Extract

Gus diZerega and David F. Hardwick Cities are incubators for creativity. They attract creative citizens and enable them to form the subtle and intricate networks required to pursue their dreams, to the benefit of us all. But not all cities are equal in this respect. This chapter explores how insights arising from the study of emergent processes shed light on what enables a city to become a magnet for creative people, a lasting incubator for their dreams and their accomplishments. Our understanding of modern cities often becomes dominated by economic and prescriptive models of what makes a community viable. While important insights have arisen from these approaches, equally important blind spots accompany them. This is because cities are far more complex than markets co-ordinated through financial feedback can encompass. In addition, they are also far more uncertain and dynamic than traditional planning could successfully handle. Both economic and prescriptive approaches towards understanding and governing cities reflect an engineering understanding of urban processes. In our current reality these social processes are too varied and uncertain in their details for a traditional planning perspective such as this to be satisfactory over many issues or for a long period of time. This is certainly the case with social environments able to attract culturally creative residents into an urban area. People are motivated by a number of basic values, important among them being money, power and recognition by their peers. All contribute to the basic goal of personal growth and survival. A good urban...