On a hillside in a Rio slum, artists are working to transform the community – not just to beautify it – by tapping the incredible local creative energy. The video above (via CNN International’s Urban Planet series) shows how residents of the Santa Marta slum are transforming their community itself into a work of art. Led by two Dutch artists and the energy of local creatives, the main square has become an artwork itself. A CNN story provides more background on the  project.

The project is the brainchild of Dutch artists Dre Urhahn and Jeroen Koolhaas, who visited Rio’s favelas for the first time in 2005 to shoot hip hop videos. People who come to the favela today say, ‘Wow, how pretty.’ It doesn’t have that image of an ugly favela.

They created the Favela Painting project. “We wanted to do something that would give them an opportunity to become painters and that would call attention to the outside world to their situation,” he said.

They first painted “Boy Flying a Kite,” an enormous mural covering the sides of three buildings. Then residents painted a cement hillside with fish leaping in a river, which caught the eye of the local media.”If you are able to get a positive message out about this place in the newspaper, then your project is a success. And we did. So that was very inspiring,” Urhahn said.

Next, Urhahn and Koolhaas put Santa Marta on the drawing board.They found residents excited about the idea of a facelift for their community, a slum tamed by police and showing signs of a newly acquired purchasing power … Brazilian paint company Coral, a subsidiary of Holland’s AkzoNobel, offered to help with raw materials and training for locals.

Tigrao, or Big Tiger, was a drug dealer before he got involved with the project.

“It gave me a different outlook on life, showing me that an honest job can be a good thing,” he said. “If Coral had 30 or 50 more job openings, I’m certain they would pull another 50 people off that wrong path.”

They created a massive artwork covering 34 buildings that has attracted foreign and local tourists and boosted the self-esteem of residents. “Color brings status,” said Carlos Piazza, AkzoNobel’s communication director for Latin America. “What divides the city, the formal city, from the informal city? Painting, that’s it.” If donations come in, an entire favela could be next — a monument created by the people who live in it for the entire city.

Here’s a fantastic video, “Love Letters to Syracuse,” that illustrates the transformative, community-building role public art can play. For the project, artist Steven Powers painted bold, vivid messages about the city across old train bridges. The messages came from residents who were asked what they loved or hated about the community. See for yourself (via the Sustainable Cities Collective).

A LOVE LETTER TO SYRACUSE from samuel j macon on Vimeo.

My article, “Talent, Technology and Tolerance in Canadian Regional Development,” with Kevin Stolarick and Charlotta Mellander is out in the fall issue of The Canadian Geographer.

Here’s the abstract:

This article examines the factors that shape economic development in Canadian regions. It employs path analysis and structural equation models to isolate the effects of technology, human capital and/or the creative class, universities, the diversity of service industries and openness to immigrants, minorities and gay and lesbian populations on regional income. It also examines the effects of several broad occupations groups—business and finance, management, science, arts and culture, education and health care—on regional income. The findings indicate that both human capital and the creative class have a direct effect on regional income. Openness and tolerance also have a significant effect on regional development in Canada. Openness towards the gay and lesbian population has a direct effect on both human capital and the creative class, while tolerance towards immigrants and visible minorities is directly associated with higher regional incomes. The university has a relatively weak effect on regional incomes and on technology as well. Management, business and finance and science occupations have a sizeable effect on regional income; arts and culture occupations have a significant effect on technology; health and education occupations have no effect on regional income.

The full study is here.

From The New York Times

My new paper on Canada’s creative class, done in collaboration with my MPI colleagues Kevin Stolarick and Charlotta Mellander, is out. It’s titled “Talent, Technology and Tolerance in Canadian Regional Development” and is published in the latest issue of the Canadian Geographer.

Here’s the abstract:

This article examines the factors that shape economic development in Canadian regions. It employs path analysis and structural equation models to isolate the effects of technology, human capital and/or the creative class, universities, the diversity of service industries and openness to immigrants, minorities and gay and lesbian populations on regional income. It also examines the effects of several broad occupations groups—business and finance, management, science, arts and culture, education and health care—on regional income. The findings indicate that both human capital and the creative class have a direct effect on regional income. Openness and tolerance also have a significant effect on regional development in Canada. Openness towards the gay and lesbian population has a direct effect on both human capital and the creative class, while tolerance towards immigrants and visible minorities is directly associated with higher regional incomes. The university has a relatively weak effect on regional incomes and on technology as well. Management, business and finance and science occupations have a sizeable effect on regional income; arts and culture occupations have a significant effect on technology; health and education occupations have no effect on regional income.

The full paper is here.

One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is: How can rural areas best cope and thrive in the increasingly spiky creative economy?

