CREATIVE CITY NEWSLETTER: JULY 2001

ISSUE 2: DEFINING THE NEW ECONOMY

Creative City Top Five Issue Areas
Topical Articles and Studies
COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT: Rochester, NY
Meeting Notes from the First Creative City Meeting


CREATIVE CITY TOP FIVE ISSUE AREAS

4. THE CREATIVE CITY CONCEPT

Creative City is a valuable two-year technical assistance and networking program that builds upon Partners' work with amenity-based economics. Research by MIT's Lester Thurow states that creativity is the fuel of the information age. It is time to look at the relationship of amenities, creativity, technology, and e-commerce to the globally competitive region and its ability of attracting the best and the brightest.
Eighteen jurisdictions seeking to maximize their assets to ensure a competitive position in the global economy will be part of this program and will benefit from an array of both technical assistance services as well as ample networking opportunities. The culmination of the two years will be a policy report documenting the experience and providing a model for other communities.

A. CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
The many complex issues facing cities, the devolution of government and the growth of metropolitan regions have brought new players to the table. Government has agencies that support the arts and encourage usiness, while private companies compete with the postal service. See new civics.

B. ECONOMIC ACTIVITY
Amenity resources are good business. More people attend cultural events than all sporting events combined!

C. EQUITY FOR ALL CITIZENS
Communities are people - families and single people, children at risk and teenage parents, young people with nowhere to go and elderly people with nowhere to turn, people with jobs and people without jobs, people with decent places to live and people with nowhere to live. These add up to problems for many communities and sometimes people's needs, dreams and fears add to the problems their communities face. But when people can overcome their fears, focus their dreams, and meet their own needs, they can take charge of their own communities and their own futures. Amenity strategies are one of the pieces of this very complex puzzle.

For example:

• Low-income neighborhood conservation is creating options for reinvestment and livability.
• Education programs are empowering community schools.
• The concept of livability is embracing issues of public health.
• Local arts organizations are helping children and families.
• Local welfare reform strategies are breaking the cycle of dependency.
• Museums, libraries, cultural centers, zoos, parks and other local institutions are creating new programs to serve families and communities.
• Local groups are building bridges of cooperation - not walls of obstruction - in multicultural cities.
• Communities are being redesigned so that people can grow old in place.
• Communities are taking back their streets so that residents can feel safer.

D. QUALITY OF LIFE
The workers required for a knowledge-based economy look to settle and remain in communities that will continue to stimulate their creative interests.

A crucial asset of a healthy community is a vibrant downtown. Many American cities suffer from downtowns that are empty at night and on the weekends - such cities are less likely to attract those demanding workers who sustain the New Economy. Arts activities and special events during these times can help keep and bring people downtown after work. Communities should explore local codes and ordinances that govern eating and drinking in public places. Sidewalk cafes, street vendors, performers, and mixed use of public spaces and buildings are but a few of the ways creative planning can shape public spaces into integral parts of urban life.

Governments can often assist communities in creating thriving urban centers and livable, desirable environments. Governments collectively are the largest builders in the nation. Design quality of libraries, post offices, government buildings and public housing is a key concern. Partners advocates mixed uses for public facilities. Partners offers tools and ideas that can be used by local governments to improve the quality of design and provide cost-effective programs and products in their communities.

Creative Codes and Ordinances: We are seeing the call to incorporate within community design and planning specific elements that encourage community interaction - front porches, town squares, and zero lot lines. But far too often, it is the codes and ordinances - from liability insurance to health and safety codes - that prohibit the full use of neo-traditional planning concepts. Partners proposes, audits, and examines those codes and ordinances that govern the use of public and quasi-public spaces in our communities.

City Information Systems/ Interpreting the City: Tourists arriving in a strange city in America often experience a strong sense of disorientation and confusion. Little information is readily available on what attractions the city possesses, and how to get to those attractions. In many cities in Europe, on the other hand, tourism centers and city information systems make the city less intimidating to the traveler. Grenoble, France, for example, has a "multipurpose center" containing a tourist office, money exchange center, post office, parking lot, bus and subway information center, and municipal museum. The city is thus instantly accessible and understandable to the tourists, which surely must make their stay in Grenoble more pleasant and less stressful.

Partners can show how cities can be made easier to interpret, through tourist centers which provide central access to information, and through city information systems such as unifying graphics, map directories, signage, and public transportation. American cities need not be intimidating to the traveler.

Artist live/work/sell space: Artist housing that incorporates working studio space and sometimes galleries for sales are a viable development option, particularly in older downtown areas. Partners shows that instituting incentives for this use is not only helpful to the arts community but to the community at large because tourism is generated, tax bases improve, and deteriorated neighborhoods become healthy.

Public Space Authorities: Public space is not maximized unless it is well maintained, secure, aesthetically pleasing and programmed. Partners offers ideas for accomplishing this important aspect of public space.

Children's Places Downtown: Until recently, little urban planning has been undertaken specifically with children in mind. A result of this may be that the number of children and families with children continues to decline in larger cities, even as the number of singles and childless couples is increasing. Like adults, children also need cities that feel livable to them. Even more than adults, children require safe and efficient public transportation, safe bike routes, properly scaled street furniture, comprehensible signs and colorful graphics, attractive gathering spaces and adequate recreational facilities.

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