Limits to Culture outlines the cultural turn in urban policy from the 1980s to the 2000s, in which new art museums and cultural or heritage quarters lent a creative mask to urban redevelopment. Malcolm Miles challenges the notions of a creative class and a creative city, aligning them to gentrification, while exploring the history of cultural urban policy and its relationship to the real culture of dissent. As Miles shows, in the 1960s, creativity was identified with revolt, yet beginning in the 1980s it was subsumed by consumerism, as evidenced in the 1990s culture of cool. But in the wake of the 2008 crash, the money has run out and the illusory creative city has given way to urban clearances, ripe for a new kind of artistic regeneration.

Gerard McCann is a Senior Lecturer in International Studies at St Mary's University College (Queen's University, Belfast). He is Director of the Global Dimension in Education project and coordinates partnership initiatives with universities in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. He has written extensively on the European Union's development and education policies._x000B__x000B_Stephen McCloskey is the Director of the Centre for Global Education, Belfast and editor of the journal Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review. His publications include Development Education in Policy and Practice (editor, 2014) and The East Timor Question: The Struggle for Independence from Indonesia, (2000), co-edited with Paul Hainsworth. He is currently leading development projects in the Gaza Strip and is chair of Cuba Support Group, Belfast._x000B_