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The value of identity

Evert Verhagen (1955) is founder and owner of Creative Cities. He is a specialist in transformation projects, mainly in industrial regeneration.He holds a degree in Hydrology, has been working in different capacities for the community of Amsterdam and has been an advisor on many urban planning and regeneration projects throughout the world.

AbstractCreative cities capture the imagination, perhaps even more than creative people or the creative economy do. A creative city is an attractive city, a city where people want to stay. It is the city where you are able to find a job, where you can meet friends, where you can find culture and the things that you didn’t know they exist. It’s a city that you want to identify with. It’s a city where you want to go and where you want to live.

Creative cities are attractive cities. But how does a city become attractive? And for whom must it be attractive: only for the creative class or the bohemian bourgeois and consequently for the creative economy? Or could there be more people to profit?

Attraction and identity go hand in hand. How do cities best develop their identity? How can you organize projects to create identity and make a city more attractive? In this article I will discuss these items. I will discuss the charac-teristics that I see that give a city its identity and make it attractive. These ideas are based on my experiences as a project manager in redevelopment. I am not an academic and I am not a researcher. I have seen many cities, many projects and talked with many people in many places around the globe about this subject.

The century of the cityIn 1900 10% of the worlds population was living in cities. Today that number has risen to 50% and it is estimated that this will be 75% in 2050. Looking at these numbers it is easy to conclude that the present century will be the century of the city. Cities become more and more important on a global scale. Foreign Policy magazine writes often about cities. They say: “What happens in our cities, simply put, matters more than what happens anywhere else. Cities are the world’s experimental laboratories and thus a metaphor for an uncertain age. They are both the cancer and the foundation of our networked world, both virus and antibody. From climate change to poverty and inequality, cities are the problem -- and the solution.”1

Cities are in a constant flux. Changes in the economy have a direct effect on them. Many cities especially in the USA and in Europe underwent an enormous transformation during the 19th century when they needed to find new spaces for industry, services and infrastructure. Today, these processes are going on in other continents of the world. The powerhouses of the near future are almost all in China, some in South America and only few in Europe and the USA. In their September 2012 issue Foreign Policy produces a list of the 75 fastest growing cities in the world: 29 of these cities are in China. But they also give a big warning: these cities are growing fast because they

1 Parag Khanna (2010); Beyond City Limits; Foreign Policy, sept oct 2010

have to accommodate enormous amounts of people that decide to live in cities for a better future. The growth is almost completely accommodated using the functional city planning ideas of Le Corbusier and the other modern architects of the early 20th century. Ideas that elsewhere in the world have caused enormous problems. Foreign Policy sais: “Much of what China is building is based on out-dated Western planning ideas that put the car at the centre of life rather than people. The Chinese may get fat and unhappy before they get rich.”2

What I value most about cities is that they are enormous emancipation machines. Cities offer the opportunity to develop oneself to become somebody. Cities are attractive because they make a promise: they allow people to become middle class; they allow them to generate an income and to create better possibilities for themselves and their children. It’s a big challenge to develop and maintain these emanci-pation machines: not only in China, everywhere in the world.

Creative cities are attractive citiesWhat makes a city important? Is it it’s history, the amount of people, of power, or perhaps it’s culture and it’s heritage. There are many different lists on what can be considered to be the most important cities in the world of today. I liked the list that Foreign Policy published in their September 2010 issue with

2 Peter Calthorpe (2012); Weapons of mass urban destruction, in Foreign Policy sept 2012

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the 100 most important cities in the world. The reason is that they used a set of interesting criteria that were beyond the obvious. You can discuss these criteria into length. Foreign Policy for instance doesn’t only take the number of inhabitants into account, but also business activity, human capital, influence across borders, cultural meaning, gross domestic product, attractiveness as a whole and the role of the city in the flow of goods. Which made one commentator say: “This list is as arbitrary as a game of darts”. I think that is true. But I also think that there is a big risk in only using the simple set of criteria because that will result in simple solutions by policy makers. When they ask themselves how they can raise on the list they only look at the criteria, choose one or two from them and start to work on that. It is also obvious that whatever criteria you use, cities like New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo are almost always in the top ten. It’s a great idea to take a wide variety of criteria into account. An integrated set of criteria will allways result in a more balanced result.

There are aspects that all these lists have in common: there are many Asian cities that grow and become more important, and South America is also catching up. Europe and the USA stay more or less stable. And we see only few African cities emerging: Nairobi, Luanda and Johannesburg. There are some other very interesting remarks that are important to share: for instance the 100 cities that are on FP’s list host almost all of the research and development activities in the world today. It is also interesting to note that being the seat of traditional political power does no longer necessarily result in being a global city. Only some of the important cities on the list are national capitals. And, very interesting, polycentricity works: in countries like Germany, China the USA it is quite normal to have more then one global city. The UK, France and Russia are more mono-centric. In these countries it is much harder for other cities to compete with Paris, London or Moscow.

What other interesting characteristics do these successful cities share? What I see in these lists is that what’s needed to make a city attractive and successful is the balance between tradition, function-ality and creativity. An attractive city has to have roots. It usually has a history in monuments that can be seen and felt. There is a certain respect for tradition. Both things are important for the cities identity and help to make a city unique. Second: attractive cities almost always have a good infrastructure: they are well connected. Airports, train stations, mass transport systems, but also access to high speed internet and things like clean water and a good sewage system play an

important role. The logistics have to be in order. Third and last, most cities on the list have a strong cultural identity and many informal places where people can meet. Places where visitors can get into contact with the local population. These cities have good univer-sities, they host institutes for research and devel-opment.

