re urbanizing the suburbs
TRANSCRIPT
Re-urbanizing the suburbs? The role of theatre and the arts
Keywords: placemaking, quarter regeneration, resilience, social change , creative milieu.
di Roncalli Elisabetta
Who is speaking?
“Could some of the towns and cities that have been suburbanized develop once again more of the characteristics
of the classic city? What would be the role of the theatre and the arts in such a
development?”
Sir Peter Hall, theatre director
Sir Peter Hall, urbanist
Source: City, Vol 10, N° 3, 2006
…. living a social changefrom a collective consumption of culture towards individual consumption of culture
“Live sport, live concerts, live theatre is declining. The centre of the city is becoming less than necessary.”
We can imagine all together. And because it’s an act of
imagination, it’s socially binding.
Or we can stay at home, we can sit in our gardens and watch and listen.
Source: City, Vol 10, N° 3, 2006
The collapse of social capital
Source: City, Vol 10, N° 3, 2006
“People increasingly have no kind of civic involvement together
at all. They’ve become atoms,
individual atoms.”
“It is toward rematerialization and perhaps partial deceleration, that we need to move” cultural regeneration
Teatro la ScalaGlobe Theatre
Rose theatre
Royal Opera HouseL’opera di Parigi
Teatro Bolshoi di Mosca
“It is part of the collective anxiety of cities now to create some image of them- selves”
Case history:
The Rose Theatre, Kingston upon Thames
Object of discussion: exploring the wider implications of building a new theatre in Kingston upon Thames (2008).
Observations:
What had become largely a suburb seems to be re-emerging!!
“Kingston is not comparable in scale to either London or San Francisco. But the possibilities for productive face-to-face social interaction
are so much greater here. There is a sense of cultural and intellectual
ferment and of a movement towards ‘new and unknown social
arrangements“
Source: City, Vol 10, N° 3, 2006
Promoting the creative milieu
Source: Peter Hall, 1998
Creativity and planning
“Is creativity a spontaneous reaction to circumstances or it has to be planned?”
Creative spark(spontaneous,
bottom up)
Pre-conditions(planned, top-down)
Creativity (and innovation)
Source: City, Vol 10, N° 3, 2006
“You can create some pre- conditions, but whatever is going to make it work depends uniquely on some creative spark, which must always be, I suppose, a matter of chance”
Creativity and planning
Source: The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators, Landry C., 2008
“A creative milieu is a place that contains the necessary preconditions in terms of “hard” and “soft” infrastructure
to generate a flow of ideas and inventions”.
(…….) A creative milieu is a place where ‘face-to-face interaction [among a critical mass of entrepreneurs,
intellectuals, social activists, artists, administrators, power brokers or students] creates new ideas, artefacts, products, services and institutions and, as a consequence, contributes
to economic success.”(Landry, 2000)
“Does it matter if we do not have wonderful buildings?”
“We have had this de-industrialization leaving huge areas of derelict space. To some extent, this is to the good, because ware- houses are just the spaces where you can begin”.
Re-useRe(covery)Re-conceptualize
Source: City, Vol 10, N° 3, 2006
Creativity and planningTheatre: hard or/soft infrastructure?
Conclusion
Why is the theatre strategic for local development?
1. Towards a polycentric city (the suburb as a place where to live, work and consume culture- città diffusa).
2. Theatre as a tool for promoting a local community (from “Bowling alone” to Sharing) ----- beneficiaris = locals
3. Theatre as a driver for tourism development --- beneficiaris = tourists.
4. Theatre as a creative hub: promoting a strong town–gown relationship.
Did it work? A few years later…
25 November 2010
Source: TimeandLeisure, 2010