Today, at the Rotterdam CityLive2005 Conference, Amsterdam’s creative advisor Evert Verhagen presented a new book on creativity and the city. Coinciding with that presentation the new CreativeCity.nl website was launched. A couple of weeks ago Evert, KL’s Joeri van den Steenhoven, NIROV’s Anne Hemker and I came up with the idea to revive the Creative […]

Brisbane, Australia will never ever look the same. Read this article in The Courier-Mail to find out what Brisbane will look like in five years from now. Of course there cannot be any large-scale urban redevelopment scheme without an arts precinct.
An interactive map with artists’ impressions of the redevelopment areas can be found here.

‘How can a city that looks so stagnant in some areas be booming so dramatically in others? Or, as Portland State urbanist Ethan Seltzer puts the question, “What’s a better measure of the economy: unemployment numbers or skycranes?”‘
That’s the big question in Portland. Find out more in this interesting article.

In the electronic version of Prospect, October 2005 issue, Joel Kotkin makes a strong argument against creative city strategies that are based on creating hip environments.
Read the article in Prospect.

With New Orleans looking like a ghost city debates have started about the future of the hard-hit metropolis. According to Business Week broadly three visions about the new New Orleans are starting to take shape. In the first one, New Orleans recovers primarily on the basis of cultural heritage (in particular: music). Creative industries and […]

Looking for books and papers about culture and territorial development?
Check out the European Spatial Planning Research & Information Database.

There are officials that believe a city cannot have enough art galleries. However, local authorities in Carmel City, California, are increasingly worried by the large number of art galleries in their city. You can find out here why.

Friday afternoon. Rain is pouring here in Amsterdam, but it does not seem to affect the enthusiasm of the people that are building up the outdoor ‘Summer Camp’ stages just fifty metres from our building. It’s free music for us this afternoon, as Amsterdam gets ready for the tenth Amsterdam Pride to promote the city […]

Cities are like people. They want to be on television and star in movies.
Read this excellent article in the Financial Times about how cities even start to impersonate other cities just to make it to the movie theatres.

Interesting comment on the ‘geography of nowhere’ in The Toronto Star this morning. In Toronto, Canada, the issue of how to become a creative city occasionally pops up in The Star. (See for instance these two articles by John Honderich: culture generates urban buzz and Montreal hones creative edge). In the ‘geography of nowhere’ Glen […]