New research by economists David McGranahan and Timothy Wojan of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Dayton Lambert of the University of Tennessee provides some new and important insights. Their study, entitled “The Rural Growth Trifecta: Outdoor Amenities, Creative Class and Entrepreneurial Context,” published in the July 2010 issue of  the Journal of Economic Geography looks closely at the economic forces that are acting on rural areas and the local assets these areas can use to most effectively respond to these forces and spur development and prosperity. Rural areas can no longer depend on manufacturing branch plants as a source of jobs and growth, but rather can work to bolster local amenities, spur entrepreneurship, and enable the creative class to generate jobs and growth.  Their main conclusion is that amenities matter a lot to rural development.  Here’s the abstract for the study:

Recent work challenges the notion that attracting creative workers to a place is sufficient for generating local economic growth. In this article, we examine the problem of sustaining robust growth in the periphery of the USA, demonstrating the contingent nature of talent as an engine for economic growth. We test the hypothesis that rural growth in the knowledge economy is dependent on the ability to utilize new knowledge, perhaps generated elsewhere, in addressing local economic challenges. Tests confirm that the interaction of entrepreneurial context with the share of the workforce employed in the creative class is strongly associated with growth in the number of new establishments and employment, particularly in those rural counties endowed with attractive outdoor amenities.

The full version is here (PDF).

We are starting a new series at the Creative Class Exchange entitled “Creative Capstones.” Every few weeks, we will highlight a creative community, inspiring leader, or innovative program that has an interesting perspective on creativity and the changing global economy.

This week, we interviewed Jeremy Holmes from Roanoke, Virginia. Jeremy is a transportation alternatives coordinator with the Roanoke Valley Alleghany Regional Commission and a volunteer “community connector” with the Roanoke Creative Communities Leadership Project (CCLP). Jeremy provided us with his insights on Roanoke, the region’s CCLP successes, and what it takes to build a successful community engagement effort.

Creative Class Group (CCG):  Tell us about Roanoke. What makes it a special community?

Jeremy Holmes: In a purely technical sense, Roanoke is a small urban area of about 200,000 people tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia, a place with four seasons (a novelty for a California native like myself), easy access to everything from the Appalachian Trail to Washington, D.C., a fairly stable job market and housing prices, and major educational and technological resources in our own backyard.

I think it’s also a place on the cusp of greatness, perfectly balanced between urban vitality and natural beauty, cultural renaissance and a respect for tradition. Well, maybe not perfectly; there is still lively debate and the occasional personality conflicts of its various constituencies; but for me, even the disagreements suggest a community that’s doing anything but standing still, and reveals the passion that many of its residents feel for our home.

CCG: For over a year now, Roanoke has been working initiatives that evolved from the Creative Community Leadership Program. Describe these initiatives.

Holmes: There are three major initiatives. CNR2030, the project I’m involved with, is creating an information and communications clearinghouse for all the sustainability initiatives in the region, with the goal of having Roanoke reach carbon neutrality by 2030. 81 Reasons to Connect has inventoried the region’s many higher education and technology resources and is currently fundraising in order to produce a joint marketing video to promote the area’s assets in hopes of attracting creative professionals to the Valley. The group has raised more than $20,000 and still going. S.T.A.R – the Spirit of Tolerance and Art in Roanoke has teamed up with Roanoke Yea! (Youth Experiencing the Amenities) to work on a series of arts and cultural events, including a Sunday Bridgewalk to bring together Roanoke’s often segregated faith communities, and Down by Downtown, a spring music festival.

CCG:  What have the initiatives accomplished so far? How have they impacted the region?

Holmes: In many ways, the programs are just getting started. I think a lot of us came out of the initial two-day seminar with a lot of excitement about our goals and initial program visions, but when we began the hard work of putting together business and marketing plans, and began to take a deeper look at what the gaps were in the region, there was a lot of refining to be done. CNR2030, for example, came out with grand visions of a sustainable living education center, only to realize that one already existed. A lot of our time ended up being devoted to research to find out where we fit in, and during that we got a better understanding of the amount of work already being done in the region on our chosen area, and allowed us to narrow our focus. Then again, S.T.A.R. and Yea! were able to tap into the fast-growing music scene in Roanoke and get Down by Downtown off the ground quickly.

Another way of thinking about it is that, while our CCLP projects are at various stages of completion, the CCLP program succeeded in bringing together a wide variety of people who are continuing to volunteer their time over a year later, and who are still dedicated to bring their initiatives to fruition. I think that says a lot about how dedicated people are to keeping this community vital.

CCG: Developing community initiatives can be challenging. What obstacles has the program had to overcome?

Holmes: I think the main obstacle has been time. The people who are drawn to programs like CCLP are, if Roanoke was any indication, people who are already active in the community, though they might be plugged into their particular niches and circles. Getting all these disparate folks into the same room can sometimes be a scheduling nightmare, and we’ve all got obligations with other projects and boards. That said, everyone involved in the CCLP program was dedicated to their projects and have continued to stick with them, finding ways to meet virtually or work independently when necessary.

CCG: For other communities considering a community engagement program, what is your advice? What’s critical to ensuring their initiatives will be successful?

Holmes: I’m not sure that it’s possible to insure all the initiatives will be successful, just like it’s not possible to insure than every entrepreneurial effort will be successful. What’s important is for a community to recognize the power of its creative class and change-agents, to draw them together and give them the opportunity and support to dream up some crazy ideas and see what happens. These folks want to be involved because they believe in the communities they live in; even if individual initiatives die on the vine, it’s unlikely the initiative of the individuals will do the same.

For more information about Roanoke and its creative initiatives, visit www.thecreativeconnectors.com.

