URBACT Report

The report Cities Facing the Crisis was launched at the Annual Conference of the EU programme URBACT held in Liege at the beginning of December. The video featured here summarises the findings of the report and presents the key issues debated during two days of intense discussion and exchange.


URBACT cities facing the crisis (Part 1)
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Rethinking Cultural Policy

Culture Shock is a new paper by Demos calling for change in cultural policy, its function and delivery in the light of the changes taking place in technology, society and cultural production and consumption. You can download the paper here

Beautification or Regeneration?

Thousand of volunteers dig in for I-70 project in Indianapolis
Could this be how the Big Society looks like? The killer answer is in the comment at the bottom of this article

Mercer 2010 Quality of Living Survey

European cities still dominate the top ten ranking for quality of living with Canada, Australia and New Zealand also featuring.
Vienna scores highest for overall quality of living, while Calgary the Eco-city league's top dog.
Watch the short video discussing the criteria for city ranking.
Ranking tables and descriptions are to be found here.

The Other Side Of Branding

For all those cities that are battling for pole position in the urban league... David Brier says...

Get Real with the Creative City

Firm Intentions: Cities, Private Sector Jobs & The Coalition is the title of a new report by The Centre for Cities calling for more realism from the Coalition and cities across England pursuing sectors such as green industries or creative clusters. The document focuses on evidence that only a small number of cities will be able to develop specialist clusters in sectors identified as “growth” industries.  These are more likely to emerge as a result of a natural or historic advantage – such as life sciences in Cambridge, with its highly qualified workforce and its University – than government intervention which has been found to be limited.
 The report also identifies a “reality gap” at a time of shrinking public expenditure. 70% of cities in England believe they have a creative industries sector worth investing in, 46% of cities, a green or low carbon sector and 59% of cities, an advanced manufacturing cluster.  More than one in four of England’s cities plan to support the emergence of all three, despite funding constraints.
Download the report here: http://www.centreforcities.org/firmintentions

Cultural Planning in Canada

The internationally renown cultural planner Greg Baeker has just launched an edited publication called: Rediscovering the Wealth of Places (published in Canada by Municipal World). The book focuses on methods and case studies for the effective integration of culture in planning across municipal departments of Canadian cities. It is a practical and intelligently written ‘how to’ guide providing conclusive proof that municipal cultural mapping processes are often the key to effective policies for building creative advantage. By the way, just in case you were wondering, this applies to cities large and small both in Canada and outside! Well worth getting hold of it!