Post-Fordist State planners, developers, and their entrepreneurial service arm have debased the meaning of ‘creativity’ to a shallow pretext for the further looting of cities and public wealth. The cookie-cutter aestheticisation of selective zones of our cities (tourist promenades, waterside public art, creative quarters), is a mere fig leaf covering the acts of enclosure and exclusion that cultural regeneration entails. As the sensibilities of the Creative Class are sensationalised, courted, and monetised, the creative possibilities of the dehumanised majority narrow. But as the recession bites, there are signs that dreams of the Creative City are crashing, as the public purse-strings tighten and the financial sector’s ability to underwrite the creative industries weakens. In this issue we examine that possibility, explore artists’ creative sabotage of their own regenerative co-optation, and philosophically examine what ‘expression’ might actually be.