CREATIVE CITY NEWSLETTER: JANUARY 2003

ISSUE 7: TRANSITIONS

ISSUE IN FOCUS: Publication Guide
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Blue Banana
CREATIVE CORNER: Seeking Support for Green Roofs
Creative Cities in the News
Articles of Interest
Upcoming Events


ISSUE IN FOCUS: CREATIVE CITY PUBLICATION GUIDE

The Creative City Publication Guide – A Project of Partners for Livable Communities

Throughout our years of work in communities across the country and internationally, Partners for Livable Communities has chosen to focus on the importance of an amenities based approach to improving the quality of life. In 1980, Partners made a landmark contribution to the field of amenities-based planning with an urban economic development initiative entitled "Economics of Amenity." The program was led by a number of distinguished economists who connected the decline of the manufacturing economy, and the subsequent rise of the service sector, with an increased significance in the perceived quality of life of a community. Working with a thirty-seven-city consortium over five years, Partners explored the elements that made up quality of life and assessed how these elements could serve as an investment strategy for training and creating jobs. The result changed the way businesses made location decisions, and gave a boost to communities to invest in an amenity infrastructure that included libraries, parks, streetscapes, and museums.

The 2000’s present a new set of challenges to cities struggling with the tough planning decisions that come with a revolution in the nation’s economy. Though amenities still represent the crucial social and economic elements of a livable community, the New Economy raises the stakes for creative city planning. A livable city not only provides an exciting and inviting home for mobile, choosy tech firms and professionals, but also promotes social equity through access to culture and education, safety through design, and pride through effective community development and amenity marketing. In our first year of our new Creative City program, Partners has found that, what once were amenities are now necessities.

Background on the Creative City Project

The Creative City project represents Partners’ newest effort to reexamine, using sixteen participating "creative cities," what it explored 20 years ago – the relationship of quality of life and amenities to community sustainability and smart development, and the use of creative solutions to diversify single-industry economies. We place a dual emphasis on identifying and nurturing those practices that best suit the challenges and opportunities of the New Economy along with assuring equitable access to the benefits of a successful creative city. It is important to explore those creative ideas that embrace and strengthen high-tech jobs, e-commerce, and link local economies to the globally competitive region; cities with access to the best and the brightest can put those resources to work locally, serving the needs of those that have not had the dull bootstrap opportunities of advancing into the mainstream. Partners seeks solutions that will improve the marketability of cities, helping cities become more livable by seizing their competitive cultural advantages. With cities increasingly vying for access to the mobile workforce of the new economy, talent attracted through livability will allow development across seemingly disparate sectors of the economy, and will allow cooperation and common success to reach all citizens – cementing a community of mutually dedicated talent and promoting an equitable social infrastructure within that community.

Establishing a policy agenda that effectively delivers on so many economic and cultural expectations has been a tall order, but quite necessary. As part of Partners for Livable Communities Creative City initiative, we committed ourselves to developing this agenda, undertaking the research and documentation of its components, and producing a high quality series of publications that communicate how our participating cities found and applied creative solutions to planning in the New Economy.

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