drive Promethean-like economic development. However, the creative class is not monolithic; members of the creative class can choose to be involved in society in many different ways. The benefits that members of the creative class can have on a society when they act socially have been largely ignored in the literature. Creative social entrepreneurs characterized by their creativity, horizontal hypermobility, preference for involvement in participatory activities, and desire for quasi-anonymity (weak ties)facilitate the governance of society by creating social capital (societal level social capital, associational level social capital, and individual level social capital). The thesis presents and analyses the output from a survey of 30 creative social entrepreneurs from government, business, civil society, and the university in the Saskatoon city-region. This survey was used to measure the level of creativity (professional and informal creativity) and entrepreneurial capacity of the participants, as well as map their social networks. Using social networks analysis (SNA) three measures of centrality (closeness centrality, betweens centrality, and eigenvector centrality) were used to examine the impact that creative social entrepreneurs play in social capital creation. The results from this analysis did not explicitly support the hypothesis that creative social entrepreneurs play a key role in social capital creation and the facilitation of governance at the city-region level. However, there was a positive correlation between professional creativity and all three measures of centrality. Not all innovators impact social capital creation. However, those professional innovators that do act socially are positioned in community networks to be the primary creators of social capital.

This thesis investigates the hypothesis that creative social entrepreneurs facilitate collaborative governance in the Saskatoon city-region by being the primary creators of social capital. Governance, both its quality and form, is essential in facilitating social, cultural, and economic development at the city-region level. Collaborative governance is a form of governance that enables a community to mobilize all of its assets (individuals, associations, and institutions) in all sectors of society (industry, government, and civil society) to address issues of need and to create new growth. The quality of governance at the city-region level is directly influenced by the level of social capital in the city-region. It is widely acknowledged that members of Richard Floridas creative class drive Promethean-like economic development. However, the creative class is not monolithic; members of the creative class can choose to be involved in society in many different ways. The benefits that members of the creative class can have on a society when they act socially have been largely ignored in the literature. Creative social entrepreneurs characterized by their creativity, horizontal hypermobility, preference for involvement in participatory activities, and desire for quasi-anonymity (weak ties)facilitate the governance of society by creating social capital (societal level social capital, associational level social capital, and individual level social capital). The thesis presents and analyses the output from a survey of 30 creative social entrepreneurs from government, business, civil society, and the university in the Saskatoon city-region. This survey was used to measure the level of creativity (professional and informal creativity) and entrepreneurial capacity of the participants, as well as map their social networks. Using social networks analysis (SNA) three measures of centrality (closeness centrality, betweens centrality, and eigenvector centrality) were used to examine the impact that creative social entrepreneurs play in social capital creation. The results from this analysis did not explicitly support the hypothesis that creative social entrepreneurs play a key role in social capital creation and the facilitation of governance at the city-region level. However, there was a positive correlation between professional creativity and all three measures of centrality. Not all innovators impact social capital creation. However, those professional innovators that do act socially are positioned in community networks to be the primary creators of social capital.

This research examines a contemporary planning case in Toronto where tensions between policy visions and planning practices contribute to our understanding of neoliberal urbanism. Media, policy and interview discourses contribute to developing the nexus between neoliberal urbanism, creative class theory and gentrification in the case of 629 Eastern Avenue. The amalgamation of Toronto’s municipalities in 1998 resulting from the “Common Sense Revolution”, and the ‘creative turn’ in the 2000s are identified as two key evolutionary stages in Toronto’s neoliberal urbanism. The City’s contradictory positions as “grassroots” organizers, market actors and market regulators reveals their interventionist role in this case. The analytical imperative presented by this case study to expose the contradictory and contingent nature of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ (Brenner & Theodore, 2002) leads to challenging our very understanding of neoliberalism in the context of contemporary urban planning practices.

This research examines a contemporary planning case in Toronto where tensions between policy visions and planning practices contribute to our understanding of neoliberal urbanism. Media, policy and interview discourses contribute to developing the nexus between neoliberal urbanism, creative class theory and gentrification in the case of 629 Eastern Avenue. The amalgamation of Toronto’s municipalities in 1998 resulting from the “Common Sense Revolution”, and the ‘creative turn’ in the 2000s are identified as two key evolutionary stages in Toronto’s neoliberal urbanism. The City’s contradictory positions as “grassroots” organizers, market actors and market regulators reveals their interventionist role in this case. The analytical imperative presented by this case study to expose the contradictory and contingent nature of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ (Brenner & Theodore, 2002) leads to challenging our very understanding of neoliberalism in the context of contemporary urban planning practices.

This dissertation presents an alternative understanding to current works exploring the creative class. Extant views of the creative class portray it as a concentration of individuals and organizations producing clusters of interconnected cultural activities fostering positive socioeconomic change in the communities where they are located. By contrast, this dissertation articulates the creative class as time evolving geographical organizing of networked creative individuals whose presence over time in a community may or may not foster positive socioeconomic change. The creative class is thus conceptualized as contingent and continuously evolving processes whose emergence at any one point in time may or may not be sustainable over time. Framed theoretically through a nexus between strategic management, economic geography, and economic sociology, the unfolding of a creative class is explored as location specific phenomenon illustrating mutually co-constructing processes of organizations and their environment. It focuses –as its exemplar- on local socioeconomic processes enacted by an assortment of artists and artisans in a small New England (USA) former mill town. A case study was derived from data collected for over four years in fieldwork through a multi-method approach. Underpinned by interpretative notions, methodology included participative ethnography and social network analyses, where quantitative and qualitative data functioned in a complementary way. Exploring relationships between artists and artisans and their organizing attempts to become members of the community, observations focused on mundane situations through which these processes were enacted. Social network methodologies contributed to mapping processual linkages between community members, while further ethnographic work contextualized relationships uncovered through social network analyses. The resulting case study presents a narrative about the unfolding of a potential creative class as dynamic bottom-up phenomenon whose socioeconomic consequences cannot be guaranteed by formal planning. Artists and artisans struggle to become a community of creative practice and become acknowledged as such by their neighbors when their organizing opens up socioeconomic change. These processes, which may lead to a sustainable cultural economy in this location, are not independent or exogenous to the place. They are part of the local history, influenced by shared and ongoing socioeconomic processes, and specific to locality.

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