Conflicting Visions of Urban Regeneration in a New Political and Economic Order

This article analyses the phenomenon of urban regeneration and development in the context of globalisation and processes of Europeanisation with a focus on culture and creativity. It asks how the process of negotiating EU-rope is being reflected in places situated at the 'edge' of the European Union and which actors are involved in these processes of negotiating EU-rope, its culture, values and urban regeneration. The author presents an empirical example from Ljubljana, Slovenia. The focus lies on negotiating the usage and development of an abandoned industrial site. Here, different ideas of negotiating and developing the city in the context of globalisation and Europeanisation come to the fore: top-down approaches that follow the image of a creative city as well as bottom-up initiatives that develop anti-global and anti-capitalistic criticism with the help of social-spatial and cultural practices.