The Emotional City

Erica Butler — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:36:38 +0000

An interview with urban thinker Charles Landry

Before Richard Florida discovered the ‘creative class’ and their predeliction for culturally dynamic places, Charles Landry started talking about the ‘creative city’, referring to the regenerative force of arts and culture in post-industrial cities like Glasgow, Scotland in the late 80’s. Landry’s concept of the role of creativity in urban life is both broad and deep, encompassing all aspects of city-making and the entire organizational culture of cities.

The UK writer and thinker will speak to a business luncheon crowd in Halifax on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009. I spoke to him on the phone from his home in Gloucestershire on April 8th, 2009, about the creative city movement, city planning, and the emotional experience of our cities.

Recently a coalition of artists from around Nova Scotia released a research report on the creative economy, making the case from an economic perspective about what role cultural industries can play. How important is that, and how does your idea of the creative city differ?

When people talk about the creative city, there are four definitions which are sort of floating around. First, the creative city is a place which has a very strong arts, cultural and heritage fabric, let’s say. You’ve got lots of good buildings, lots of cultural institutions and there’s a strong arts community. That equals a creative city.

A second group might say, actually a creative city is a place which has that, plus a strong economy of design, music, and all of those things. So that’s a sort of second definition. When I initially talked about it in the late 80’s, I was doing some work in Glasgow, looking at that creative economy and assessing the value of it. So you could say that’s a creative city, you’ve got artists and this vibrant design scene and so on.