Designing the Creative City. Using Elements of History and Future for Shaping the Urban Form

Abstract

This paper explores the characteristics of creative city planning. This certain form of urban planning emerged in the realm of the debate about the 'creative class' and the 'creative city'. Based on two sociological case studies that I conducted in the cities of Dublin (Ireland) and Gothenburg (Sweden) I show that creative city planning comprises three characteristic elements: an understanding of creativity as people's capacity to generate innovation, the conceptualization of creative cities as places of the knowledge society, and the use of the cities' past as a way to build the new city identity on its old foundations. Preserving the old physical structures and converting the use of historic monuments are strategies to transform old port and trading cities to creative cities that become places of knowledge-intensive industries. Creative cities then constitute the built environment of the knowledge society. I conclude that creative city planning features a specific temporality with this combination of orientation on the past and on the future.