Currently (urban) amenities as growth drivers are being given much attention in urban and regional studies and it is transmitted into urban and regional policies too. The basic claim is that amenities attract economic activity in terms of firms and labour and especially highly skilled knowledge workers, talents and creative class members that seek to optimise their utility function of amenities. In policy terms local authorities, municipalities, are taking the arguments serious and they are advancing the development of amenities even in small towns and peripheral regions outside the main city-regions as a new universal remedy to secure future
growth and prosperity or at least to prevent stagnation and decline. In that sense amenities are seen as a tool to 211 secure skill provision. The amenity-growth paradigm does offer new perspectives for some cities and regions but as a universal remedy for urban and regional growth it has, as many of it redecessors, its shortcomings. Hence, we are critical of the underlying tenets of the amenity-growth paradigm but the critique is sustained with respect and sympathy for its contributions to urban and regional studies too. First of all, it has brought back a vital debate on urban and regional growth including the distinction between localisation economies and urbanisation economies. Secondly, it has pin pointed the value of labour, human capital, in the new knowledge based economy in terms of knowledge workers etc. Thirdly, it has drawn attention to labour migration and labour mobility underlying structural changes in the economy. The basic tenet has, however, recently been
contested theoretically and empirically. Theoretically it remains within the limits of neoclassical economics and hence restrained by the classic pitfalls of being a meteristic, agent based science dominated by ahistorical models and reversible processes. Further, little empirical evidence has been pushed forward to support the amenity-growth linkage. On the contrary, new evidence reveals that for instance labour movements are driven by jobs and not amenities. The paper explores the bulk of literature that in recent years have followed in the
aftermath of the cultural turn in urban economic geography. Based on the review of the most important contributions to the field we discuss how culture economy is used as a locomotive for regional planning regardless of regional context.