Charles Landry - a face cultural das cidades criativas -

Charles Landry representa, digamos, a faceta cultural das cidades criativas concebidas por Richard Florida. Que desenvolveu um conceito atraente, sedutor que colocou as pessoas no centro do debate mobilizando algum pensamento acerca do melhor modo de racionalizar políticas públicas para as cidades. Lisboa, por uma pluviosidade tremenda e alguns entupimentos estruturais que nos momentos críticos revelam amargamente as nossas (ainda) vulnerabilidades, bem precisou da imaginação e criatividade de Landry para - ao balde ou à bomba, extrair a água que se infiltrou onde não devia, fazendo até boiar os carros quando é suposto que eles rolem no solo, e com as quatros rodas. Enfim, Lisboa, desde o veto estranho do Tribunal de Contas - parece ter-se imunizado às mais agrestes violências da Mãe-natureza que por Lisboa ser a capital ainda a sacrifica mais. E foi nesses tanques d´água que caíam dos céus - que me lembrei da imensa falta que fizeram os conceitos criativos sobre as cidades de Landry, mas ele não apareceu...

Pergunto-me se Landry saberá nadar?!

"Charles Landry helps cities transform their thinking so that they look at their potential imaginatively and can plan and act with originality. He assesses the interplay and the impacts of deeper global trends, and attempts to ground these in practical initiatives. He inspires, stimulates, challenges and facilitates tranformation.

Charles is an authority on creativity and its uses and how city futures are shaped by paying attention to the culture of a place. His recent book The Art of City Making (September 2006) now in its third edition and published by Earthscan has been highly acclaimed. It focuses on how cities can be more "creative for the world" so that the energies of individuals and companies can be brought into alignment with their global responsibilities. This builds on his original ideas in The Creative City: A Toolkit for urban innovators, which has now been reprinted 10 times. Together with co-author Phil Wood he has now also published The Intercultural City (2007).

On this web site, you can access his library of images, image collections, and presentations, as well as articles, books and reports, all available for download. Charles has created these materials over many years and they represent a valuable resource.

The website will grow over the next period with more free downloads of reports, articles and pamphlets. The picture collections will expand to give a visual impression of the issues which Charles and Comedia are concerned with. There will be more Powerpoint presentations each with over 100 pictures. They provide an overview of the concepts of The Creative City and The Art of City-making."