Second citiesNot every city is an attractive city. Not every city is a big city. Not every city can be in the top 100. Not every city even wants to be on a list. But every city can nevertheless be attractive. So where I am most interested in is what we can do in what I would like to describe as a second city, lets say the cities that are not in the top 100. That is the majority of the cities in the world. What can these places do to become attractive and creative and thus to become more successful? When these cities are shrinking what are the ingredients that they need to survive? What is the future of Casablanca, of Dinslaken, of Tainan, of Detroit, of Perm, Buffalo, Leeds, and all the others? When they are happy as they are what can they do to stay attractive? What can be done in Nantes, Madison, Stockholm or Bologna? Perhaps the real bigness is a passing trend. There is ample evidence that most people prefer a medium sized city where they can find everything they need but also have the possibility to meet others by coincidence. An example: Moscow may have 20 million inhabitants but Russia has 180 million. And the better you make Moscow, the worse it will get because more people will come. The same is true for many other megacities in the world. It could be easier and better to invest in the quality of life of the 10 or more cities that have more than 1 million inhabitants than to strengthen the process by making the mega city even more attractive.3

Many of the shrinking cities that I know are former industrial cities. With the departure of industry, more was lost than just jobs. The factory itself also provided an important social environment. Like the church and the pub, factories functioned as principal meeting points. With the loss of the factory, cities lost places where people met. Structures were lost that were able to promote social coherence. When we talk about the growing divide between black and white, between upper class and lower class, between the creative and the others, an important cause is that the cities that see these problems are missing the logical social structures where these groups could meet. Too often places are developed one

3 P. Oswalt, T. Rieniets and H. Schirmel (2006), Atlas of shrinking cities

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dimensional, for one group only. Cities that have the capacity to bridge the gap, cities that can be inter-esting for everybody are most of the times the more attractive cities. But even in the most successful and highest ranked cities of the world we see this problem of social divide: think about the banlieues in Paris, the South Bronx in New York or the East side in London.

Clean, green and safeAn attractive city is a city where people want to go and even more important where people want to stay: to live, to work, to recreate or simply to be. Lets have a look at the basic qualities that every city should have. These qualities can be summarized as clean, green, and safe. These factors must be considered in conjunction with each other. They are not directly associated to the notion of a creative city or to the creative economy, but are simply of key importance everywhere. Unfortunately, in many places and in many cases these basic factors are completely overlooked. If the basis is not good it is useless to build any further.

A clean environment creates an ambiance of attention and care. It involves management and upkeep, the sense that someone is in charge. Although aesthetic beauty is also significant, cleanliness is more important. A green city has a connection with nature. A tree in the street, a park within walking distance, fresh air, the sound of birds, such things that can represent nature. The presence of several parks is of crucial importance for every city. And of course, safety is important. Safety is especially about the presence of people you trust. Cameras, walls, fences and guards do not create safety, but are introduced when real safety is lacking. We want to run into people that we can trust and have a chat with. But who will also leave us to ourselves when we

prefer that.

I learned to understand the importance of “clean, green and safe” in Amsterdam. I learned this first in the part of Amsterdam that is called Bijlmermeer where I lived and worked in the eighties.Bijlmermeer was the Dutch solution for a new modernist city. I lived there in one of the 13.000 apartments. This part of the city is like a new town, only connected to the rest of Amsterdam by metro.I started to ask myself who on earth was respon-sible for a city like this and in a later phase I was confronted with the ideas of people like Jane Jacobs4 and Oscar Newman5. These two people represent two different solutions to the planning disaster that the modern architects created.

Many years later I had the opportunity to practice what I felt in Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. When I first came there it was a no-go area, a forgotten industrial site, fenced and polluted. Today it is the most valued park of Amsterdam. It is a place for everyone. It is well kept and you feel at home immediately. It is clean, green and safe.

It’s not my idea to make the whole world clean, green and safe though. Wouldn’t something be lacking? Wouldn’t that be incredibly boring? Would there be anything exciting left to do and discover? There are some other aspects that I want to discuss in relation to an attractive, creative city. To find the new and to be confronted with everything else that is possible is certainly one of them.

4 J. Jacobs, (1969) The economy of cities: New York, Random House

5 O. Newman (1973), Defensible space; crime prevention through urban design: New York, Collier Books

Amsterdam, Bijlmermeer: there is a direct relationship between the functionality of “De Stijl” and the city planning of the CIAM (International Congres of Modern Architects).

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OpennessAn attractive city is open. Creativity is fed by inspi-ration, which comes from interaction with others. Of course you can read a book or the newspaper, watch a movie, sit behind the computer, go to a museum or meditate to get inspired. In the process you might get a flash of inspiration. However, direct contact with others, coincidences, discussions, these are all major contributors to direct or indirect inspiration. It is also one of the reasons we like to travel. To find out what else is possible. The English biologist Matt Ridley states in his book ‘The Rational Optimist’6 that the only thing that makes human beings different from every other living thing on this planet is that humans are able to exchange ideas. It could be as easy as that: create places that stimulate that. Places that have the capacity to catalyse this process of exchange will be more attractive than places that are not.

An open city is sustainable and gives energy. It welcomes talented people, whether they are immigrants or not. Diversity is embraced in an open city, not rejected, because diversity encourages creativity.

FlowAn attractive city encourages the exchange of ideas.

6 Matt Ridley (2011) , The Rational Optimist, how prosperity evolves

Such a city stimulates people in their creativity. It’s a big misunderstanding to think that some people are more creative than others. Everyone is creative; the point is that not everyone is able to use that creativity effectively and efficiently. In his famous TED talk Sir Ken Robinson7 discusses how schools and the whole education system as well as circumstances can kill creativity. Creativity, he says, should be considered as important at school as arith-metic and language. Useless to say that it is usually not. Education should help people to discover and use their talents, to let them experience success in using them. The nice thing of creativity is that there is never enough of it. It’s like beauty or love: the more you have it the better it is.

