Cocreating the Creative CityOpen Creative Communities meet City Policy & Planning

1

Copyright Remarkk! Consulting, 2007. Distributed under a Creative Commons license:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca/

2

Creative Class, Rise!Richard Florida’s Three-T’s:

Technology

Talent

Tolerance

• In case you haven’t heard, Richard Florida - regional economic development superstar - has chosen to live in Toronto.• He argues that places that score high in terms of technology, talent and tolerance will outperform their peers in the global economy.

Florida’s Creative Class

Arts

Architecture & Design

Entertainment & Media

Science & Engineering

paid to create

share a “creative ethos”

are attracted to “creative habitats”

3

• Florida’s creative class includes everyone from artists and designers to scientists and software developers.• They are paid to create, share a “creative ethos” and are attracted to certain kinds of “creative habitats”.

4

BarCamp to Burning Man

• This is Burning Man, a week-long arts festival that takes place in the Nevada desert where participants cocreate a temporary city of 40,000 inhabitants.• The community self-organizes for radical self-expression in an atmosphere of radical tolerance.

Cultural Creative Values

5

heterarchy: horizontal power & control

reject the materialist notion of success

self-actualizing, integrated and balanced life

believe in authenticity, emphasize relationships

prefer intimate, visceral & engaged learning

idealism, activism, globalism and ecology

believe that a little creative chaos is a good thing

Source: Ray & Anderson (2000), “The Cultural Creatives”

• Cultural creatives believe in horizontal power and control, reject materialism, are self-actualizing, believe in authenticity, prefer engaged styles of learning, are idealistic and global in outlook and believe that a little creative chaos is a good thing.

Modernist Values

hierarchy: big-company OR big-government knows best

support financial materialism

life is compartmentalized into “work”, “family” & “friends”

climbing the “ladder” of success

industrial paradigm: creation, production, distribution, consumption are separate and professionalized

being “in control” is a priority

6

Source: Ray & Anderson (2000), “The Cultural Creatives”

• By contrast, Modernists believe in hierarchy, materialism, live a compartmentalized life, work within a tiny slice of the industry value chain and use control to manage the complexity of work and life.

BarCamp Values?

7

•

• I see links between the BarCamp community and cultural creative values.• Authenticity is important, hierarchy is shunned;• They make meaning, think globally, are engaged in their communities and thrive in what some would call a chaotic environment.

Values-Embedded Technologies

8

Open standards:“our systems need to talk”

Open source:“globalized commons production”

Social networks:“transparent social identity”

Blogs:“join the global conversation”

Wikis:“emergent order from the chaos of the crowd”

Enterprise 2.0:“lateral collaboration, silo-busting”

• These values are expressed in the technologies that we adopt and build.• Open standards, open source, social networks, blogs and wikis reflect cultural creative values• They are global, horizontal, heterogenous and help us create order from chaos.

Values-Embedded Practices

9

Unconferences: “leadership can come from anywhere”

Startups: “be your own boss & change the world”

Conversational marketing: “markets are conversations”

Communities of practice: “peer-led learning”

Peer-production: “wisdom of crowds”

Coworking: “shared workspaces for independents”

Creative Commons: “copyright for the digital age”

• The community also uses practices that are infused with these values.• Unconferences, Startup culture, the Cluetrain Manifesto, peer-production and the notion of a community of free agents all reflect cultural creative values.

Coevolution?

Cultural values

Creative practices

Technology tools

10

Millennials (born after 1980)

Emerging creative communities

Social Web

Human Capital = Labour + Technology

• For economists and city-builders to understand what’s happening to Human Capital, they need to look at our coevolving values, practices and tools.• this coevolution is seen in the Millennial generation and in the thousands of communities like BarCamp that employ social web tools to self-organize.

What are the values of the City?

