How do artists, arts managers, urban planners and politicians regard the significance of arts and culture for urban development? This presentation describes the impacts of culture on urban development for the very different cities of Baltimore and Hamburg. Even more important, differences of the understanding and the urban utilization of art and culture are described and analyzed for Baltimore in 1988, in 2004 and in 2010, conducting a systematic contents analysis of expert interviews in these years. How has the rationale of instrumentalizing arts and culture for urban development changed in these last decades, in this city, and why?