The Art of City Making

About this book

Written by the internationally-renowned expert on city futures and author of "The Creative City", this book explains how we can understand and reassess urban potential, harnessing a city's resources and cultural creativity to promote its development. It presents guidelines, policy approaches and clear recommendations, with international case studies City making is an art, not a formula. Conventionally, city making is considered primarily in terms of architecture, engineering and land use planning.

This book offers new insights by integrating the arts of understanding human desires, bending the dynamics of economics to the city's needs, trading power for creative influence, triggering inspiration, moving forward without erasing memory, celebration, and much more. Most importantly, the author recognizes city making as adding value and values simultaneously in everything undertaken. Together, the mindsets, skills and values embodied in these arts help make places out of simple spaces.

Following the widespread success of "The Creative City", this new book explains how we can understand and reassess urban potential, helping cities to strengthen their identity and adapt to the changing economic dynamics, global terms of trade and mass migration. Aided by international case studies, the author examines deeper fault-lines, paradoxes and strategic dilemmas that make creating the 'good city' so difficult and crystallizes how urban psychology can be used in decision making.

Contents

Riding the Rapids of Urban Change; Urban Logistics: The City as a Guzzling Beast; The Sensory Landscape of Cities; The Geography of Misery and Desire; Urban Psychology; Creativity and Risk; Rethinking Our City; City Making in Practice; Index.

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Biography

Charles Landry is founding director of COMEDIA, a cultural planning consultancy. Author of the highly influential The Creative City (Earthscan 2000), he is an international authority on city futures and the use of culture in city revitalization, cultural planning and heritage issues, and strategic policy development.