11

• Policy-makers avoid talking about values in the mistaken belief that their work is values-neutral.• in order to enable the creative potential in each and every one of us, we need to be explicit about values and we need to consider how to engage the diverse communities of the city in the collective act of city building.

City Policy & Planning Paradigm

12

Developed for and by the industrial economy

Separation of “working” and “living” through zoning

Powers are restrictive, not permissive: “you can’t”, rather than “you can”

Professionalized: “father knows best”

City is struggling under its own weight, unable to adapt quickly enough to a changing global social and economic environment

Much talk about a “Global Creative City”, but not much to show for it

• City policy and planning practices are embedded in the industrial economy.• We have segregated work from life, and the city expresses itself in what we can’t do, rather than exploring the possible.• We cannot wait for government to transition us to the Creative Age on its own.

City Policy & Planning Paradigm

12

Developed for and by the industrial economy

Separation of “working” and “living” through zoning

Powers are restrictive, not permissive: “you can’t”, rather than “you can”

Professionalized: “father knows best”

City is struggling under its own weight, unable to adapt quickly enough to a changing global social and economic environment

Much talk about a “Global Creative City”, but not much to show for it

Who will save us? WE will!

• City policy and planning practices are embedded in the industrial economy.• We have segregated work from life, and the city expresses itself in what we can’t do, rather than exploring the possible.• We cannot wait for government to transition us to the Creative Age on its own.

Toronto TransitCamp

“Not a complaints department, a solutions playground”

Passion and fun meet practice

Diverse communities

Design Slam

Institutional change

Instantiating community

Modelling for replication

13

• For example, TransitCamp took the BarCamp model and applied it to the user experience of the TTC and its website.• Designed to be a safe third place where the transit authority could join the community in creative problem solving;• the TTC received insight and research from the community unavailable elsewhere.

14

• FixMyStreet is a UK open source project that provides a bug-tracker for government services that is outside government control• Users identify and report local issues and the system forwards them onto the responsible council for action and follow-up.

Open Creative Communities

Open: No artificial barriers to entry; membership comes from creative citizenship, both professional and amateur

Creative: Production of ideas and inventions that are personal, original and meaningful

Community: any group of individuals who interact and share some common characteristics; characteristics include practices, interests, values and proximity

15

“What is an Open Creative Community?”: http://remarkk.com/2007/02/25/essay-what-is-an-open-creative-community/

• BarCamp, TransitCamp and Burning Man are “Open Creative Communities”.• They are open, with no artificial barriers to entry;• they are involved in the production of ideas and inventions and• their members share practices, interests, values and geographic proximity

Virtual communitymeets physical place.

16

• Many online communities demonstrate a desire to come together in physical place.• While technology makes it possible for us to work together in entirely new and powerful configurations,• creative people want and need the human connection of face-to-face contact, where tacit knowledge can be exchanged.

What Connects The Creative City?

PLACE?

PRACTICE?

VALUES?

17

• What connects the creative city?• Is it the places we live and work, the creative practices we employ or the values that we share?• For regional economic success, governments need to understand, join, support and empower these creative communities.

18

How do we create space

for play?

Text

City Repair Project, Portland

• Open creative communities need space for play, interaction and creative work.• We need: • coworking spaces; • spaces to hold events; • mental space to explore new ideas; and• entrepreneurial space to attempt risky new ventures.

What do we want to do together?Awareness

Meet

Learn

Enable

Practice

Share

Succeed

Tell

19

• I challenge this community to imagine itself engaged in the act of creative city-building.• What do we want to do together?• I believe that DemoCamp is important because it is fundamentally about story-telling.• DemoCamp is as much about culture as it is about technology.

Creative Manifesto for the Web Age?Mark Kuznicki

http://remarkk.com

20

• We’ve had the Cluetrain Manifesto for 8 years now.• Do we need a new creative manifesto for the web age?• A Manifesto that helps government and companies better understand who we are and the world we want to create?• I welcome you to join the conversation @ remarkk.com.