It is interesting to think about other conditions or situations that can stimulate creativity. The American psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi8 performed a worldwide investigation into the conditions that favour the development of creativity. An interesting outcome of his research is the term flow, the state of mind you reach when you accept a larger than normal challenge and make optimum use of all your skills and talents. A person in a state of flow produces his or her best work.

7 Sir Ken Robinson; TED talk.

8 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1998), Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (Masterminds Series)

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Three dimensions The modern architects at the start of the 20th century, assembled in the International Congress of Modern Architects (CIAM) planned their future cities using the four basic elements: working, housing, recreation and transport. Today it is much more feasible to look at the city as if it is an eco-system. I learned the eco-system approach from Beth Benson, one of the directors of the Toronto Waterfront Trust in Canada in the nineties. Thinking about this eco-system approach I started to understand that a successful city is never one-dimensional. That there are many more aspects that have to be taken into account. So I started to build my own model, a model that is based on a more general view on how we can look at the world. I took the ingredients from an article written by Waldemar Herngreen9, a Dutch philosopher.

There are three ways, Herngreen says, that one can use to look at the world and to find ones way in it: the way of the country, the way of the factory and the way of the city. When you look at the world in the way of the country, the world seems full of dangers. People try to control these dangers with rituals: sometimes with a totem pole, but more often with a holy book, with symbols, things like that. In the way of the country people stick together, they form organic groups: they are often suspicious, afraid of fate. The way of the country is the traditional approach; we experience it in religion and spirituality. When you see the world in the way of the factory things are much more linear and everything is about logics. You approach the world based on knowledge. Things you don’t see cannot exist. The world is one-dimensional. In this approach it is very often about the rules to fall back on, it’s about goals, about order. It is the way the management looks at things, the way the government works. The third way is the way of the city. In this approach a problem becomes an opportunity. This approach is about art, about poems, about culture. It is the city that values things that do not directly relate to survival. The city is about creativity. This third view is the creative view.

The interesting thing is that you can find these three dimensions everywhere, but always in different amounts. And I started to see that wherever you go you always need all three: in your live, in your work, in your projects. Without the approach of the factory the trains would not run on time and there would be no water from the tap. The way of the country is

9 W. Herngreen (1999), Het rode platteland, in Stedebouw & Ruimtelijke Ordening, Volume: 80 Issue nr. 3 Page 7

not something you can easily neglect; you need to be connected to something. The way of the country is also about family and roots, about where you come from. On top of that, creativity is needed, scientists, inventors, artists, city planners; they always need to be creative to find something new, to do things different: often with the traditionalists or the less creative scientists as their biggest opponents. Albert Einstein said: “Logic can take you from A to B but creativity can take you everywhere.” And I want to go everywhere.

I could see that these three ways of looking at the world also form an integral part of my own life and career. I was born on a small farm, in a religious family, somewhere in the South of the Netherlands. Life was full of tradition and religion. The industrial approach made its introduction soon enough. During the summer holidays I started to work for Philips, a big electronics company in Eindhoven. Some years later I went to University and lived in Amsterdam, more particular in Bijlmermeer. You should know that Bijlmermeer is the modern architects wet dream. A city like Brasilia or Chandigarh based on the principles of CIAM. The Bijlmermeer planners defined the world in the four functions that I mentioned earlier: living, working, transport and recreation.10 I wrote a book on Bijlmermeer in 1987. After eight years on the University it was no coincidence that my first job for the City of Amsterdam was to bring some creativity into that environment, in other words to create more city into this one-dimensional area. We were not very successful. Today, more than 25 years later, the recon-struction of the Bijlmermeer into an attractive place to live is still not finished. Most of the appartment blocks have been demolished. Around 1990 a new opportunity arose for me. I started to work in another part of Amsterdam, in Westerpark on a derelict and heavily contaminated former factory site, Amsterdam’s former gas factory. This is where my creative journey started. This is where I learned that creativity could bring me every-where.

Consequently, the next fifteen years of my life would be entirely defined by finding the creative approach to make this derelict place into a place where people would like to be. We couldn’t do this without the rituals: we organised fire works and there was spiri-tuality. I had a Buddha in my garden. And next to that there was a lot of logic and linear thinking that we had to do; we understood what the managers and the planners needed. We knew that it’s better not to be too creative with your budget. We knew we had to follow the rules especially when we were

10 E. Verhagen (1987), Van Bijlmermeerpolder tot Amsterdam Zuidoost, Den Haag, Sdu Uitg.

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renovating the buildings or handling the contami-nation. Looking back on that process in retrospect it was the creativity, the strong belief that there was always another possibility to solve the problems, the inspiration that we had to create a space that was open for everybody, that made this project work.

City Transformations: Creative CitiesWhat happens when a city starts to really work on these things: create places that stimulate exchange, foster conditions of flow? Such a city starts to develop its unique identity. And the direct result of having this ‘new’ identity is that talent that’s interested in that identity will be attracted to that city. Which is what you want, because the creative economy thrives on

talent.11

As said, as a city you need to develop an identity to attract talent in order to get the economy going. It is not more than simple logic that reusing your available industrial or other heritage to attract talent is the perfect thing to do. Before I go in to the elements that make a successful project I want to have a closer look at creativity and on and how it can create value.

What strikes me often in the current discussions on creative cities is that again these discussions have they have become one-dimensional. City planners, journalists, academics and politicians, they all seem to have only one answer to all problems: creativity. You should know by now that in my opinion that is too simple and not creative at all.12 The debate on what a creative city is has really only just started. It is completely useless to think that ‘the creative city’ can already be turned into a model that is a guarantee for success. We have only started to look into that phenomenon during the last ten years or so. There is still a lot to learn.

