Lunch Talk @Academy: The Civic, the Nomadic & the Creative - How to Transform Cities for the 21st Century

About

The world of cities is changing dramatically and a business as usual approach will not get us where we want to be. We are in the midst of redesigning the world and all its systems - legal, moral and political as well as the economy and our infrastructures for an interdependent more digitally driven age. These forces contribute to the ‘anytime, anyplace, anywhere’ phenomenon changing how we interact with space, place and time. There is mobility and not only for people, but for capital, for jobs, for commodities, for information, for ideas. There are frenzied finance movements, with companies and factories on the move in search of cheap labour and markets. Talent is on the move as are the most ambitious.

These transformations will involve a massive cultural rethink and psychological readjustment and its effects will be as powerful as those brought about by the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago.  

Within this shifting landscape ideas of the civic are being reshaped, the new norm is nomadic and creativity and imagination are major resources that will determine the success or failure of cities. Crucially this means that our bureaucracies and institutions must become more responsive and inventive and work out how to be strategically principled and tactically flexible. There is an urgency to the urban agenda and a new paradigm is required. The crucial question is: will the public interest be put centre-stage?
 

Charles Landry
Charles Landry is a world-renowned expert in city dynamics and planning and inventor of the Creative City concept, which he developed in the late 1980s. The concept focuses on how cities can create the enabling conditions for people and organizations to think, plan and act with imagination to solve problems and discover opportunities. The notion has become a global movement and changed the way cities think about their capabilities and resources. In 1978 Charles Landry founded Comedia, a highly respected globally oriented consultancy working in creativity, culture and urban change. His latest project is ‘The Civic City: Urbanity & citizenship in a nomadic world’ which brings together his work over the last decade including the concept of ‘civic urbanity’, ‘creative bureaucracy’ and ‘the management of fragility’.

Please note that the event will be held in English.

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