[-photo essay-]

complied and written by Nancy Waldman

You too can have a huge collection of tiny art cards … but first, you have to make your own

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[-essay-]

How do our city spaces affect us? Here’s one article that reflects on public space and creativity

by Neil Takemoto

The Renaissance in Florence. Silicon Valley. Japan post WWII. New York City at the turn of the century. Paris and Impressionism. Some rather extreme bursts of creativity over about 40 years at a time. Coincidence? Historian Peter Hall doesn’t think so, and outlines the common elements in his stellar book, Cities In Civilization.

“24 hrs” © 05 - 07 simon wong/eyecatcher

• 1. Disorder. As Chris Gibbons, who pioneered economic gardening puts it, economic growth happens at the edge of chaos.
• 2. Clustering. Popularized by business guru Michael Porter, clustering is the focus of a certain industry in one locale, such as the movie industry in Hollywood, or ad agencies in Manhattan.
• 3. Fanatical government leadership. Each of the aforementioned examples of creativity could not happen without major financial backing and promotion by a major government body. Author Jim Kunstler has similar conclusions in his book, City In Mind.

• 4. A local creative class network. One person does not make a movement. It takes a village, a guild, a group of people with a common vision to build a community of commerce.
• 5. $$$. There’s really no getting around this. Think OPM. A community just has to be more creative in obtaining it - lots of it.

“china bikes” © 05 - 07 tom clevenger/leclev

© 2005 - 2007 Neil Takemoto; all rights reserved

Neil Takemoto is the founding director of CoolTown Studios. His work for over the last ten years has been solely focused on the implementation of next-generation towns for the most creative and entrepreneurial of markets. With Andres Duany, Neil co-founded the National Town Builders Association in 1997, the only business trade group of Smart Growth/New Urbanism real estate developers. He also assisted in the founding of The Town Builders Collaborative in 2000 as an institutional financial group coordinated with the top practitioners and thought leaders in the country committed to investing $200-$800 million per CoolTown. The original article is found at: www.cooltownstudios.com/mt/archives/000483.html

published by the permission of the author in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: space and spaces