Creativity and urban regeneration. An interview with Charles Landry

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Charles Landry, essayist and urban sociologist

The inventor of the “creative city” concept was invited to Italy by the Salone del Mobile to make an introductory speech at the presentation of the Milan Design (Eco) System research project. He explained how forms of wide-spread planning can be activated in urban spaces and why he believes Milan, as a city full of projects, should become a city-project oriented towards the common good

Charles Landry (1948) has been interested in The Art of City Making, (which is also the title of his book published in 2006), and the application of fluid categories such as creativity and imagination on a metropolitan scale since the early Eighties. His beliefs include the fact that culture is an extremely powerful tool for urban renaissance, and that only radical collaboration between the different city institutions can release enough creative energies to achieve this. We took the opportunity of his presence at the presentation of the Milan Design (Eco) System, the Report dedicated to the first analysis of the Milan Design Week, conceived and edited by the Salone del Mobile with the scientific supervision of the Politecnico di Milano for a chat with him on these topics, focusing in particular on the city and on its near future.

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You were the first to talk about creative cities and creativity as a driver of urban de-velopment. How do you see Milan?

You Milanese know perfectly well what design is, I certainly don’t have to explain it to you, and you know equally well that cities are made up many different things: people, activities, infrastruc-ture. However, these elements are seldom taken into consideration in the round, at 360 degrees. You could be even more ambitious than you are now and make a bid not just to be the capital of de-sign “of” the world, but the capital of design “for” the world. Seemingly just a change of preposition, but in actual fact there’s a huge difference. It means having an ethical perspective rather than just tending a reputation as a “cool” and fashionable city.

What do you prescribe?

As I explained in my presentation, to make a city a better place there has to be radical collaboration between all its parts – the public sector, private individuals, NGOs, the academic world. Everything can be designed, not just the objects but also the atmospheres, concepts, paradigms. Frankfurt, for example, is set to be the 2026 World Capital of Design, and has chosen Design for Democracy. At-mospheres for a Better Life as its theme. I am one of the organisers of a festival dedicated to creative bureaucracy (The Creative Bureaucracy Festival, the next edition of which will be held in Berlin in March 2025, Ed.).

When we think about creativity, we usually think of it as something spontaneous, but can it be regulated or channelled so as to have benefits for an entire community?

I believe it’s a combination of hard work and momentary insights. In English we say that creativity is 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration. I think though that the real challenge is to have wide-spread creativity. Not everyone is as creative as the next person, but we can all strive to be more creative than we are already. I don’t even think we need do so 24 hours a day or 7 days a week, clearly. There are situations in which it’s better to stick to tried and tested recipes. If I have to make some pasta for supper, for example, deciding to trial new cooking techniques might not be the most efficient solution. You need to find the right balance between divergent and convergent thinking, You need to find the right balance between divergent and convergent thinking, between open-mindedness and the ability to stay focused on the goal.

What do you see as virtuous examples of creative cities in terms of urban design?

Helsinki and Copenhagen are two excellent examples. The Finnish capital has always paid great at-tention to the quality of life of its inhabitants. In 2012, when it was World Design Capital, it chose “Embedding Design in Life” as its theme. Just one tiny example that I think is extremely intelligent, the pavements in the thoroughfares are heated from below to prevent snow and ice from settling there. In Denmark, on the other hand, they’ve designed alternative routes for cyclists, shortcuts that make cycling the fastest way of getting around the city.

How has Covid changed the way we live our urban spaces?

There have been huge changes, especially in our relationship with distances. Many people work from home, or aren’t forced to go into the office every single day. That’s taken the pressure off the big cities, in favour of smaller towns, for the more enterprising at least. Here’s an example close to home. Stroud is a former working-class country town in Gloucestershire, where there was already a certain buzz – the artist Damien Hirst has his studio there, it has one of the most important foundries in the country and an international festival dedicated to textiles. In 2021, the town was named the best place to live in the United Kingdom. Certainly, prices have gone sky high.

While we’re on this subject, it seems as though regeneration has to go hand-in-hand with gentrification. There are lots of ongoing projects here in Milan too, but there are lots of people and local shops that are being pushed out because they can’t keep up with the rising costs.

It’s a huge problem that the market can’t solve on its own. As I often say, its energy should be channelled into more general objectives through a system of public regulation and incentives. In the long term, it would also be necessary to be able to create awareness, to make owners and real estate developers understand that savage capitalism risks having destructive effects on everyone.

In this mechanism, the role of artists and creative industries is ambivalent, because if, on the one hand, their work makes cities more pleasant to live in, on the other hand it helps to make them elitist.

It’s one of the great dilemmas we all face: artistic expression and creativity are fantastic things and they make cities more vibrant, but as soon as a city becomes more vibrant, it starts attracting more people and that triggers a process of gentrification. However, we all need to live in agreeable places, not just hipsters. There should be an alliance between the private sector and the public, and also, more glamorous things than art perhaps, but equally important, like social housing and various forms of cooperative habitat must not be neglected.

In a TED Talk a few years ago, you said that one of the first things you do on visiting a city is to look at the graffiti and the writing on the walls, why is that?

I’m keen on graffiti because it allows anyone and everyone to express themselves, anybody can use a simple wall as if it were an art gallery. They often tell stories of frustration. One of my favourite ex-amples, which I often use in my presentations, is one that says “Wasted Youth” – which can be read two ways: a wasted youth or a young person under the influence of alcohol and drugs. That was what first got me interested in creativity on a city scale. When I was young, I thought the people around were stilted, they couldn’t manage to fully express their potential. I wondered if this was a way of helping them and whether it was better to do so at individual level or by trying to inject a sort of collective energy.

Have you seen any interesting graffiti on this trip to Italy?

My time in Milan has been very short. Before I came here, though, I went to Turin, and there I saw an inscription inviting people to rebel against ugliness. How can we fail to agree?