It is our observation that musicology has so far mostly neglected
the many links between music and the city. There is evidently little interest in
the socio-spatial effects of urban music on urban spaces or in the impact of urban change on music, though in the broader field of cultural studies there has long been such a ›spatial turn‹: We hope this book will begin to fill this gap. In order to do so two pivotal notions must be more closely examined, namely, ›music city‹ and ›creative city‹. On one hand, urban music is a project with economic legitimation that is governed and sponsored ›top-down‹. But on the other hand urban music is a ›bottom-up‹ product of disparate urban groups using music to creatively express not only their diversity but also their tensions. This innovative potential has recently been discovered by ›creative city‹ strategists, who however understand creativity predominantly as an instrumental and outcome-oriented product of economic development. Many articles in this volume critique this conceptualisation in at least one of three ways: first, by reflecting on the globalization of music and its effects on the local; second, by recognizing the obsolete but ever present distinction between popular and classical music, and third by looking at the potential of music to create sustainable urban cultures. We conclude this essay by briefly introducing the fourteen articles which have been arranged along geographical and analytical lines. The first part contains contributions exploring the question how ›music cities‹ and ›creative cities‹ are related to each other. The second part comprises articles about how this relationship is played out in cities around the globe. And the third part contains articles that specifically analyse this issue in Hamburg, a city that proudly labels itself as a ›music city‹.