Creative Places for Collaborative Cities
Proposal for the "Progetto Habitat e Cultura" in Milan
Teresa Franqueira
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Abstract
This paper presents a proposal for a pilot project in an old milk factory in Milan, which is part
of an ongoing PhD research that aims to develop a solution to enhance the growth and
development of creative places for a new urban everyday life. Places where groups of people
collaboratively promote and manage a mix of creative initiatives in the fields of art and culture,
economy and production, social services and urban regeneration.
This places help to shape a different city. A Collaborative City, that is, a city with kernels of
creativity, where people interact and enact creating a symbiosis of activities that promote
sustainable lifestyles, an active citizenship, social inclusion, cultural diversity and new economic
models.
It is a city where hierarchies are transversal instead of vertical, i.e, where local authorities
(urban leaders) create opportunities for mass participation, bottom-up creativity and collaborative
services.
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POLITECNICO DI MILANO (ITALY), INDACO, PHD STUDENT, TERESA.FRANQUEIRA@POLIMI.IT
UNIVERSIDADE DE AVEIRO (PORTUGAL), DECA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, TERESA.FRANQUEIRA@UA.PT
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1. Introduction
The great demographic concentration in cities and the fast paced rythmn of technological
change, together with the phenomenon of globalisation, have converted the city into a big
crossroad of cultures, but where ever-increasing individualism is dominant. Interestingly, in the
same way globalisation has prompted the rebirth of the “local”, rugged individualism has
revitalized the idea of (or the need for) community.
From previous European researches (EMUDE, in particular) surfaced that a dynamic new
form of community emerging is emerging, which is based on a diffused creativity put co-
operatively into action by “non-specialised” people, representing a significant expression of
contemporary society. The EMUDE research has defined these enterprising people as creative
communities. That is: groups of innovative citizens organising themselves to solve a problem or
to open new possibilities, and doing so as a positive step in the social learning process towards
social and environmental sustainability (EMUDE, 2006; Meroni, 2007).
These communities are an alternative to the system, generating outputs alternative to it.
They are born from the inertia and lack of flexibility of governmental bodies and the failure of
nation states and their welfare systems to address the very complex problems modern society is
faced with. They are groups of people who create places where they can, in groups and
colaboratively, develop various activities. They produce culture, alternative economies,
environmental and social sustainability, socialisation and collaborative services.
What social entrepreneurs and creative communities have in common is that they are
ordinary people that invent new ways of overcoming everyday problems and of participating in
public and social life in an active way.
This activity, not so common in a society mostly characterized by passivity, derives from the
will to promote change and not to sit back and wait for the traditional institutions to solve all
everyday problems. And they are put in practice by creative people that persist and invest in their
own ideas and are able to convert them into innovative services, responding to everyday needs.
These ideas are social innovations, that is, new ideas that work to meet pressing unmet needs
and improve peoples’ lives (Young Foundation, 2007).
These places and these groups of people can be found worldwide, and even though they are
not mainstream they can operate major shifts and changes to society. As Mark Penn refers, it
takes only 1 percent of people making a dedicated choice – contrary to the mainstream’s choice
– to create a movement that can change the world (Penn, 2007).
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2. Collaborative City
Between 2007 and 2008, for the first time in history, more than half of human population, 3.3
billion people, will be living in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost 5 billion.
The future of cities in developing countries all depend very much on decisions made now in
preparation for this growth (Martine, 2007).The impact of globalization on city growth patterns
marks a critical difference between past and present transitions (Cohen, 2006).
CEOs for Cities
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has defined the areas in most urgent need of fresh thinking in cities as: 1.
The Talented City (Developing, maximizing, attracting and retaining talent); 2. The Innovative City
(Fostering innovation and entrepreneurship); 3. The Connected City (Fostering connections that
link people with ideas to talent, capital and markets; cities to regions; and regions to the global
economy); and 4. The Distinctive City (Capitalizing on local differences to build local economic
opportunity). According to CEO, cities performing well on these dimensions are destined for
success. These dimensions make cities more competitives, but these strategies have a strong
economical dimension.
