Toolkits for urban innovators
Charles Landry helps cities transform their thinking in order to assess their potential afresh. He sees himself as a 'critical friend' to the cities he works with. He seeks to inspire, stimulate, challenge and facilitate. He combines a global perspective with an acute sense of what matters locally. He grounds ideas in practical projects.
Charles is an authority on urban futures and the use of creative approaches to achieve farsighted aims. His book The Art of City Making (2006) has been highly acclaimed. It focuses on how cities can be more "creative for the world" so that the energies of individuals and companies can be brought into alignment with their global responsibilities. This builds on his original ideas in The Creative City: A Toolkit for urban innovators. Together with co-author Phil Wood he has published The Intercultural City (2007).
Charles will be running three two-day Master Classes this year in Gloucestershire, Copenhagen and Dortmund. Please email Sue Andrew for more details.
You can read an extended profile of Charles Landry from "Strategy + Business" here. To contact Charles or to enquire about booking a speech click here
In 2011, Charles has continued to measure the creative pulse of a number of cities using his new Creative City Index. Cities include Freiburg, Canberra, Perth, Ghent, Fremantle, Penang and Oulu, the Finnish new technology city. Now the Index has a new online benchmarking survey tool available to participating cities - see the links on this web site to find out more.
Charles was in New Zealand and Australia in early 2011 where he gave talks and workshops in Auckland, which recently merged with its smaller surrounding municipalities as well as Perth.
For Khazanah, the national development agency in Malaysia, he is helping Penang develop its Think City programme as part of its attempt to become a more liveable island based on a more knowledge intensive economy. Master classes were held in George Town.
Charles has been asked by the French government commission to assess the cultural power of Paris in comparison to other global cities.
Charles begins work on a European study assessing the transformative effects of the culture and economy link. Cities explored will be Bologna, Lille, Bilbao, the Ruhr, Krakow and Liverpool.
Charles will be running Master Classes in 2012 in Gloucestershire, Copenhagen and Dortmund. Please email Sue Andrew for further details.
