I came across this link in LinkedIn, a recording of NUS Cities Lecture Series dated 27 March 2024 with Charles Landry, “Where next with the Art of City Making?”. As commonly occurs when I have tight deadlines, of course this kind of distraction successfully diverted my focus as I watched the session right away.

To put in context; Charles came to Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, in 2008 as a keynote speaker in the 2nd Arte-Polis, an international conference on creative communities and the making of place, held biannually by the Architecture Department of Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB). It’s the same year when (later named) Bandung Creative City Forum (BCCF) held the first Helarfest, a creative communities festival. It was when BCCF launched a community-initiated city branding “.bdg” and slogan, “an emerging creative city”. Helarfest became the first milestone of many that confirmed the significant roles of creative individuals and communities in Bandung as powerful city changers and city shapers. I met Charles again in 2014 at the Bellagio Center, Lake Como, Italy. Together, within a group of city makers & thinkers, we had days-long working sessions on the resilience and livability of complex urban systems. In 2016, we met again in Östersund, Sweden, where Charles delivered a keynote speech during the Annual Meeting of UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN). That was the 1st time for Bandung to attend the Meeting, after joining UCCN as a City of Design in December 2015. Afterwards, there were various occasions: a dialogue on Placemaking in Helarfest 2020, the Creative Bureaucracy conference, and so on.

Every interaction with Charles has always been intriguing; confirming floating thoughts and sparking new ones. Therefore I took no delay in watching this video. Here are a few things that caught my attention.      

1. Culture matters: it’s like the air we breathe, you forget that it’s there. [It’s very much embedded in the way we conduct our lives that we take it for granted. Culture, with all its assimilation and evolution, should be recognized as a determining factor of how we organize society.]
2. Creative matters: the first thing on “creativity” is about curiosity. However, no city has a strategy to generate curiosity. [True. A “creative city” should not only brag about its citizens’ achievements in creative fields, but — if it believes that creativity actually drives urban development and innovation — it should be committed to creating an environment that supports such playful yet productive “curiosity”.]
3. Are we giving young people the opportunity to shape the city? [How much space do we allow them to participate in decision making? How far do we let them influence a cityscape?]
4. Some cities are OK, some are not. How come? Leaderships! [It does require top-down commitments to establish substantial Changes in a city, to set the priorities.]
5. Revaluing value beyond GDP. [This notion has been discussed in many platforms, particularly regarding indexes of (creative) cities, and should always be exercised and improved. Indonesia Creative Cities Network (ICCN) has established the “10 Principles of Indonesia Creative Cities” in 2015 and has piloted a Creative City Index dashboard in 2016, the West Java Creative Economy and Innovation Committee (KREASI) has been publishing a Creative City Index annual report for all 27 cities/regencies in West Java Province since 2020; encouraging local governments to improve the 10 determining variables of the index.]

The last part of the lecture offers a list of points, that “Great livable creative resilient culturally vibrant places are:” [We can consider these as a checklist, how do our cities perceive these points? Do we have concrete examples?]

• Places of anchorage & distinctiveness
• Places of blending the old & the new
• Places of nourishment & nurture
• Places of affordability & access
• Places of diversity & inclusiveness
• Places of communication & connection
• Places of critical thinking & reflection
• Places of aspiration & inspiration
• Places of serious fun & celebration
• Places of bending the market to big picture purposes

The lecture took about 48 minutes, followed by a Q&A session for about an hour. Interesting issues were brought up. Including the one about “brand” for cities: does it encourage superficial labelling, or does it really reflect the personalities of a city? Go on and check it out yourself — you might find different angles, depending on your interests. Thanks, Charles, and thanks to NUS College of Design & Engineering for making the lecture available for public!