Indexes of cultural offer and diversity: alternatives for creative and cultural ecosystems characterization in urban areas

Abstract

Measuring the availability of infrastructure and the consumption of products and cultural services using quantitative indexes stands for a methodological opportunity to identify inequalities, dynamics and clustering, when its interpretation considers elements of specific socioeconomic and territorial contexts.

This study is based on the Stirling’s framework (1998) which proposes: (1) to review areas of the economic literature where there exists a strong interest in diversity; (2) to discuss the diversity concept from an interdisciplinary point of view; and (3) to analyse the economic diversity by using variety, balance, disparity and diversity indexes.

Additionally, using the cultural studies as a theoretical framework, considering the urban areas as an analysis object, this article also proposes a qualitative interpretation of the indexes under the cultural ecosystems perspective (Boisbaudry, 2014), which comprehends the dynamics of production, circulation and use of cultural services and activities as a system, where these parts are not isolated, but in continuous interaction with each other. A dynamic of complementarity, where the parts are not organized vertically, but horizontally: sharing the same territory and having equivalent level of importance in the totality of the cultural context, where each part is necessary for the existence of the others.