Urban and Cultural DNA Mapping for the Creative City

Lia Ghilardi

Noema Research and Planning

www.noema.org.uk

Forum for Creative EuropeForum for Creative Europe Prague 26-27 March 2009Prague 26-27 March 2009

Creative Cities of the Past

Music in the Tuileries Gardens, E. Manet - 1862

The Painters of Modern Life

Paris New Opéra - 1863

Vienna - 1875

Frederica Maria Beer, G. Klimt - 1916

Vienna – New Artistic Movements

Vienna

• Presence of writers, thinkers, painters, composers, creative individuals. PLUS patrons, and cultural intermediaries.

• Outsiders/Jewish

• Rejection of the aristocratic Austrian culture.

• Value vacuum / cultural paralysis.

• Young Vienna / Social criticism and new forms of artistic expression (e.g. 1897 the Secession and Gustav Klimt)

These cities had something in common:

• They were cosmopolitan places.

• Attracted migrants and as such had a strong input of new ideas.

• They were not afraid of taking risks.

• Had a sound financial basis while allowing room for experimentation without tight regulation.

• Good possibilities for informal and spontaneous communication.

• An environment catering for diversity and variety within their cultural milieux.

Not Selfconsciously Creative…Creative…

• Rapid economic growth.• New wealth in new hands.• New social relationships.• Stage of transition from an ordered, hierarchical world to an individualistic one.

Within the cultural milieux:

Established artistic order displaced by change in policies.Art becomes a commodity, an industry.Young artists rebel and form movements/schools…

General Instability…Continuous Creativity

Today most of us work with creative thinking.

More and more cities aspire to become attractive creative centres.

Policies oriented towards fostering creative milieux.

Concentration on top down formulas: (e.g. the Triple Helix model of collaboration between state, industry and academia, or the 3 Ts of R. Florida)

However…flux and constant change are the norm.

Today

The Creative City Formula??

Currently too much focus on urban improvements and regeneration as a tool for repositioning cities.

Concentration on BIG iconic statements.

Concentration of consumption.

Universities also concentrating on expanding ‘customer-base’ and less on research.

Branding bland and ‘unreal’ (or positively dada)

Yes we can…but not in the old way

The magic of Barcelona!

To deliver on the creative city we need to take a holistic view of place making.

Focus on the local distinctive cultural (broadly defined) resources.

Concentration on building urban, human, social and cultural capital in an integrated way.

Collaboration between different levels of government, disciplines, professions and shared leadership on the ground.

Need for New Approaches to City Making

A cultural understanding of local communities’ different components and diverse resources.

Opportunities for local people and professionals to collaborate and jointly create a vision of what's best for a city.

A process leading to policy initiatives (not top down but criss-cross)

“A timeless way of building places and communities”.

Creativity: “It’s all in the process”

Urban and Cultural DNA MappingResearch:

• Place (landscape, history, architecture, urban texture)

• Institutions (cultural, educational, health)

• People ( memory, social networks, informal networks, perceptions of place, affiliations, life styles)

• Economy (traditional skills, contemporary creative industries, current dynamics, issues, potential, etc.)

Practical Tools

EXAMPLES

Practical Tools

Mantua: Just a boring heritage town?

The reality after mapping

The romance of nature?

The Storm House

Yeats Country?

Yeats Country!

Another example: Copenhagen

The ‘Metropolzonen’ Project

About Copenhagen as a ‘liveable place’

We are proposing:

• Slow, step by step, experiments in integrated urban living

• Densification of the area (mix of uses, functions, work/live)

• Creative/cultural infrastructure better integrated into the urban fabric and more focus on the contemporary

• Incentives to work and live in the MTPZ

Denmark - Copenhagen