At the 15th International Conference on "Culture & Creativity" Assistant Professor Dimitra Kanellopoulou is willing to share her experience in urban planning and human geography. The topic of culture and creativity are large ones and give us the opportunity to federate scholars and professionals from different disciplinary backgrounds. From her position as a professor and researcher on public space and tourism issues, she finds it interesting to participate in this debate as I consider that a great part of the discussion around Culture and Creativity, takes as a tangible space of expression, the urban space, created by several political, social forces but also exposed to and shaped by cultural dynamics. The Professor strongly believes that a discussion on the subject should include questions and fieldwork experiences concerning the way people inhabit their everyday environments, invest on public space, claim urbanity, etc. The shift that has been taking place after 2000 in actions linking cultural activities bottom-up to urban transformation. It’s a must to question the impacts of such a shift and to highlight the important connection with the debate about environmental crisis and rapid urbanization.
Since 2019 she holds the position of associate professor at the ENSAPM School of Architecture in Paris. Her research focus on urban walking, public space, soft mobility and tourism issues applied to spatial planning using both quantitative and qualitative methods and a variety of perspectives (economic, sociological, psychological) to study this area. Her teaching experience include topics of urban planning theory, urban tourism and fieldwork methodology. She is a member of the Research Laboratory AAU within the research team CRESSON (France). In 2022, she holds the position of Visiting Professor at Politecnico di Milano, coordinating the master class course Contemporary Cities.
How is creativity helping cities? How important is it for a city to be creative, especially in our times – in a world of transitions?
Creativity is present from the very first moment to the creation of the City. The latter, as an amalgam of competences, cultures, is based on creativity for its existence, survival, and evolution. Not only does creativity accompany scientific progress but it also nourishes a wide range of professions structural for the function of the City as a social formation. Arts, Politics, but also everyday life are transcended by forms of creativity that lead people claiming sociability, change, citizenship, and a common future. In our days of recurrent crisis and uncertain destiny for many territories across the world, creativity is in fact a line raft that can bring people to find sense in everyday life, reason to keep hoping, to keep inventing solutions to problems, and to believe in a shared world worthy of being inhabited and protected.
Some say that the philosophy behind a creative city is that there is always more creative potential specifically in a post-industrial city. Is it true and why?
The post-industrial city is characterized by massive changes not only in forms of economic organization, politic procedures, etc. but also in tangible forms of land rearrangement and property transition. The industries leaving the city’s banlieues and neighborhoods, left behind huge brownfields, valuable architectural heritage, and a big void in terms of blue-collar working force.
This void was rapidly filled by new populations, a new expanding system of neoliberalism, new investments, trends and finally numerous worksites of urban transformation. This effervescence of changes, created de facto a fertile ground for creative actions in a restraint period of historical time. This could easily join the allegation that the post-industrial city presents more creative potential. However, we also need to look at things critically and admit that this creative potential is also constructed in a certain sociopolitical and cultural context, characterized by the reduction of state regulation, the reduction of welfare state and the increase of social and spatial segregation.
Could you please briefly mention a few examples how creativity and culture can play a significant role in transforming urban environments?
Creativity is the necessary ingredient for actions ‘out of the box’ that bring things a step beyond. As urban planners, we need creativity not only to reinvent our methods of analyzing the city (others than those used in the 20th century), to accept that public participation is in fact crucial to the success of projects, to put culture in the very center of our visions and operational objectives. Creativity is the basis for a public space to stay alive, for a neighborhood activism movement to reach its goal, for a local citizen’s committee to gain cause towards regeneration, negative impacts, etc.
How could culture and creativity help cities with the occurring environmental crisis?
There are several examples around the world, where people’s ingenuity and creativity join or sometimes bypass technical innovation and manage to respond cleverly to serious problems of soil permeabilization, water insufficiency, extreme heat waves, floods, food shortcoming. The shared public gardens in Detroit, the restored grain stores in the South of Morocco, the reopening of Cheonggyecheon river in Seoul, etc. are some of the examples.
Initiatives aiming to halt environmental degradation, are both public, private, or orchestrated by local populations. In most of the cases, projects have an important cultural aspect either because they concern public spaces, or because they introduce uses having a strong cultural footprint (arts, education, etc.)
Do humans create the environment or do environment conditions create human habits?
Of course. From the very beginning of the world. At the same time, we cannot apply this to every urban situation. For the developed cities of the occidental world, resources, investments on education, a rather smooth political atmosphere can create the ground for people acting conscientiously on their environment. However, we cannot say the same thing in regions confronting successive wars, famines etc. Humans there have no choice on creating their environment. They suffer from a context that they do not often choose.
On the other hand, environmental conditions shape human habits very often. This is true. The cultural habit of siesta in the south Mediterranean cities, the mutual support of households in areas of rare resources (water, food, etc.).
What role does science play in urban planning and tourism?
Science has a huge responsibility in every aspect of city life (economy, education, health). In urban planning and tourism, science can offer us today the specific accurate tools to measure the impacts of our actions better, and to better anticipate evolutions of projects or calculate performances. In fact, science offers a quantitative, measurable and objective look at various situations of exposure to pollution, threat of biodiversity, risk management, soil clever cultivation, etc.
The 15th International Conference on "Culture & Creativity"* invites leading academic scientists, researchers, scholars, and professionals to discuss current trends and issues in cultural management and the creative industries. This conference provides a premier interdisciplinary platform for researchers, practitioners, and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, and concerns in these fields. We welcome discourse on the practical challenges encountered and solutions adopted in the realms of Cultural & Creative Industries, Creative Business, and Arts & Culture Management and Marketing.
The online conference is organized by Vilnius University Kaunas Faculty, Institute of Social Sciences and Applied Informatics, the scientific group “Creative Industries and Innovations” and Vilnius Academy of Arts Kaunas Faculty. Learn more information about the conference and registration here.