‘We never look at cities through emotion and lived experience, and that’s important. When you go into the city is it saying yes or is it saying no? Ashphalt for example says no….’ so says international expert in urban innovation, Charles Landry, here in Perth as the first thinker in residence with FORM’s Creative Capital Series.
While Landry isn’t arguing for world wide cuteness, he says that ‘The whole look and feel of a place is conditioning. Conditioning whether you want to be open minded or not. The attitude embedded in the mind you can see in the physical.’ He says that in turn ‘the physical space then determines the personal interaction you’ve got’ and suggested that there’s probably a high degree of internet access in Perth because it’s so hard to get anywhere!’
So is Perth saying yes or no? Well, according to Charles, ‘My first impression of Perth is of the city saying ‘no’ – there are red lights everywhere, and there’s the whole thing about the regulation clutter which you hear about of which [liquor] licensing regulations are just one manifestation. I didn’t realise how draining of the lifeblood all the layers and levels of complexity of bureaucracy are. Even though people want to change, they really feel that they need permission. It’s amazing to see completely intelligent people who I like and respect at a social level being sort of not liberated.
There was a rock’n’roll festival on in Northbridge the other day, I was watching people dancing really fabulously to rock’n’roll, and then I though ah sh*t you’ve brought the fifties with you…’
Landry has been highly critical of Perth in some respects, saying ‘there’s no spirit of generosity you can feel in the city’ and arguing that during the current resources boom we should be giving consideration to the legacy we leave. ‘People here say to me we’ve got a great lifestyle and then they start talking to me about the river and the beaches, which of course I think are fantastic but I also I think well you didn’t do anything about that – that’s what God or some one gave you, so what have you made? I keep coming back to the idea that culture is something that we make ourselves.Perth is particularly lucky, but this current boom was a gift, it was not created through innovation at a social level, again it’s ‘God given’.
Landry identifies that WA takes pride in multiculturalism (which celebrates difference) although he personally prefers to promote the benefits of inter-culturalism, in which the focus in on togetherness, saying ‘Part of the intercultural project is trying to be positive rather than negative, rather than banging on about all of the differences realising that these are the realities of living in complexes called cities. I’m arguing that this leads to innovation and well being’
Landry also suggests that the gay and lesbian community often very significant in increasing standards and quality of places. While he acknowledges that this is a broad generalisation and that generalisations can be problematic, he ventured ‘I think you can say that gay and lesbian culture brings extra dimensions in experimentation and innovation’.
During his stay here, Landry has repeatedly suggested that Perth consider trying to become the most imaginative city *for* the world — and says that we are big enough to be taken seriously and yet small enough to make it happen. The idea that you need to be the most creative city ‘for’ the world rather than ‘in’ the world is a key point of his 2006 book ‘The Art of City Making’. In order to achieve this, he says, ‘you need a core idea. It doesn’t need to be just one idea obviously, but it’s very helpful to have an idea which has within it an aspiration. The difficulty is to go about not just saying it, but living it and feeling it.’ Once we have developed a core idea, Landry has suggested that we need to look at developing ten key projects which express that idea, for example a focus on solar power, or the acknowledgement of Aboriginal people.
The Creative Capital series, of which Charles Landry has been a part, has been developed by FORM, under the leadership of Linda Dorrington, to explore capacity building for the creative sector. Charles will be giving a public report on his work in Perth on Monday the 12th of March.
For an example of someone who has been inspired by Charles Landry’s ideas, check out Grant Matthew’s column on page 26.
