‘Civic Cre­ativ­ity’ brings together two words that do not seem to con­nect. ‘Civic’ sounds worthy, staid and some­what unin­spir­ing. ‘Cre­at­ive’ by con­trast has a vibrant, ener­getic ring to it. In com­bin­a­tion the phrase exudes potency and poten­tial. Dis­solv­ing and resolv­ing the ambi­gu­ity and ten­sion between these two oppos­ites lies at the heart of ‘civic cre­ativ­ity’, which is ima­gin­at­ive prob­lem solv­ing or cre­at­ing oppor­tun­it­ies with the aim to enhance the pub­lic good.

Between the old and the new: George Town, Pen­ang, Malay­sia | Photo by Charles Landry

‘Civic Cre­ativ­ity’ involves using the diverse ener­gies, skills and val­ues of the pub­lic, private and com­munity sec­tors and get­ting them to work together to achieve mutu­ally sat­is­fact­ory res­ults. This is a dif­fi­cult task as the aims of one often frus­trate and hinder those of the other given their poten­tially oppos­ing object­ives. The one might want to max­im­ize their per­sonal returns, the other cre­ate a pub­lic realm and the third main­tain a sense of loc­al­ity and authen­ti­city that comes from keep­ing the cul­ture of a place that accrues over the pas­sage of time. The private sec­tor or devel­op­ment com­munity in par­tic­u­lar are con­cerned only with their pro­ject in isol­a­tion and rarely con­sider how it fits into the wider urban land­scape. Pro­jects tend to get big­ger, higher and denser as this increases profits. No one seems to be respons­ible for the spaces left behind. Usu­ally they are filled with a clut­ter of roads once the traffic engin­eers have done their job. And this pro­fes­sion is not renowned for its aes­thetic appre­ci­ation and how cit­ies look and feel. The res­ult so often are places that have lost their tex­ture, depth and diversity.

Con­sider the great places you love and you will see a fine and grat­i­fy­ing blend of the com­mer­cial and non-commercial, the loc­ally authen­tic and glob­ally ori­ented or inspir­a­tional and the ordin­ary. This is what ‘civic cre­ativ­ity’ aims to achieve. Let us con­sider some examples: Hong Kong, Pen­ang and Bandung.

This “asphalt gully” is ideal ter­rit­ory for civic cre­ativ­ity: North Wan­chai, Hong Kong | Photo by Charles Landry

What a con­trast there is between North Wan­chai and Cent­ral in Hong Kong. The tra­di­tional parts of Wan­chai in part feel vital and vibrant. Yet as you snake past the new Exhib­i­tion and Con­fer­ence Centre from Gloucester Road and towards Con­naught Road and along the West­ern Har­bour Cross­ing towards Cent­ral you feel you are in an asphalt gully where the sky­scrapers are only reach­able by car and you as a ped­es­trian are guided into sky­walks. Try walk­ing it. It is extremely dif­fi­cult if not dan­ger­ous. This is ideal ter­rit­ory for civic cre­ativ­ity. A joint taskforce not too beholden by sec­tional interests and nar­row views could with ima­gin­a­tion have human­ized this area. Yet it would have had to have some simple devel­op­ment prin­ciples like ‘people first’. In the longer run this would add value eco­nom­ic­ally and yet reflect val­ues. The harsh sur­round­ings would then have been softened and so the envir­on­ment would become more desir­able, walk­able and foster meet­ing and mix­ing and this in turn builds social capital.

Meld­ing the old with the new, the mod­ern and the shabby, to main­tain a unique urban char­ac­ter: Wan­chai, Hong Kong | Photo by Charles Landry

This is why there is a vig­or­ous debate to main­tain the feel­ing of Cent­ral – a mix of the highly mod­ern and slightly shabby, keep­ing street traders, small local shops, which have encour­aged the night time eco­nomy around Hol­ly­wood Road. This is a place which feels gen­er­ous and where you vis­ibly see that not every ounce of profit has been dragged out it. The cre­ativ­ity here is to sens­it­ively build and meld the old with the new and not give in to the entice­ments of large scale development.

The sho­p­h­ouses of George Town provide the global image of the city, and it is in the interests of main­stream developers to sup­port George Town’s his­toric revital­iz­a­tion. Pen­ang, Malay­sia | Photo by Charles Landry

Think of Pen­ang and its cap­ital George Town. It has a huge col­lec­tion of over 1000 old pre-war sho­p­h­ouses, and colo­nial build­ings scattered through­out the city and its des­ig­na­tion as a UNESCO World’s Her­it­age Site in 2008 might save them. Many are being left in a sorry state of dis­repair, but some have been reju­ven­ated. The India quarter has become a bright col­oured and lur­idly beau­ti­ful place. For many years large out of scale devel­op­ments were eat­ing into the his­toric core of which the Komtar pro­ject centred around Pranjin Mall is the most extreme. Taken in isol­a­tion it made money for the developers, but nearly des­troyed the pos­sib­il­ity that George Town could rein­vent itself for this era. Pre­cisely the people Pen­ang needs to rein­vent its eco­nomy are those who want to live and work in shophouses.

Of course you could knock them down and make money by build­ing more of the anonym­ous high rise struc­tures that increas­ingly encircle the his­toric core. The res­ult though would be an uncel­eb­rated city ‘any­place any­where’. The cre­at­ive dimen­sion is to under­stand that by redu­cing the pos­sible profits on each indi­vidual build­ing in George Town’s core the total value of George Town will increase dra­mat­ic­ally. The soul­less build­ings gird­ling the town will rise in value as they res­on­ate in the reflec­ted glory of George Town’s her­it­age. In fact it is in the interests of main­stream developers to sup­port George Town’s his­toric revital­iz­a­tion. The ques­tion is whether Penang’s polit­ical lead­er­ship has enough savvy and its offi­cials enough com­pet­ence to fol­low the lead of the gov­ern­ment agency Khaza­nah. It has launched an ambi­tious plan to cre­ate one of Asia’s most walk­able, human scale, green inspired places centred around learn­ing, live/work accom­mod­a­tion and the revival of older craft industries.

Jalan Cihampelas has become a tour­ist attrac­tion thanks to a dis­tinct­ive, play­ful build­ing style and an abund­ance of cre­at­ive busi­nesses: Bandung, Indone­sia | Photo by Charles Landry

Think of Bandung and we remem­ber the 1955 Bandung Con­fer­ence of non-aligned nations or its art deco build­ings. Today Bandung is an Indone­sian learn­ing and fash­ion hub with innu­mer­able out­let stores. Inter­est­ing design and fash­ion com­pan­ies are sprout­ing every­where and there is one of the most unusual streets in the world Jalan Cihampelas.  This crowded bust­ling fash­ion street attracts cus­tom­ers in their own spe­cial cre­at­ive way: Larger-than-life mod­els of super her­oes from movies from Tar­zan to Bat­man, Super­man, Alad­din and Rambo. The energy here came from the com­pet­it­ive urges of the private sec­tor, but the ‘civic cre­ativ­ity’ ele­ment is that the city has encour­aged this devel­op­ment. It is part of its sig­na­ture and unsur­pris­ingly it Bandung major vis­itor destination.

At times ‘civic cre­ativ­ity’ means let­ting things flow with a small nudge here and there as in Bandung. At oth­ers it needs a clever under­stand­ing of how you cre­ate incent­ives and a strong vis­ion and plan­ning policy frame­work to lure investors to act in the longer term as in George Town. Hong Kong reminds us of how cru­cial it is to develop with people in mind oth­er­wise this great city could des­troy itself.