Robert Kloosterman

• University of Amsterdam

creating conditions for green innovations in the built environment

In this article, we unravel the production network of a large acoustic wall in a newly built theatre in Rotterdam. This project can be seen as a deviant case in the sense that it goes against the grain of the often observed long-term trend of erosion of the role of architects. This erosion signifies not just a loss for this specific group of profes...

It was not so much Amsterdam, the cultural capital, but The Hague which had the most vibrant Beat music scene in the Netherlands in the 1960s. Part of the explanation for this lies in the presence of a sizeable group of youngsters who were born in the former colony the Dutch East Indies and who were already well acquainted with contemporary America...

Drawing on an innovative ‘big data’ method, this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the geography of media and entertainment industries (MEIs) in China, by examining the specific activities that are performed by celebrities, the key actors in these industries. Compared to previous research on cultural and creative industries, which primaril...

Most existing research on advanced economic activities focuses on either inner-city milieus or suburban industrial parks. We contend, however, that residential neighbourhoods constitute a milieu for economic activities which require the input of high-skilled labour or, to follow Allen Scott, cognitive-cultural activities which are characteristic fo...

Hotspots of Cultural InnovationIn the 1960s, a long list of poets, writers, and musicians flocked to the Chelsea Hotel, 222 West 23rd Street, New York (Tippins). Among them Bob Dylan, who moved in at the end of 1964, Leonard Cohen, who wrote Take This Longing dedicated to singer Nico there, and Patti Smith who rented a room there together with Robe...

De titel van interieurarchitect is - net als in het geval van architecten, stedenbouwkundigen en landschapsarchitecten - wettelijk beschermd. Om deze titel te mogen voeren moet men aan bepaalde opleidingseisen voldoen. In dit onderzoek, uitgevoerd in opdracht van het Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap (directie Media en Creatieve Indus...

In this paper, we empirically explore if the BRIC countries are indeed emerging as global centres of cultural industries and thus initiating a new phase of global economic development. We focus on two distinct sectors of cultural industries in the BRIC countries : the audio-visual sector (film, TV, music), and architectural design. They represent r...

The Ghanaian population in the Netherlands is relatively well-endowed in terms of human capital. In addition, a large number of them came when deindustrialisation had run its course and the Dutch economy, the service sector in particular, started growing again after 1985. On the basis of the Mixed Embeddedness model, we expected that the combinatio...

Innovation is not necessarily about making things more efficient, more powerful, bigger or smaller, faster, lighter or stronger. Innovation in cultural industries can be all of these things, but innovation can also be quite different, namely aesthetic. A new music style (e.g. hip hop), the introduction of a new literary genre (e.g. young adult fict...

Sometime in the 1980s, it became obvious that cities in the West were undergoing some fundamental changes. Deindustrialization had more or less run its course in many cities in developed countries. In quite a few cases, however, urban economies were growing again - this time driven by a whole set of economic activities diff erent from large-scale m...

In binnen-en buitenland klinkt regelmatig de vraag naar de waarde van cultuur. Het antwoord wordt daarbij steeds vaker gezocht in de sociale en economische effecten van cultuur. Ook in het cultuurbeleid zijn deze effecten centraler komen te staan en krijgt de culturele sector nieuwe doelen opgelegd. In deze verkenning pleit de Wetenschappelijke Raa...

Zhang X. and Kloosterman R. C. Connecting the ‘workshop of the world’: intra- and extra-service networks of the Pearl River Delta city-region, Regional Studies. Most research on globalization and city-regions in developing countries has focused on manufacturing activities, disregarding the considerable growth of producer services. Drawing on the In...

Urban residential neighbourhoods, including migrant neighbourhoods, have become important incubation zones for small businesses in recent years and policy-makers and academics alike are wondering which local factors affect this development. This paper analyses the extent to which migrant neighbourhood characteristics related to the built environmen...

This chapter traces the urban employment trends in cultural industries in the Netherlands from 1899 onwards and argues that a historical approach is necessary to understand economic geographical patterns in this post-industrial growth sector. Longitudinal employment data for the country’s four main cities, as well as case-study information on the s...

A theoretical starting point is offered for international comparative research on immigrant entrepreneurship, focusing on the relationship between the welfare system and immigrant entrepreneurship from a socio economic perspective.This approach combines three theoretical building blocks. The first block involves the assumption that immigrant entrep...

Cultural planning has been high on the agenda of many policy-makers. From an end in itself, it has been transformed into an instrument to regenerate neighbourhoods and even whole cities and as a means to boost the quality of place to attract high-skilled workers. With the current crunch on public spending, the question arises what will happen to cu...

Der Umgang mit »Differenz« ist ein Kernelement des Städtischen: Der oder die ›Andere‹ am Rande der Gesellschaft stellt das gewohnte Denken in Frage. Dieses Buch begreift die Herausbildung von migrantischen Ökonomien in den Städten als einen Kristallisationspunkt von Urbanität. Die Beiträge zeigen, dass viele der migrantischen Unternehmerinnen und U...

In recent years, an attractive urban environment has increasingly been recognized as a factor of local competitiveness in a globalizing world. Notably, Richard Florida and Charles Landry have stressed the importance of the concept of quality of place. The implications of their often criticized, but nevertheless widely adhered ideas for current plan...

Urban residential neighbourhoods, including migrant neighbourhoods, have become important incubation zones for small-scale businesses in recent years, and policy makers and academics alike are wondering which local factors affect this development. In this paper we analyse to what extent migrant neighbourhood characteristics related to the built env...