CreatificationLets have a look in more detail. There is nobody available to tell us what a creative city exactly is. And it may as well be impossible to describe it. Even though I use the name: “Creative Cities”, for my company, we know that it is not the city that is creative but the people in it. Medvedev, when he was the Russian president,

11 J. Howkins (2002) The creative economy : how people make money from ideas: London, Penguin

12 C. Landry and Comedia (2000) The creative city : a toolkit for urban innovators

8500 BC 2000 AD

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY

INDUSTRIAL ECONOMY

INFORMATION ECONOMY

CREATIVE ECONOMY

agriculture agriculture agriculture agriculture

manufacturing manufacturing manufacturing

information services information services

creative services

CREATIFICATION

economy size in the Netherlands

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announced that all Russian cities are going to be creative. In the eleventh five-year plan the Chinese government has declared that Chinese cities have to make the transition from industrial to creative. In Brazil almost every city has a plan on how to become creative. What is going on here? All these people seem to know what they are doing without having a clue. There really is no clear recipe for what a creative city is or should be. There are only thoughts about it. Although there are definitions on what creative jobs, creative people and creative economy are, we should ask ourselves: can these artists, actors or even computer nerds really make the difference? In a certain way they can. But couldn’t that be as well the result of all these changes instead of the cause?

Economy is about adding value. It all started with the traditional agricultural economy, with the farmer, the hunter, the miner and the fisherman. With the growth of the industrial economy the industrialisation of the agricultural (and the fishing and the mining) economy was as important as the industrial economy itself.13 This is what happened again and again. With automation the computer was introduced into the economy. Computerisation was introduced every-where.14

In the same way we should look at branding. You can describe branding as the addition of the creative value to a product. That creative part of the product is the added value that is connected to the story, the part of the product you cannot touch. That creative part of the product, the branding part or the story behind it or even the feeling that the product gives the client, that part is becoming more and more important. In some products it is almost 100%. And the total added value of all these creative additions in that way becomes an enormous part of our economies. Because that part of the product is not physical, the work that has to be done to produce that part can be done anywhere. What all this branding does is give this product an identity. It creates identity in the person that wears a certain sweater, pair of shoes or a shirt. It creates identity in the house you live in, the car you drive, the stove you cook your food on, and the furniture you sit on. We all pay enormous amounts of money for identity. That is what I call “the creatification” of the economy. And it is safe to say that creatification is a huge part of our economy today. 15

13 Have a look at John Kenneth Galbraith (1972): The Industrial State.

14 D. Bell (1973) The coming of post-industrial society; a venture in social forecasting: New York, Basic Books

15 R. L. Florida (2004), The rise of the creative class : and how it’s transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life

Richard Florida is the one who made all these things clear to us. But even more important is the relation he makes with space. Even though this creative work - the branding addition to the product - can be done everywhere it is not what we see happening: some cities are successful in attracting these economic activities and others are not. Why?16

Identity attracts talentCreatification does not only work for the individual or for the family. It is important for the city as a whole as well: the story behind the city, the sum of functionality, tradition and creativity. When you add it all up, that is what makes a city. That is the cities identity. And yes, the so-called creative class is a very important indicator of the success of a city. It is an indicator on how attractive the city is for talent.

Talent is the fuel of the creative economy. The creative city is not the city that has the highest amount of creative workers in it. It is not the city that produces the highest amount of creative products or has the highest amount of artists, studios theatres or workshops. It is the city that has the best capacity to attract and connect with talent.

What do we have in mind when we talk about talent? The Economist17 did spend a special issue on it. They define talent by “brainpower: the ability to solve complex problems or invent new solutions”. Talent is very often young, it is the best and the brightest. And all companies in the world with a human resource manager know: you can’t have enough of it. “Obsession with talent is no longer confined to blue chip companies (…), it can be found everywhere in the corporate world.”So it is mostly young people that come to mind, people with a university education or kids that have learned a trick or a trade. Talent is different from the creative class. Talent is different from knowledge workers. Talent is the most valuable resource of the new economy.

Artist or nerdTalented young people have to be well educated. That seems to be a common understanding. But in reality education is under inflation and creativity is much more in demand. Talented is not only the student that has high grades and has big chances is some global company, or wants to start a new business or works together with others in a workshop. Talented are also the singers, the artists, the soccer players and the

16 R. L. Florida (2008), Who’s your city? : how the creative economy is making where to live the most important decision of your life.

17 The Economist, October 13, 2006

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actors that we want to see in the theatres. Talented are the fashion designers, the architects, the writers and the shop owners. The politicians, the managers, and the workers, they all have to be talented enough to be useful. So there really is a difference between investing in the knowledge based economy and a creative economy. There is a difference between a nerd and an artist. To be successful anywhere you need both.

Talent develops better in a flexible and open environment that facilitates meetings and connec-tions with others. Talent loves flow. Talent is not always creative. But most of the time talented people are. It is no longer enough to have knowledge that is based on tradition. It is not enough to be able to calculate, translate and reproduce what others have done before. You need to be creative, alone or together with others. Creativity makes things work. It is the ability to think in new ways, to invent and to innovate. It is the ability to co-create.

Movement of talentWhat can a city do to attract talented people? Lets have a closer look at who they are that are actually moving. In most countries the people that relocate from one city to another are for the largest part young, somewhere between 16 and 40. Those between 16 and 24 move to another city for their

education. It is the group between 24 and 40 that moves to another city to settle. People above 40 do not really move and just like their children between 0 and 16 they stay generally speaking where they are. There is nothing like a free choice for most people in the world to go where they would like to go. But the ones that move are usually young. The most important reason that cities are growing is that people are looking for better opportunities for a better future. They hope that things will be better where they go than where they came from. They are looking for better chances for themselves or for their children.

Companies know this much better than cities. Many companies focus on how to attract young talented people. What we see is that most cities are mainly interested in people above 40. They see their city as a fashion item: people above 40 can spend much more money. People older than 40 are tourists. If you can get them before 40 they may be travelers and willing to stay and get rich and start adding value to your city’s economy. When they are older than 40 they will usually stay for a shorter period as expat or as a tourist. They will spend but not create.

