In 2001, the city of Porto hosted the European Capital of Culture event. 'Porto 2001' was a year-long programme of arts, cultural events and urban regeneration activities. The key finding in the article is that, despite rich and well-attended cultural events, too much emphasis was put on attracting public investment to regenerate the public space, replacing infrastructures, and modernising cultural facilities. This was done at the expense of institutional capacity building and boosting civic creativity.