Abstract: The article describes the potential and prospects for implementation of the popular concepts of creative city, creative class, and creative economy in the modern cities. The author argues that these concepts are applicable only in certain loci and social groups of the urban community, and do not create the cumulative effect of development for the entire city. Promises, addressed to the city and the citizens by the creative concepts cannot be fulfilled for the majority, which is not employed in the post-industrial economy. These promises form high expectations, distorting the agenda of the city in favor of different kinds of privileged minorities. As a result, creative industries and technologies merely become limited urban utopias of the XXI century. The article reveals a number of alternative long-term conditions for the successful urban development which are not connected with creative communities, whose interests should be viewed as complementarity to solutions focused on the interests of the wider urban groups. These are factors of urban progress, associated with the broadening of municipal autonomy; support of the competition between different strategies of urban development; restriction of commodification of urban resources; support of the vulnerable social groups, designated as precariat; promotion for egalitarian models of suburbanization.