Neoliberal Place Competition Andculturephilia: Explored Through The Lens Of Derry~Londonderry

In this article, we contribute to international debates on the impact and legacy of major cultural events. Using the theoretical backdrop of neoliberal urbanism, and our conceptual contribution ofculturephilia, impact inflationand thethree Cs, we examine Derry~Londonderry (D ~ L) UK City of Culture (CoC) 2013. Neoliberal urbanism generates fierce inter-city competition to host major cultural events, conditioning the actions of local stakeholders who produce bid documents resulting in excessive targets for impact and legacy, i.e.impact inflation. This is part of a wider fetishisation of the alleged curing qualities of culture, orculturephilia, which is underpinned by claims thatcultural andcreative policy interventions can enhance cities'competitiveness, what we term as thethree Csof local and regional development. We show that in D ~ L culture has been somewhat successful as a 'peace resource', but less dynamic as an 'economic resource'. The key lesson from D ~ L is that not delivering on the excessive economic targets creates frustration and disillusionment amongst those at the margins of society. Our advice to future cities of culture is, notwithstanding theincentive to inflate, they must be fully cognisant of the consequences of not delivering on extravagant targets for those most marginalised in society.