The Impact of Creative Industries on Urban District Image. The Case of Artkvartal in Moscow

This paper studies influence of creative industries objects on geographic image of urban area, formed among various categories of citizens. The relevance of this topic is caused by several facts – on the one hand we can see active development of creative clusters in Moscow for the past 6-8 years, on the other it was still remain unclear whether they are adequately reflected in spatial images of citizens or not. During this work we used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Among them are in-depth interviews and mental mapping and non-questionnaire methods - content analysis of local media and the use of bases of regional syndrome method. Findings could be divided into three categories. The first relates to the mechanisms of formation of geographical images. We have identified existing vernacular borders of informants, detected a link between current employment (lifestyle) and perception of space around, place of various objects and landmarks in whole image. The current image of the territory turned out to be virtually divided into two fundamentally different: noisy, transit area near the Kursky railway station and cozy, historical around Baumanskaya metro station. Different images provoke contradictory evaluative characteristics among informants: some try to interact with the territory as little as possible; others would like to live nearby. In the detected structure of existing images creative clusters turned out to be “crushed” by negative perception of Kursky railway station and the territory around – this causes that citizens who are not involved in creative industries do not articulate them in personal perception. The impact of creative industries on district image is minimal outside the clusters themselves and community of their residents. But not only clusters turned out to be break away from the surrounding urban space, but also the industry itself. However, lack of mutual integration makes further development of clusters impossible.