Although immigrant entrepreneurship still comprises small businesses confined to lower segments of markets, today immigrant entrepreneurs are also visible in the high-value activities that characterise advanced urban economies. The potential of self-employment to open up avenues of upward social mobility has also increased over time. This qualitati...

Cultural industries are activities concerned with the production and marketing of goods and services that have aesthetic or semiotic content (SCOTT 2004). Their emergence as engines of economic growth reflects an economic and cultural conjuncture where commodity production has become tied in with artistic experimentation. Research on cultural indus...

The aim of this article is to broaden the epistemological basis for investigating the current shift to cognitive-cultural economies and the resurgence of cities and its socio-spatial articulation. The point of departure here is that the drivers of the structural changes are indeed more or less ubiquitous, but are played out in different national in...

Building a career: labour practices and cluster reproduction in Dutch architectural design, Regional Studies. This paper explores how firms and workers deal with the specific characteristics of the labour market in a cutting-edge cultural industry, namely, Dutch architectural design. Based on in-depth interviews with principals, workers, and key in...

Amsterdam is wat betreft de culturele industrieën koploper in Nederland. De voorsprong op de andere drie grote steden is vooral na 1960 aanmerkelijk vergroot. Den Haag daarentegen heeft veel terrein moeten prijsgeven en dreigt steeds verder weg te zakken.

In this article, an innovative analytical framework for the analysis of (migrant) entrepreneurship is presented. The approach combines the micro-level of the individual entrepreneur (with his or her resources), with the meso-level of the local opportunity structure and links the latter, in more loose way, to the macro-institutional framework. This...

The competitiveness of particular cities in cultural industries, one of the mainstays of post-industrial urban economies, is often thought to depend on historically-evolved local production systems and thick localized institutional webs. By examining employment trends from 1899 onwards in cultural industries in the four largest cities of polycentri...

Cultural industries as an instrument seem to offer a way to revitalize derelict areas in and around the urban core that have been blighted by deindustrialization in the 1970 and 1980s. In this article, we explore how cultural industries have affected two such areas close to the Amsterdam central station. One area, Oosterdokseiland, is an example of...

Cultural industries as an instrument seem to offer a way to revitalize derelict areas in and around the urban core that have been blighted by deindustrialization in the 1970 and 1980s. In this article, we explore how cultural industries have affected two such areas close to the Amsterdam central station. One area, Oosterdokseiland, is an example of...

This paper introduces a special issue of Regional Studies on 'Globalization, City-Regions and Polycentricity in North West Europe'. The issue focuses on the thematic core of the EU-funded project POLYNET: the analysis of economic connections and information flows generated by advanced producer services in eight European polycentric city-regions. Th...

Innovation thrives on the face-to-face exchange of tacit knowledge. In this article, the focus is on how firms in a cutting-edge cultural industry, namely architectural design in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, can exchange knowledge. By using in-depth interviews with the main players in this field, I have explored different conduits for the exchange of k...

In this article, we first seek to develop a more general framework to understand differences in long-term trajectories of urban systems. We use a model that has two dimensions: the level of accumulation of capital and the level of concentration of capital. We then use the model, very much in a heuristic way, to see what insights can be gained when...

The turn of the century in Europe is marked by social changes that have affected immigration policies. In the Netherlands, internal controls have been tightened in order to curb illegal residence and employment. On the basis of interviews with undocumented workers before and after significant policy changes, shifts in labour market position are obs...

As an introduction to this special issue, a contemporary economic-geographic perspective on the relationship between places and economic activities is used and this is applied to popular music. From this perspective, it becomes clear how music is embedded in places and why a much broader socio-economic context has to be taken into account when look...

Cultural industries are becoming in general more important in advanced economies as sources of employment and economic growth. In this paper, a quantitative exploration is given of recent trends in cultural industries in the Netherlands. The data show a rapid rise of employment in the cultural industries in the last decade. Moreover, the four large...

Dutch architecture matters in international perspective. Cultural industries - economic activities where the aesthetic component of the products constitute the distinguishing characteristic - are now emerging as a promising source of wealth and employment in post-industrial cities. Firms in the cultural industries tend to be relatively small and de...

Since the 1980s, subsequent Dutch governments have promoted self-employment of immigrants to reduce their unemployment rates. These policies have been focused on the (potential) actors themselves, i.e. the immigrants who have started or who may want to start a business. Taking mixed embeddedness as a point of departure, entrepreneurship and self-em...

De Nederlandse regering beschikt sinds enige jaren over een Fonds Economische Structuurversterking (FES). De Interdepartementale Commissie Economische Structuurversterking (ICES), bestaande uit de secretarissen-generaal van de investeringsdepartementen adviseert het Kabinet over prioriteiten inzake ruimtelijk-economische investeringen. In dit verb...

The Dutch economy was relatively hard hit by the economic recession of the 1980s. Unemployment soared, especially in the larger cities. In these cities, unemployment was unevenly distributed with some neighbourhoods experiencing concentrations of economic decline. Unemployment was also more prevalent among immigrants (Burgers and Kloosterman 1996)....

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The emerging post-industrial urban economies are characterized by a renaissance of small businesses. As numerous examples from many cities in the European Union, and in advanced economies in general, suggest, immigrant entrepreneurs are part and parcel of this development. These immigrants are affecting advanced urban economies in various ways as,...