What in the past was a competition between countries nowadays is a competition between
cities. As countries before them have battled for technological supremacy, cities now strive to
implement strategic plans that will grant them a place as financial and cultural powerhouses in
the globalised world.
Cities are the main beneficiaries of globalization and the progressive integration of the
world’s economies.They incubate new businesses, connect people, ideas, money and markets
and house most universities. In our increasingly diverse society they are the crucibles for
connecting cultures and generating opportunity. People follow jobs, which follow investment and
economic activities.
Today’s cities must speak to a world well beyond national government. They have been
benchmarked against each other in terms of liveability and wellbeing, economic and cultural offer
and according to the functional importance they have in various global networks (Young
Foundation, 2008). They need to attract investment, inward-investing companies, property
developers, the talented the world over. To survive well, cities must play on various stages – from
the immediately local, through the regional and national, to the widest global platform. (Landry
2006)
And this competition is continously reinventing the way cities position and envision
themselves. London had a plan to become a creative city, now it has commissioned a study on
how to become a collaborative city. Toronto and Brisbane, amongst others, also follow in the
creative trail, whilst Berlin has in its local agenda 21 strategies to foster not only creativity, but to
become a sustainable, social and participatory city.
There are many self-nominated “Creative cities” (Landry, 2000 and 2008) either because
they have a huge concentration of creative professionals (Florida, 2004), or because they have a
strong role as “art cities”. In recent years creativity has been introduced in economic and urban
policies as a key resource to compete in the global knowledge economy. Many creative city
strategies have focused on providing the spaces - physical and social environments – to
stimulate the production of creative contents and communities, the start up of value added
economic activities and the regeneration of degraded urban areas [Creative London, 2005]. On
closer examination most of these city strategies have been actually concerned with strengthening
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CEOs for Cities is a bipartisan, nonprofit alliance of US mayors, corporate executives, university presidents and
nonprofit leaders, that works with local and national policy-makers to advance the economic competitiveness of
cities.
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the arts and cultural fabric and/or fostering the creative industries (Landry, 2005) which have the
potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual
property (advertising, architecture, art, crafts, design, designer fashion, television, radio, film and
video, interactive leisure software, music, the performing arts, publishing and software creation).
But, a creative city, regarding its social and sustainable dimension is, in our working
assumption, more of a Collaborative City, that is, a city with kernels of creativity, which are
constituted by: social services, artistic and economic activities. This collaborative city is a place
where people interact and enact creating a symbiosis of activities that promote sustainable
lifestyles, an active citizenship, social inclusion, cultural diversity and new economic models. It is
a city where hierarchies are transversal instead of vertical, i.e, where local authorities (urban
leaders) create opportunities for mass participation, bottom-up creativity and collaborative
services. It is a creative, connected and collaborative city.
A collaborative city is open, as opposed to the structure of other urban government
tipologies, usually closed. What we can observe in very many urban strategies is this shift from
systems enclosed in themselves to open systems and a growing political will to envolve citizens
in the decision making process, to invest more in culture and intelectual capital.
For traditional institutions and organisations this means working differently, in collaboration
with people who are not usual partners. It also means that informal networks between
organisations, based on personal peer- to- peer contacts rather than formal arrangements, will
become increasingly important (Young Foundation, 2008). To do this they need to develop an
adaptive capacity that enables them to change the way they do things.
3. Creative Places
In tandem with the creative city’s debate, there is a discussion about old ex-industrial areas
and their potential for sustainable urban development. Europe has a rich legacy of industrial
archeology, due to its heavily industrialised past followed by the relocation of heavy industries to
other parts of the world. It now has to find new uses and solutions to these empty and abandoned
places.