TerminalThis movement of people carries a big danger in it. Many countries suffer with the same problem.

People older than 40 do not move

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Talented people (in all fields) move to other “better” cities. And the ones that stay behind can easily be frustrated. You can see it in their political interest. The talented that live in the creative cities are the optimists, the democrats, and the liberals. The ones that stay behind are more often the pessimists, the conservatives. Their factory is closed, the church is empty and the friends and the kids have gone and there is nothing there to replace them. So it is not only important to make your city into an attractor for talent, it’s as important to take care that everybody can take part in it. And it’s not only important to accelerate the process in places that already have it. It will be as important to think about what you want to happen in cities that stay behind.

I think there are things you can do. I will use the analogy of the terminal to illustrate this. Amsterdam has a beautiful historic inner city. It attracts many visitors every year. Although Amsterdam wants to be a lively city, where it needs more than tourism, it also wants to attract the tourist with a higher income. For that reason they invested in a cruise terminal. The economic value of the cruise terminal is easy to see. Between the moments that the cruise ship sails in and out the medium amount of money spent per day per ship is one million euros. So with more than 100 cruise ships per year that is a lot of money that goes into the local economy. The cab driver, the bar owner, the museum and the museum shop, the shop owner and the pickpocket, they all get their share. And very often they spent their money again and again. Which makes the economic spin off of that cruise terminal very interesting.

My point is that we should start to find in every city and every project that “terminal effect”. To invest in something that creates a strong economic spin off. To create something that is inclusive and makes everybody proud. Economic spin off happens where the visitor stays longer and spends more. Economic spin off can create more jobs for all the talented people that want to stay and in many different aspects create value. So the question is: how can our projects become terminals?

Let me give you some other examples. The easy one is the project I worked on in Amsterdam, the Wester-gasfabriek. This project functions as a terminal and it is easy to see why. Although it is not created as a tourist destination, every year it has lots of visitors, local, national and international. The buildings on the site have their always-changing activities that attract many visitors. The place has a very positive identity that helps real estate owners in the neighbourhood ask higher prices for their houses or square meters. The place creates jobs.

The combination of attraction and terminal is what is important. And you will not be surprised when I say that the best projects that I have seen are the ones that have together with that tradition, functionality and creativity in them.

Cities that have an interesting art collection may invest in a new museum. London build the new Tate gallery but is urgently working on a strategy to connect the success of the new museum with the challenge of solving the problems that they still have in South London. Cities that were important car producers like Munich (BMW) or Stuttgart (Mercedes) find their identity in a car museum. There are many other examples of short term and long term activ-ities where city councils believe that the activity can be attractive and a terminal for economic activity. You can see this on a big scale with projects like the Olympics or the World Cup. The truth never the less is that the “hope” is most of the time much bigger than the “reality”. It’s not an easy process.

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ProjectsAn attractive city doesn’t start by itself. It grows from projects. I am a very strong believer in acupuncture. I like a bottom up approach. In fact you can start every-where. It seems for many cities much more inter-esting to invest in master plans, to build new roads, new airports, or other infrastructure, to allow devel-opers to build more and more offices that a growing amount of them will never be used then to invest in places, spaces and talent. I call that avalanche money. Money that destroys more than it helps to create. The best projects are the ones that create a strong identity and that have the capacity to combine that with the terminal

effect. The best projects are the ones that make the talented group come and stay. These projects create points of attraction that can make the difference, are impressive and amazing. Attractiveness creates identity, pride and jobs. The terminal effect makes it available for everyone. And the solutions can be right in front of you.

Let me take you to some projects that I worked on: two in Amsterdam and one in Casablanca, Morocco. After that I would like to discuss the important elements that make a good project.

Culturepark WestergasfabriekThe Westergasfabriek was a very complex project. A heavily contaminated site, 15.000 square meters of heritage buildings and a city government that had promised the people living in the neighbourhood to transform the area into a park. To make things more complex (or if you want simple) there was no money. So the first thing I could immediately see was that this was not going to be a project that could be solved

in some years. What we needed was a strategy, not a plan. So we started to look at the site’s history: why was this place build, which were the people that worked here, what were their stories and so on. Although in some of the pictures we found that the site looked almost pastoral, in reality it must have been hell. To make gas from coal is a dirty process. It’s hot, there are poisonous smells, and there are pollutants like tar and cyanide. We wanted to listen to stories of people who worked there and although the factory closed in 1960 and we were living in 1990 it was almost impossible to find them.And what to do with the listed buildings? We started to look at the life of the Jewish architect Gosschalk and the company from London - the Imperial Gas

Association - that gave him the assignment. The buildings were exceptionally beautiful. And then there was the contaminated land. Who was respon-sible for that, how were we ever going to find the millions that were needed to remediate the site.

It became immediately clear that there were no fast solutions. This is why I changed priorities. I started to build an organisation, outside of city hall, with it’s own responsibilities. It had to be flexible and creative. Also, we started with a temporary use of the site. To create time and to find out what was possible, but also to create a buzz. A nice side effect was that it created some income.

We did many different things; there were big cultural events, like Zingaro, the horse show from Paris in The Holland Festival or the Helicopter Streich Quartet with Karl Heinz Stockhausen. And there were commercial events like car presentations or confer-ences. There were huge techno parties. Video clips were filmed, movies were made, artists started to use

Culturepark Westergasfabriek in 2012. The park is growing, the public loves it. It hosts several big events every year but there is enough space to relax.

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the buildings as their studio.

