Creative and passive cities

Feb 15

Feb 15 Creative and passive cities

Originally written on May 20, 2016

I was just thinking about why I didn’t want to work in Belconnen or the other Town Centres instead of Civic. And suddenly, it hit me…it was because I perceived Civic as being creative, and Belconnen as being passive.

What do I mean by that? Well, of course both places have similar businesses, so that’s not the whole story. But when it comes to doing something after work, that’s what annoyed me about the idea of working in Belconnen; there was nothing I knew of at ground level that I could walk to quickly and get involved with.

In my view, Belconnen has the following activities:

shopping (passive)
drinking (passive)
eating (passive)
cycling (active, but not creative)
bowling (passive)
watching a movie (passive)

….and I can’t think of any others. This situation may change as people move into the large apartment towers being built there, but I wonder what the catalyst would be.

By contrast, in Civic, on top of the activities listed above, there is:

busking (creative)
live music (creative)
dancing classes (creative)
poetry readings (creative)
writing classes (creative)
event management (creative)
business incubation (very creative)

Now, to be fair, it is possible that many of these things exist in Belconnen as well. But they are not as obvious as they are in Civic, and perhaps they don’t exist in the same numbers.

And this got me to thinking; is there a certain size that a community or a city needs to get to, in order for more creative activities to take root? I take these figures very cautiously, but according to Wikipedia, the population of Belconnen in 2011 was 4,437, while Civic’s population was only 2,823. Given the huge amount of apartment construction done since 2011, I expect that both numbers are now larger, but it’s also fair to say that the redevelopment of Braddon could conceivably be added to Civic’s numbers, given that much of that suburb is walking distance away. Adding Braddon’s 4,558 people brings the Civic numbers up to 7381.

Population aside, though, does the difference have more to do with the local population, and how engaged they are in being creative? Does the average level of education have an impact upon this? Could the way our cities and our society is being built, be having an impact upon which locations grow or fail? Is this accentuating the 80/20 rule?

And for cities that want to become more creative, what helps in terms of creative infrastructure? If someone is new to creating, is it less about buildings and more about the social infrastructure a location has…i.e. an existing network of people who have the appropriate skill sets? Does having a certain level of wealth help, in allowing people to afford to follow creative pursuits? More than that, does having flexible working hours support this?

Does it work almost like gardening…that is, governments can prepare the soil, but in the end, does it depend upon the combination of sun, wind and water to determine which creative activities thrive in a given location?