The passage from a period of industrial prosperity to a post-industrial one disfigured entire
urban areas. It left behind not only abandoned industrial sites, but made many of the inhabitants
jobless and transformed previously booming neighbourhoods in rundown ones. But this reality
also opened unforeseen perspectives, as some of these abandoned places were re-occupied,
converted to new uses and gradually began a new life.
The “available” architectures of these buildings were able to adapt to the most unlikely
projects, and welcomed change. Open-ended in their essence and with no predetermined role
they welcomed new experiences and were open to various re-interpretations. Together, the
mindsets, skills and values embodied in these re-interpretations help make places out of simple
spaces.
These renewed and converted places upgrade the urban environment of entire
neighbourhoods. They encourage people to get involved in civic initiatives and to get together to
back common causes, they provide emotional and intellectual outlets in creation, and in doing so
they help people to form a better relationship with their environment and their lives. They promote
social cohesion and inclusion and become active agents of a participatory democracy.
They form the backbone of what we consider, for the purposes of this research, creative
places. Creative places are a new type of urban spaces where groups of people collaboratively
promote and manage a mix of creative initiatives in the fields of art and culture, economy and
production, social services and urban regeneration.
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Creative places are the hotbed of innovative societies, in the sense they promote the
exchange of existing ideas and visions and their recombination in innovative mixes (Leadbeater,
2006).
In the framework of this debate, the ongoing research intends to explore Creative Places’
economic, cultural and social role within contemporary cities, investigating how they actually
manage to reconcile economic and cultural development with the regeneration of citizenship and
identity. More particularly, to explore the potential of Creative Places in order to propose a
strategic plan and design tools that support urban regeneration processes and allow Creative
Places to integrate their physical, social, cultural and environmental dimensions.
In this respect, our hypothesis of work are the following:
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Creative Places are expressions of emerging urban culture, identity and citizenship
and, at the same time, they are social laboratories where these urban culture, identity
and citizenship are actively and continuously produced and reproduced.
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Creative places enrich city life, promote an active citizenship, improve cultural
diversity, and generate a system of relationships with the neighbourhood and the city.
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Creative Places are experiments for a sustainable city: places where creative
communities can conceive and develop sustainable ways of living and producing, re-
assigning new meanings to physical spaces anticipating some aspects of what could
be a sustainable society.
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The re-use of abandoned spaces helps in sustainable urban regeneration and
reinforces the sense of identity and belonging.
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One of the strategies for sustainable urban regeneration may be based on a
facilitation process that transforms abandoned spaces in creative places.
To clarify what these places are, how they work, and what they produce, two case studies
are presented, UfaFabrik in Berlin and Grote Pyr in The Hague. The data and its interpretation
are the result of extensive desk and field research.
4. Case Studies
UfaFabrik. The UfaFabrik is a one-of-a-kind European experiment in community. What
began in the 70's as a "squat" of the old Berlin Universal Studios led to the transformation of the
buildings and extensive grounds into a local artistic, social service and ecological centre. Many
lower income families living nearby were initially skeptical of the artists’ intentions. But over time,
this redevelopment process used the arts to engage, include and ultimately revitalise the entire
community.
In 1979, West Berlin was one of the priciest cities in Europe and affordable housing was not
readly available. Consequently, some individuals, resorted to squatting – the practice of
occupying and living in abandoned buildings. One building taken over in this way was the former
Universal Studios film studio in Berlin. The studio, famous for many productions throughout the
30’s and 40’s, was abandoned after the Second World War. In 1979 a group of young artists
moved into the dilapidated facility, shortly before the planned demolition of the buildings. This
action was referred to as the "Big Post Robbery" as Universal Studios had sold the buildings to
the local post office.
The grounds of the former UFA Film studios in Tempelhof are „peacefully re-activated“ on
the 9th of June. A large banner was placed at the entrance reading “Welcome” to invite all of
those interested to take part and to interpret the plans of the activists for themselves: a place,
where the wide range of social spheres can be brought together in a co-operative project.
45 people decided to live together in a residential community, shared their income and took
the chance to build their own sustainable village in the metropolis Berlin. New ideas have been