So we learned our first and most important lesson: it’s not the site with the fantastic buildings and the wonderful location that creates the value: no, its what’s going on there. It’s the life we could bring to the place that made it into a destination. It were the thousands of people that came to the festivals, the expositions, the bars, the temporary restau-rants, that gave the place its edgy identity. And the big cultural events gave us our friends in important places like politicians and investors. This is how we created a network. But most important of all it was what we learned from all these experiments. What went wrong and what went right is what gave us the necessary information on how to proceed. It helped us to define our vision and it gave us all the infor-mation we needed to make our plans for the future.

Temporary use also gave us time to develop a remedi-ation strategy and a plan for the park. It was decided that the contaminated soil was going to stay where it was and that we were going to build the park on top. The park is essentially a big roof garden. Based on that remediation strategy we could make a scheme for what the park should be. We had discussions with all kinds of different users on the needs in the future park. Then we organised a design competition, using all this information by putting it in a short brief. All the designs for the park had to use the remediation strategy as a basis. Kathryn Gustafson, a landscape architect from the USA who lived in Paris, won. We worked closely together with her and her team. Because of all the experiences we already had it was possible to make a fitting plan. We were able to find an investor who was prepared to regenerate the buildings according to our plans and vision.

We didn’t know that the worst was still to come. The first trenches were made, some of the buildings demolished. And we faced enormous problems. The pollution seemed to be everywhere. It was far worse than what we ever expected. Because of the strong vision and because of the strong coalition there was only one possibility: to keep on going forward. We had to be creative in finding new solutions and work around the problems. It took us almost five years. Finally the park was there and the first buildings after their renovation were opened again for the public.

We created a fantastic project.18 Today the park is the second best visited park in Amsterdam, next to the Vondelpark. In 2004 the project won the Golden Pyramid, the State prize for the best project and in 2010 Westergasfabriek won the Europa Nostra Award. There were awards from the English Landscape Institute and from the German Interna-tional Urban Landscape Institute (IULA) both in 2007. The project was mentioned in many articles and books. But the most important thing is that the public came back to the place, to visit the cultural activities as well as the creative events. The people from the neighbourhood love the park. The whole city adores it. It is a place that is open for everybody. It is a place where people can meet. Or as a journalist of the American Society of Landscape Architects described it in 2004: “Westerpark is fabulous.”19

Noorderpark - Amsterdam NorthIn Amsterdam North where I have been working on a park I was missing these points of reference, the attraction points. We did find a wooden building, a

18 Olaf Koekebakker (2004) Westergasfabriek Culturepark

19 Mark Hinshaw, (2004) Amsterdam opens a new culture park in ASLA, Landscape Architecture, 11 2004

Amsterdam Noorderpark. The structures that can host a programme are missing. Although the park by West 8 is of a high quality the park stays empty. In another part of the park a meeting plavce emerged around a small wooden building.

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“parasite” designed by a Swiss architect but never properly used, somewhere near Rotterdam. We managed to buy that building for one euro. The costs to replace it were relatively high, the costs to keep the building safe and in shape are also on the cities budget. But much more important is the group of people that invented a program for that building. A program that is able to connect neighbourhood people, children, the elite and many others. The former parasite has become a destination.

We had to do large infrastructure works in this project with the diversion of a motorway. Two petrol stations became obsolete and were ready for demolition. I started to think that we could use them as points of attraction. A young architect20 was found and she did some very basic repair work, had them painted and made them suitable for creative reuse. They are now being used for different cultural groups in the area. It’s not cheap; it is also not very expensive. These points of attraction are a necessity for the park. If there are no points of attraction the park will always stay empty, a place that only attracts dog owners and a place that is almost never visited.

The abattoir in CasablancaThe project in Casablanca is an entirely different story than the Westergasfabriek or the Noorderpark. The conditions are different and my role in the process was even more different. The project is still really in its preliminary stage. I was asked in 2006 to go to Casablanca by the mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen. The mayor of Casablanca asked for support on one of their regeneration projects that already had been discussed for many years: the derelict abattoir.

20 Sophie Valla, Amsterdam, http://www.sophievalla.nl/

Casablanca is one of the bigger cities in Africa. It is in many aspects an important metropolis. It is Morocco’s largest city. But many things are missing. In the cultural realm for instance: there are no museums. There is a theatre and there are open-air music festivals, you can find bars and restaurants, but generally speaking for young people with a cultural interest the city has not much to offer. Talented young people are focused on the North, the other side of the Mediterranean. Or even further away, the USA, Canada.

Casablanca is an important harbour: the largest even in Morocco. You can find lots of industrial buildings and much derelict land. There is no metro or other mass transport system. In contrast to other cities in Morocco, Casablanca has no big interest for tourists. Speaking about identity, the name of the city is known throughout the world because of the famous movie Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, a movie that is in the top 5 of most seen movies in the world.

In this city with more than five million inhabitants, half of them younger than eighteen, it’s under-standable that there is an urgent need for a place that has a cultural potential and attraction, a place that can function as a terminal that attracts talent to the city.

The Casablanca abattoir was built in the thirties of the last century. It has always been an important building: for reasons of hygiene and for cultural and traditional reasons. It is a big complex with its 20.000 square meters. You can easily walk down there from the main railway station. In the old days trains often brought in the cattle. So logistically speaking it is

In Casablanca the former abattoir could be turned into a space for art and for people to meet, be it on a temporary basis.

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in the right position although the neighbourhoods around it are mainly industrial.

To go back to the three dimensions from which one can approach life, traditional reasoning plays a very important role in Casablanca decision-making. The more rational, logical thinking also has a place but is less evident. And creativity more or less absent. The original idea was to help Casablanca with the more practical sides of that project. To make plans, investi-gations and calculations. After that a set of drawings can be made with lots of calculations. Then you have to find a contractor. More than anything else you will need a lot of money. And in the end, when the project is opened even more money will be needed to make it work. The simple question for whom and for what this was done was never asked. The project becomes more a prestige project than a practical answer to real needs. It fails.

