Gary from Junk for Code has posted some thoughts on Adelaide’s “creative city” policies, or lack thereof, which kind of continues an earlier dialogue on the matter between our two blogs. Here’s some more of my thoughts.

While Richard Florida’s bookThe Rise of the Creative Class, and the wider emerging discourse of Creative Industries and Creative Cities, have had a big impact on urban planning and policy in Brisbane, the SA government seems more intent on going in the opposite direction – slashing funding, as Gary says, and persisting with draconian policies (e.g. about noise levels in venues) that seem more designed to destroy creativity than anything. When I was down there at the Sonics/Synergies conference, though, it was apparent that there are a lot of community workers and academics putting significant energy into communicating the mutual benefits to the community, to the academy, to the economy and to the government of a localised emphasis on creative industries and creative networks (not just big festivals, but ongoing, everyday creative activity) – so hopefully things will start to get better.

Update: In typical blogosphere voodoo fashion, Anne Galloway within a matter of hours posts an article about creative cities and urban (over)design. Anne’s post was apparently sparked off by John Thackara’s article The Postspectacular City, which is at once a critique of the unthinking celebration of the rise of the “creative class” and a thoughtful exploration of urban possibility. It’s a long article, but to risk oversimplifying, Thackara argues that the creative class has had negative effects on urban life: there is now too much emphasis in policy and economics on urban spectacle (monumental architecture, cultural tourism), and not enough on the lived human experience of the city. While I would be cautious about some of his polemical judgements and over-generalisations (referring to “the city”, as opposed to “(particular) cities”, is always a worry) one strand of the proceeding argument really captured my imagination:

What matters most in a post-spectacular city is activity, not architecture. As the director Peter Brook has said, “It is not a question of good building, and bad. A beautiful place may never bring about an explosion of life, while a haphazard hall may be a tremendous meeting place. This is the mystery of the theatre, but in the understanding of this mystery lies the one science. It is not a matter of saying analytically, what are the requirements, how best they could be organized ‹ this will usually bring into existence a tame, conventional, often cold hall. The science of theatre building must come from studying what it is that brings about the more vivid relationships between people.”

My own concerns are less explicitly tied up with design than John’s or Anne’s, but I really liked this quote because it resonates with what I wrote earlier about the need to facilitate, build and nurture not just big-ticket cultural tourism (festivals, monumental cultural venues) but more importantly the “ground level”, everyday creative networks that sustain these vivid relationships between people, that immediately benefit the everyday lives of urban citizens.