It is our aim, with this paper, to contribute to the analysis of the importance of the cultural activities cluster in the structure and in the competitiveness of the economy of cities.
Firstly a frame of the question is made, putting in evidence the importance of cultural goods in the economic activity and linking its increasing weight to some structural mutations occuring in contemporary societies (in what concerns dematerialization of economy and flexibilization of production systems, consumption practices, lifestyles,...) focussing specially its role on the improvement of consumption and production and on employment creation. The development of these activities is mainly associated to urban spaces (especially metropolitan) and to the economy of cities.
This analysis is complemented, in a second step, by a short empiric approach to the question, based, mainly, on the portuguese case, but inserting and comparing it with other realities. Starting from the weak statistics available to our country, we try to identify the main trends in the evolution of the cluster in our national space.
From this analysis two parallel lines of investigation are opened, which are developed in the context of wider investigation works: on one hand, the role of the cultural activities cluster in the development of the economy of towns and in the promotion of territorial competitiveness; on the other hand, the importance of these activities in the inner structure of the urban space, mainly the metropolitan.
In the first case we study the dynamics observed through the several aglomerative tendencies that regulate the location of these activities, detaching particularly the effects of the environment ("milieu") and the possibilities and the potencial of the exploitation of local specificities as a way of competitive implantation in an increasing globalized economy.
In the second case the territorial impacts of cultural practices and of the dynamics of production, distribution and location of the activities are more directly analysed, with a major attention to the internal organization of the metropolitqan territory. It's detached the (re)centralization of certain activities and social groups with a fundamental role in the cultural consumption and production, as well as their association to urban regeneration processes. The importance of the popular culture is particularly noticed, subverting the traditional cultural hierarchies, fomented by confluence and juxtaposition in the city of a diversity of activities and practices linked to the proliferation and fragmentation of patterns of cultural production and consumption.

Pedro Costa - Universidade Atlântica