This is why apart from looking into the history of the place and taking good notice of the buildings and their quality, my idea was to start the whole process with discussing the future programme. A proposal for temporary use was made. We started to invite the artists that were still living in the city or the others that wanted to come back. We sat together with them in two workshops inside the abattoir and things started to role. Six months later there was a big cultural event inside the abattoir. It was in all the newspapers; Casablanca did something new. But things are never that easy. New elections made the Mayors position a bit more difficult and the project came to a halt. My involvement is on a very low level now. Which doesn’t mean that nothing is going on: the group of artists that started temporary use is still there, also inside the abattoir. But there is no budget and decision-making is slow.

Elements in projectsWhat is really important in projects? Where do you start? I have discussed many aspects for cities like the identity and the terminal. But how does this relate to projects. Projects should offer a clean green and safe environment. They also should take tradition, functionality and creativity into account. But how do we start working on them? What is important to make them successful?

Every project should have a start and an end date. The area should be clearly defined. It is also useful to think about what is part of the project and what is not. Every project always has hardware and software. The things you can touch and the things you cannot touch. And there is the method, the way you do it and with whom. I invite you to have a closer look at these elements that a successful project needs.

VisionBy working on the projects that I described and on being involved with many other projects that there is no place to mention here, I came to the under-standing that vision is crucial and should always have a central place in the process of every project. I do not think that with vision you should try to commu-nicate a complex story. No. With vision I mean two or three sentences that describe what you want to do. These lines have to be clear and should be immedi-ately understood by everybody. Vision has to be derived from all the information that you have on the table: the stories, the tradition, the historical aspects, the building quality, the hardware, the location and infrastructure. You have to have a look on everything else that can give you information that you might need to define that vision.

For me vision is the essential part of every project. What do you want to achieve? For whom, why, and how is this connected to all the known aspects of that

Westergasfabriek in 2002. The park was under construction, the remidiation was not yet finished.

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place? It becomes immediately clear that the value of the project is not only in the hardware. It is only partly in the stones, the installations and the location. The real value is in the programme and in the way that this programme is connected to the history of the site, the stories, the rituals, the song lines, and the genius loci. And yes, infrastructure plays an important role. How can you get there, how well is the place connected, are the buildings in good shape? But the really important aspect is not what there is, but what can be done. So what is the programme and even more what are the possibilities? What could be the programme?

Inspired leadership These processes of change need strong leadership. The biggest challenge is to bring all energy together. All aspects of the change process have to be brought together and be managed by one resourceful person, like a powerful laser beam. In most cases this person will be a politician, for example the mayor, like the one of Bilbao or Nantes. In Tirana, Albania, where the mayor who was an artist and visionary played this role. In many successful cities it is easy to point out that kind of leadership. The leader may also be an alderman or an inspired project manager. The essential point is that he or she is able to put the vision in words, lead the team, make the right decisions, delegate the work to the appropriate people and is willing to take chances. Instead of simply investing in ‘old’ infrastructure like roads and building new office space, these leaders are investing in redeveloping industrial heritage, in installing networks of fibre optics and creating places and spaces with an open and inspiring character. They know that the software is at least as important as the hardware.

ProgrammeAs said, it is not about what is, but about what can be done. Music, exhibitions, picnics, anything that will make people want to visit a place and, hopefully, will make them want to come back. To develop programme for a place you need money, but maybe not as much as is often believed. Above all, you need young and talented people who want to participate. You have to listen to their needs and their ideas and give them space to develop them.

What programme can do in any regeneration project is adding a new story to the already existing stories of the location. This new story adds value. The pubic will respond to this. Programme puts your project on the mental map. Or in other words: programme is part of the creatification of a place. It gives identity. Looking at programme we see some trends. I will discuss

some of them.

Museums Creative expressions of others can induce a better performance. Of late, art has shown to be a valuable factor in bringing a city into the spotlight, with special exhibitions or unusual works of art in public space. One of the most famous examples is of course the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The city put in a lot more effort than merely building the museum. But in the end it has proven to be more cost-effective to build and maintain this fantastic icon than to start a media campaign. And of course the added bonus is the museum itself.

In London a disused power station was converted into the Tate Modern. Paris started years ago with the Centre Pompidou and hasn’t stopped since. In Germany cities such as Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich all boast magnificent new museums. In Amsterdam all mayor museums have been closed for years because they had to be renovated. In the Ruhr area large industrial buildings are now being reused for museum purposes. Remarkably, cities with a strong car industry have also started to build their own museums. The Mercedes museum of Ben van Berkel in Stuttgart is a brilliant example. The list of examples is endless. But museums carry a big risk in them as do new Opera buildings or music venues: when there is no programme available the buildings start to be used for conferences. And the next step is an empty building.

ArtLarge works of art in public space contribute strongly to the identity of a location. In the planning stage most of these projects are considered ludicrous. During the building it is often thought to be a waste of money. But by the time the museum is being officially opened or the piece of art is being revealed, often a sense of growing pride emerges. The following year all the companies in the area have a photograph of the work in their annual report. And after a few more years all agree that the work of art is a blessing: it brings new people and it brings new energy. Which goes to show that public participation is not always the best basis for a decision.

EventsLarge events are the best publicity for a creative city. Many cities use events to create an image. They choose to organize a large event and attract international attention: the Olympic Games, the World Expo, the Capital of Culture, football champi-onships or major international cycle races. A major recurring event helps to establish the name of a city. But events are most of the time a big problem and

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can easily turn out to be a disaster. What counts is what happens after the event, how these spaces can be used when everybody is gone. Events can be very successful when they can help you to achieve something that you already wanted.

