The book argues that the Creative City does stimulate creativity, but through a reaction to it, not as part of it. Creative City policies do not contain any formal mechanisms to stimulate individual, collective or civic creativity, yet subcultural activity is inherently creative by reacting to such policies, and the urban development therein entailed. The book explores the role that urban subversions and subcultures have in the contemporary city in challenging the dominant political economic hegemony of urban creativity.