Book 9. The Creative Bureaucracy -

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Public bureaucracies across the globe face a converging, escalating crisis. Our societies are increasingly unequal. The population is ageing and they have fewer resources to respond to the growing need for care services. Demands for affordable living conditions are increasing as public space declines. Frenzied finance movements are rattling domestic economies. Mass migration is engendering fear and uncertainty. This accounts for some sudden and dangerous responses to overcome the effects of a turbo-charged capitalism.

Book 8. Psychology & the City -

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Being in a city is a two-way psychological process. The city impacts upon our mind — our mental and emotional state impacts upon the city. This is part of a constant cycle of influencing and being influenced, perpetual transactions changing moment to moment as our daily lived experience unfolds, with repercussions both for us and for the city in ways we cannot always be aware of.

Book 7. The Digitized City -

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The digitized city is already with us, but it needs a jointly created vision of where next. Digitization represents a tectonic shift providing computing with an immense force. Its devices are changing society and social life, culture, levels of connectivity, the economy as well as cities. These devices are both liberating and potentially invasive.

Book 6. Cities of Ambition -

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Cities of Ambition is the result of a long term endeavour to understand how cities make the most of their potential and why some cities do more with their tangible and intangible resources than others. It summarizes the collective insights, intelligence and knowledge of insiders, those running cities or contributing to them as business people, politicians, officials, activists and informed outsiders, such as urban advisors, researchers or commentators.

Book 5. The Fragile City -

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Cities are the most complex artefact created by human beings and their most significant investment. They make civilisations manifest. They drive cultures, they embody their values and are crucial to development. Cities are hubs of creativity and potential. They are accelerators of opportunity, force feeding transactions and connections. Skills, talent and expertise cluster in them as do trade, commerce and industries.

Book 4. Culture & Commerce – The Royal Academy & Mayfair -

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Culture and commerce co-exist in creative tension. Their values and aims can be sharply opposed. There is a need to find the fragile balance. This is true for culture in both the big sense, such as our wish to remain true to ourselves, and the narrower sense of expression through the arts. The desire for artistic integrity can conflict with the exigencies of the market.

Book 3. The Creative City Index -

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The Creative City Index assesses the creative pulse of places by exploring their urban dynamics, processes and projects. It differs from most indexes by looking at the city as an integrated whole from an insider and outsider perspective through a series of ten broad crosscutting domains.

Book 2. The Sensory Landscape of Cities -

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This is the second in a series of short publications, which seek to briefly encapsulate key agendas and thought movements that shape cities today and will have an impact on their future. The city is a communications device. It speaks to us through every fibre of its being. The lived urban experience comes from a circular sensory cycle. The Sensory Landscape of Cities, sees the city as a 360-degree, enveloping, immersive experience, which has emotional and psychological impacts. It argues that we sense, feel and understand it through increasingly narrow funnels
of perception.

Book 1. The Origins & Futures of the Creative City -

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The city faces an escalating crisis that cannot be solved by a ‘business as usual’ approach, including the challenge of living together with great diversity and difference, addressing the sustainability agenda, rethinking its role and purpose to survive well economically, culturally and socially and to manage increasing complexity. These are some of the future priorities for creativity. Creativity needs to address the issues that really matter globally.