Rethinking the creative city in post-conflict historic cities: a scoping review and critical planning framework

Abstract

Purpose The global Creative City paradigm, which is based on stable governance and market-driven growth, fails in the fragmented, traumatic conditions of post-conflict historic cities. This scoping review demonstrates the necessity of critically reinventing this paradigm for contexts marked by ongoing fragility, revealing that effective practice challenges the paradigm's core logic, and suggests a substantial reorientation toward social reconciliation over economic competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach A scoping review was conducted following Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. Twenty-nine sources comprising academic publications and grey literature from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) were systematically identified, charted, and synthesized using qualitative content analysis. Findings The evidence suggests a generative adaptation in which culture operates as critical social infrastructure for peacebuilding. Effective practice integrates three concurrent interdependent imperatives: Reconstruction, Reconciliation, and Revitalization, rather than treating them as sequential stages. However, the field remains characterized by implicit conceptual engagement, geographic concentration in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and methodological reliance on single-city case studies. Originality/value This review provides two principal contributions: a Critical Planning Framework (Three-R Framework) integrating Reconstruction, Reconciliation, and Revitalization as interdependent imperatives; and a methodological agenda (the Scale-Sequence-Measure Agenda: Re-scale, Re-sequence, and Re-measure), addressing research gaps. It concludes that post-conflict fragility should be reconceptualized not as a constraining condition but as a productive theoretical engine for evolving urban theory and practice.