Planning creativity, culture and cities often leads to hyped tunnel visions, in which the cultural creatives are viewed from the economic point of view mostly. This is a shame, says Charles Landry, for culture is much more than economic value or the rise of the creative industries. Landry pleas for a city to use the creativity of many "to become the best and most imaginative city for the world - not the most creative city in the world". Text: Roy van Dalm
Credit where credit is due: it was the Englishman Charles Landry who launched the term creative city, and not, as many believe, Richard Florida. Landry's famous book ‘The Creative City: a toolkit for urban innovators' appeared in the year 2000, two years before Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class was released. However, where Florida stresses the economic value of human creativity, Landry sees the necessity of a new, cultural thinking and the use of the creativity of many to solve the city's important issues. Not an economic story, therefore, but a call for a broader cultural vision.
What Florida and Landry share, is their vision on the city as a complex biotope that appeals to biological rather than economic patterns. This is logical in a society that is about knowledge and creativity, because it is about peofple. Leading a city by simply pushing the old policy buttons is harder and harder. Causality is hard to find in a complex, living system. Who knows if B will happen when you do A? Landry has published two books in the last two years: ‘The Art of City-Making', and just a year after ‘The Intercultural City', which he wrote together with Phil Wood. In both books, he tries to describe the complexity of city life.
The City as a Work of Art
Charles Landry sips his coffee in his study and ponders on the analogy between the city and complex systems. "Hmm, you have got a point there. I talk of urban development as an art and not as a skill, exactly because of the city's complexity. City-making means balancing between order and chaos. A city has no beginning and no ending. City-making is therefore a process, not an end-result. There is no end-product of a city. The challenge for cities is to enhance the mutual connections and thereby strengthen the city as a whole. The city's culture has so many aspects, that policy makers who still think in terms of causal connections will run into problems. Innovation in this environment asks for a different approach."
Landry wants innovation in cities no longer to be seen as merely an economic issue. "In the last years, creativity has become limited to economic creativity too much. This way, it will only result into a competition between cities with the creative industries as asset. You know, the creative industry naturally knows very well how to project and sell itself, but it has become a fashion item."
For the World
Landry positions that cities should no longer try to be the most creative city in the world, but the most and best imaginative city for the world. Charles Landry: "The importance is that you get all the different forms of the city's creativity on one line, aimed at a certain goal. A higher goal. Call it a type of sustainable, social city-making. At the heart of the matter, innovation and creativity in cities are about ethical issues, about who you would like to be for the world or for your own community. I think the time is right for it. Some time ago, I have worked on a project in the Australian Perth, and I have noticed that everyone who is under forty there feels a deep longing to be part of something larger, to be connected to the city. It is time to start seeing the city as a collective enterprise. People want to feel connected with a place; so use their energy for the benefit of the city."
In ‘The Art of City-making', Landry speaks of the importance of ‘cultural literacy'. In ‘The Intercultural City', a book about the coexistence of different cultures in a city, he gets back to that in detail. Landry: "It is about cultural thinking and about culture in the broadest sense of the word, so the way we do things around here. Each city has its own personality and it is important to keep it. However, this personality is complex, for a city consists of many cultures. Cultural literacy means that you are open to these other cultures."
Besides that, Landry finds it important that people develop a sense of what makes their city different to others "It is about the feeling of buildings, of the environment. Cities have a different look and feel everywhere in the world. If you are sensitive to this, you can enhance it. You must take care that your city will look like the others too much in the process of globalization. Everywhere in the world, there is a tension between what is similar and what is different in cities. Each city strives for a certain level of cultural facilities, but at a certain level, cities will start to look like each other too much. Then, only the difference is distinctive and that is that own personality. That is what makes Amsterdam Amsterdam."
Diversity Dividend
Diversity provides many advantages. Diverser teams produce better innovation results than homogenous groups. This diversity dividend also goes for cities. A closed system which allows little diversity from outside will at some point loose the ability to renew itself. So will a closed city. However, cultural diversity is a starting point for Landry, not an end goal. "Culture is a double-edged sword. Do nothing, and it will produce tension. You could admit it is hard to have totally different people around you. Living together does not come by itself."
Cultural diversity is like a working top full of beautiful ingredients, but they must be cooked. Landry: "If a city wants to get dividend from its cultural diversity, it will have to actively do something with it. Interculturality takes place where we meet the others in an open space. That is what it is all about. You will not achieve this in the private realm, but in the public realm." In The Intercultural City, Landry mentions many Dutch projects that promote interculturality. He is enthusiastic about the long term culture strategy of Amsterdam. "It is really different, in completely different terms than what you usually see in culture strategies. It is open, welcoming and aims at what it means to be an Amsterdammer. This way, you will get to the city as a joint effort, as a collective enterprise. And that is the key."
About this interview
Charles Landry was interviewed by Roy van Dalm on behalf of OOlympia, a cultural magazine for the future of the Olympic Area in Amsterdam. Making this cultural magazine is part of the redevelopment of the Stadionplein, an important part of the Amsterdam Olympic Area. The act of making the cultural magazine can be seen as one of the new tools of what Charles Landry calls city-making. The magazine has been produced by BPF BouwInvest and The Beach. Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters of poly-xelor edited. The full magazine can be read and commented (in Dutch only) on http://www.poly-xelor.com/oolympia/.
Building the Utopian Stadionplein is a workshop with children from the nearby British School in Amsterdam, organized by artist Uta Eisenreich. The children drew and built their own design in the shape of a 'cheese mountain' with materials from housing association Eigen Haard. Uta Eisenreich guided the children and made a series of pictures for Oolympia.