SportEverything that has to do with sport can be important for a city: as well in its branding or as a programme for regeneration. Sport can be a perfect tool to break down social barriers. I am currently working on a new project in Amsterdam South where we want to create a large area around the Amsterdam Olympic Stadium (from 1928 when Amsterdam had the Olympics) that will have the best facilities for top sports but at the same time will also be attractive for everyone to visit.

EntrepreneurshipThe new economy is for a large part an economy of new and small companies and businesses. There is ample reason to create places where small companies can start. When the authorities ask them selves how they can stimulate new economy in their environment, one of the answers is to create a friendly climate for start-ups, so more people will start their own company. This can be achieved by organizing breeding places or creative hubs, where space is leased out against reasonable prices to starting entrepreneurs, often in disused factory buildings. Another option is to stand surety for loans, since banks may have their doubts about the feasi-bility of start-up business plans. To stimulate young people to take their future in their own hands is always a good idea. It is really a disaster that many cities invest much more in their infrastructure or their branding than in their most important economic asset: their young and talented people.

Infrastructure

Public SpaceCreativity is in essence personal and individual and nobody else’s business. Nevertheless, the city authorities do have important responsibilities. For a start, they can provide the earlier mentioned basic environment that is clean, green, and safe. Which is very often not that easy at all. Public space and even more important the semi-public space plays another essential role: the public space is the marketplace of the creative economy. It is here where creatives meet and interchange ideas. It is here where they get inspi-ration.

There is a reason why all these attractive and creative cities are full of places where you can see and be seen. It’s not the building, it’s not the street or the

square: it’s where the building meets the street where things happen. In a project that I did with a group of students from SCI Arc in Los Angeles one of them made a map of places where she dared to go inside after eight o’clock in the evening. That map was empty. It was clear that we were not talking about a nice neighbourhood. And I started to think: isn’t it what we are all looking for when we are in a city that’s not our own: places where we dare to go inside alone. The more there are, the more choice you have, the better it is. And it is the plinth that is telling just that.

Parks and squaresArchitecture is an important tool in creating identity. More and more cities are investing in the quality of their public space. Places such as municipal parks, squares, urban woods, and city beaches are gener-ating a strong and widespread interest, for they attract people to different and other areas of the city. The victory started again in Paris, where in a short time span three parks were laid out on disused indus-trial sites: Parc the la Vilette, Parc Bercy and the Parc Andrée Citroën. Barcelona also developed a strategy with the focus on a first-class arrangement of public space. Currently this strategy is widely adopted, for example on a smaller scale in Antwerp, where a new park is being constructed on an abandoned railway yard. The park Noord is intended as a strategic tool to fight the problems in this underprivileged area. New York created the High Line. Vancouver has used this strategy, Boston has done the same, and there is not a city in the USA that is not thinking about it. Tel Aviv made a new park; Emscherpark in Germany is a collection of new city parks. And I am currently working in Moscow on a new park.

WaterWater may be the best example of a successful transformation from industrial to recreational use. In urban environments water is an important element that generates meetings. People like to sit near the waterside. It refreshes the senses. That has been a fact throughout human history.

The waterways in a city such as Amsterdam were constructed as transportation routes for trade. When these routes were no longer needed in the 19th century, many canals were filled in. Transport and parking space were considered more important then living quality. Fortunately, those times are over and water has been able to put itself on the recreational and economical map. The combination of water and warehouses, both reused and with modern functions, makes the old town centre of Amsterdam such an attractive place. The redevelopment of waterfronts as an important economic asset for cities came much

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earlier then the reuse of industrial sites that is so popular today. Out of ecological reasons or just for nostalgia, many cities bring back formerly hidden waterways. Almost always these places become the most popular spots in town. Madrid covered more than 20 kilometres of motorways to make its river-front accessible. Paris is thinking to do the same. New York started some years ago.

BuildingsAlthough the programme is important we also have to invest in structures that are able to host that programme.

HeritageAn important factor in becoming an attractive city is to have places and spaces with an informal character but of high quality, where talent can meet and become visible. The creative redevelopment of (industrial) heritage – buildings, sites – can be used to create places just like that. Cities have to aim to create places with personality, spaces with a story. The redevelopment of heritage is in this way a direct investment in the new, creative economy. It is sustainable and it is a response to the need for a city identity and the search for talent.

Housing The creative economy just like any other economy needs affordable spaces to live and work. In the last years new residential areas are often given a strong identity. In considering this identity, it is recom-mendable to take into account that people might want to work from home for a couple of days a week. Another important aspect is the availability of enough parking spaces or good public transport. Not only for the people that live in the area but also for the ones that come to visit during the day. Small businesses attract a lot of small traffic.

ConclusionI have discussed the importance of identity: for cities, but also for the places and spaces, for the projects in those cities. With identity, cities will be able to attract the talented people that are the most sought after resource. Or, in other words: identity attracts the fuel for the creative economy.

City identity is connected to the ability to reinvent yourself as a city time and time again. The source of this modernisation and change can be found in the residents themselves. The buildings, places and spaces merely provide the background and must be able to facilitate that change. To invest in the city is to invest in change, in a spatial infrastructure that may accommodate several functions. In a new economy it is important to reassess matters and to learn how to appreciate them differently. It’s about places that tell a story. It’s about places that stimulate exchange and flow.

To attract talent you have to become an attractive city. You have to have certain characteristics that encourage people in the development of their creativity. Urban regeneration projects play an important role in this process of becoming an attractive city. Instead of making big master plans it is much more important to start. By reusing your heritage in a creative way, you can create terminals with a clear identity that generate not only economic spin off, but most of all creative spin off.

It’s not the biggest city that is the most attractive. It’s not the big city that has nothing more to offer than highways and concrete. It will be the medium sized city that is able to create the best conditions for exchange and flow. Or it could be that attractive neighbourhood inside that mega city that makes the difference. You can start today.

Creating places where people can meet. The plinth is where the visitor meets the local.

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