PASCAL subscribers may be interested in this call for papers for a Special Issue, entitled ‘Cultural, Creative and Sustainable Cities’ in the Sustainability Journal with a deadline of 11 December for submission of abstract. Further details follow below. 

This special issue is co-edited by Valentina Montalto from the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the EC and Pier Luigi Sacco from the OECD.

Call for papers for a Special Issue on ‘Cultural, Creative and Sustainable Cities’ for the journal Sustainability (IF 2.592). 

The last two decades have recorded a massive increase of interest in culture as a major resource for sustainable development. Nevertheless, the practical implementation of culture-led strategies remains a challenge. The varied impacts of culture are indeed difficult to monitor, as they cover many different domains of the economy, society and individuals’ lives.

The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission has developed the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor  to help policy makers identify local strengths and opportunities and benchmark their cities against similar urban centres. The Monitor offers a fully accessible dataset of 29 carefully selected indicators covering 190 cities in Europe.

While the Monitor succeeds in breaking from a narrow economic perspective of culture by including, for instance, indicators of cultural participation, diversity and openness, its full potential to address relevant policy research questions is yet to be explored. By using the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor’s measurement model and or dataset, this Special Issue aims at developing specific evidence at city level to support the New European Agenda for Culture, the Agenda 2030 and, last but for the least a new, major cornerstone of the EU policy agenda: the EU Green Deal.

• Green, creative, cultural and now sustainable cities have been separately defined, measured, ranked and assessed. But many cities appear to rank well on all aspects. So where do they differ and what do they share?
• Do culture- and creativity-led growth strategies ultimately help pursue (also) social, economic, cultural and environmental sustainability objectives, by empowering citizens, by help increase awareness on societal relevant topics, or by fostering community-led innovation, for instance?
• How can culture and creativity help (re-)imagine green cities?
• Or how can green concerns help strengthen the economic and societal contribution of Europe’s cultural and creative sectors as a way out from the COVID-19 crisis (e.g. through which shared strategies, cross-sectoral cooperation)?
• How can European policies foster shared visions and mutually supportive collaborations between the cultural/creative and green world?  

The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor dataset offers the opportunity to explore these policy questions offering a wide-ranging set of 29 indicators for 190 cities from all over Europe.

Ware pleased to invite you to submit a theoretical or empirical contribution providing a deeper insight on how culture relate to your specific domain of expertise, either with a solo paper or with a co-authored one, to your best judgment. Empirical analyses showing the relationship between the Cultural and Creative Cities’ performance and sustainability goals/green indicators, for instance, will be particularly appreciated. Applications of the Cultural and Creative Cities model to other geographical contexts or units are also welcome. Theoretical contributions with a sound conceptual basis on the future scope of the Monitor, with a focus on cultural sustainability metrics, are of interest as well.

If you accept to contribute, we kindly ask you to send the guest editors below a short abstract (1000 words) including the title, objective, methodology and (for empirical papers) preliminary / expected findings of the work by 11 December. The deadline for the full manuscript submissions is 30 March 2021. You can find the submission guidelines at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/ccsc_sus

Do not hesitate to share the call with relevant researchers and scholars working on policy-related research questions.

Guest Editors

Mrs. Valentina Montalto ([email protected])
Prof. Dr. Pier Luigi Sacco ([email protected])
Dr. Michaela Saisana ([email protected])

Warm greetings,

Annie