I was talking to a 60-year-old, retired entrepreneur at a party the other night. Successful guy, very sharp. I asked him what he thinks is next for Florida and he said he did not have much hope for Florida, mostly due to lack of visionary leadership. Then he said something that really struck me. He suggested that Florida is on a course to reset to its old state of being “cheap, sunny, and dumb.”

That really struck me because while we are all talking about the great reset that is going on, I had not thought to ask the question, “What does Florida reset to?” And he may very well be right. At the state level, we are relaxing the rules for developers  to encourage even more sprawl to try to kick-start our construction industry again. We are actually lowering impact fees in places. We are lowering protections on the environment. This seems like a reset towards “cheap, sunny, and dumb.” There are powerful forces and attitudes that could very well push Florida back into this reset mode. And that is pretty scary.

While we all generally agree that this reset is needed and welcomed in some cases, we should be careful that we don’t reset back to a point so far back that we actually lose too much of our hard won progress. We all have to ask ourselves and our leadership what the plan and vision is for this reset. Each community is facing this and we act as if the reset is just something that will happen. That is not the case, yet I hear far too little  debate as to how we actively shape the reset.

I recently had the opportunity to visit Milwaukee, WI, for the first time (thank you FUEL Milwaukee!). And visiting cities for the first time, to me, is particularly exciting. Arriving for the first time is a pure and unadulterated experience. First impressions matter and how a city presents itself to a first-time visitor is very important. I learned this from my friend Charles Landry.

Milwaukee Art Museum

I arrived via the airport with the typical location outside of city. My host takes the highway toward the city. As we approach the Hoan Bridge, we pass amid the Port of Milwaukee. On both sides, there are mountains of bulk materials and cranes. While not beautiful, there is the appearance of activity and a muscularity that says “we work here.” As we crest the bridge (with its own very strange design element) I am startled because the city presents itself there in panorama. The city in the hills to the left, the waters of Lake Michigan to the right. And to the right, near the lake, your eye is drawn to the white sails of the Santiago Calatrava masterpiece at the Milwaukee Art Museum.  It looks so different and unexpected in the tableau that one cannot help but to stare. Unexpected because this is the Midwest where modern iconic design is not the norm and that is not a shot; I am originally  from the Midwest!  More photos click here.

While many question the value of “starchitects” and iconic design, I have to say that my impression of Milwaukee was and is shaped in no small part because of that building. It is different and it says something about Milwaukee that no amount of advertising and marketing could equal. It says in a profound way “we are not what you expect” and that Milwaukee is looking to the future and beyond the beer brewery image of its past. The building says it in a visible and demonstrable way that one cannot deny.

Cities that are arguing over the cost/benefits of such iconic architecture should consider the context in which the new building will occur. In starchitect-rich Singapore, one more Calatrava or Libeskind is just keeping up with the crowd. In cities with a dearth of quality architecture (lots of those) or cities that need to redefine themselves in the 21st century, a new building can be a catalyst for new design and a whole host of other values.

Today, we take it for granted the streets are there to move cars, and also to carry buses as well as cyclists, pedestrians, and the occasional skater, scooter-rider, and Segway user. The typical solution is to keep pedestrians on the sidewalk and paint lanes on the street to separate cars from cyclists or create express lanes for buses.

But maybe there’s another approach: Why not consider devoting different streets to different kinds of transportation? And surely cities need more green space and some are actually getting it. Inspired by the High-Line Park, by D.C.’s Rock Creek Park, and Toronto’s extensive ravine system, I have been noodling about the possibility of creating linear green belts or what I like to think of as sliver parks through cities. I literally feel this when I walk through Toronto’s ravines, or in the past when I cycled through D.C.’s Rock Creek Park. It provides a natural environment in the city and creates green zones for cycling, walking, picnicking, or other activities. But I thought this is far too pie-in-the-sky to actually be implemented or even proposed.

So I was more than pleasantly surprised to see The New York Times’ Nicolai Ouroussoff highlighting just such an approach coming out of  a nine-month design competition for the Bronx’s “faded” Grand Concourse.

A proposal by the New York office of the international design firm EDAW that would create a strip of communal farmland down the middle of the Concourse verges on cliché. But it improves when you keep in mind the grittiness of some of the urban gardens in New York or Berlin and imagine them stretched out along several miles. A new light-rail line would run the length of the boulevard; traffic would be reduced to two lanes in each direction, down from the current six.

A raucous proposal by the French team Nadau Lavergne Architects would pile more activities on top of existing structures to add density to the neighborhood and create unexpected urban frictions. Schools and cultural institutions would be stacked over apartment complexes, freeing up the street level for commercial use. A graffiti-covered streetcar would run up and down the Concourse, linking it to Manhattan. The Concourse would be packed with trees, transforming it into a linear urban forest.

Part of what is moving about these proposals is that their approaches have become so familiar. Not long ago the notion of building farmland in the middle of a busy urban roadway would have seemed like madness; today it seems too obvious. So does the idea that segregating urban functions can drain the life from a city.

Check out the terrific images from the project website, including this slide show. A full gallery of all the submitted projects is here.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons