The notion of 'creative cities' - where cultural activities and creative and cultural industries play a crucial role in supporting urban creativity and contributing to the new creative economy - has become central to most regional and urban development strategies in recent years. A creative city is supposed to develop imaginative and innovative solutions to a range of social, economic and environmental problems: economic stagnancy, urban shrinkage, social segregation, global competition or more. Cities and regions around the world are trying to develop, facilitate or promote concentrations of creative, innovative and/or knowledge-intensive industries in order to become more competitive. These places are seeking new strategies to combine economic development with quality of place that will increase economic productivity and encourage growth. Against this increasing interest in creative cities, this volume offers a coherent set of articles on sustainable and creative cities, and addresses modern theories and concepts relating to research on sustainability and creativity. It analyses principles and practices of the creative city for the formulation of policies and recommendations towards the sustainable city. It brings together leading academics with different approaches from different disciplines to provide a comprehensive and holistic overview of creativity and sustainability of the city, linking research and practice. In doing so, it puts forward ideas about stimulating the production of an innovative knowledge for a creative and sustainable city, and transforming a specific knowledge into a general common knowledge, which suggests best future policy actions, decision-making processes and choices for the change towards a human sustainable development of the city.

Culture and creativity have untapped potential to deliver social, economic, and spatial benefits for cities and communities. Cultural and creative industries are key drivers of the creative economy and represent important sources of employment, economic growth, and innovation, thus contributing to city competitiveness and sustainability. Through their contribution to urban regeneration and sustainable urban development, cultural and creative industries make cities more attractive places for people to live in and for economic activity to develop. Culture and creativity also contribute to social cohesion at the neighborhood level, enable creative networks to form and advance innovation and growth, and create opportunities for those who are often socially and economically excluded. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had a deep impact on the cultural sector, yet it has also revealed the power of cultural and creative industries as a resource for city recovery and resilience. More generally, cities are hubs of the creative economy and have a critical role to play in harnessing the transformative potential of cultural and creative industries through policies and enabling environments at the local level. 'Cities, Culture, and Creativity' (CCC) provides guiding principles and a CCC Framework, developed by UNESCO and the World Bank, to support cities in unlocking the power of cultural and creative industries for sustainable urban development, city competitiveness, and social inclusion. Drawing from global studies and the experiences of nine diverse cities from across the world, the CCC Framework offers concrete guidance for the range of actors -- city, state, and national governments; creative industry and related private-sector organizations; creatives; culture professionals and civil society-- to harness culture and creativity with a view to boosting their local creative economies and building resilient, inclusive, and dynamic cities.

This book collects a selection of the best articles presented at the CUPUM (Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management) conference, held in the second week of July 2013 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The articles included were selected by external reviewers using a double blind process.

Consisting of presented papers from the 15th International Conference on Urban Regeneration and Sustainability, the included works address various aspects of the urban environment and provide solutions leading towards sustainability. Urban areas result in a series of environmental challenges varying from the consumption of natural resources and the subsequent generation of waste and pollution, contributing to the development of social and economic imbalances. As cities continue to grow all over the world, these problems tend to become more acute and require the development of new solutions. The challenge of planning sustainable contemporary cities lies in considering the dynamics of urban systems, exchange of energy and matter, and the function and maintenance of ordered structures directly or indirectly supplied and maintained by natural systems. The task of researchers is to improve the capacity to manage human activities, pursuing welfare and prosperity in the urban environment. Any investigation or planning on a city ought to consider the relationships between the parts and their connections with the living world. The dynamics of its networks (flows of energy matter, people, goods, information and other resources) are fundamental for an understanding of the evolving nature of today’s cities. Large cities represent a fertile ground for architects, engineers, city planners, social and political scientists, and other professionals able to conceive new ideas and time them according to technological advances and human requirements. Coastal areas and coastal cities are an important area covered in this volume as they have some specific features. Their strategic location facilitates transportation and the development of related activities, but this requires the existence of large ports, with the corresponding increase in maritime and road traffic and all its inherent negative effects. This requires the development of well-planned and managed urban environments, not only for reasons of efficiency and economics but also to avoid inflicting environmental degradation that causes the deterioration of natural resources, quality of life and human health. These research papers put a focus on sustainability across the multidisciplinary components of urban planning, the challenges presented by the increasing size of cities, the number of resources required and the complexity of modern society.

With majority of the Earth’s people now urban dwellers, and cities being the most efficient habitat for the utilisation of resources, it is imperative that we continue to support standards of living and efficiencies of urban areas. However, the urbanisation process has not been without its problems. While much has been done to address the original issues surrounding the quality of urban life, new challenges continue to arise. It is no longer sustainable to achieve improvements by means that require greater and greater energy consumption as we did in the past. Despite their complexity, however, cities are a great laboratory for architects, engineers, and other key professionals to apply new ideas and new technology to meet our requirements for more sustainable city environments. Containing papers presented at the latest in a series of conferences organised by the Wessex Institute of Technology, these proceedings, split in to two volumes address not just environmental, architectural, and engineering concerns, but also quality of life, security, risk, and heritage. The diversity of topics and the case studies based on existing projects make the book an important contribution to the literature on urban planning.

Containing the proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Urban Regeneration and Sustainability this book addresses the multi-disciplinary aspects of urban planning; a result of the increasing size of cities; the amount of resources and services required and the complexity of modern society. Most of earth’s population now lives in cities and the process of urbanisation still continues generating many problems deriving from the drift of the population towards them. These problems can be resolved by cities becoming efficient habitats, saving resources in a way that improves the quality and standard of living. The process however, faces a number of major challenges, related to reducing pollution, improving main transportation and infrastructure systems. New urban solutions are required to optimise the use of space and energy resources leading to improvements in the environment, i.e. reduction in air, water and soil pollution as well as efficient ways to deal with waste generation. These challenges contribute to the development of social and economic imbalances and require the development of new solutions. Large cities are probably the most complex mechanisms to manage. However, despite such complexity they represent a fertile ground for architects, engineers, city planners, social and political scientists, and other professionals able to conceive new ideas and time them according to technological advances and human requirements. The challenge of planning sustainable cities lies in considering their dynamics, the exchange of energy and matter, and the function and maintenance of ordered structures directly or indirectly, supplied and maintained by natural systems. Topics covered include: Urban strategies; Planning, development and management; Urban conservation and regeneration; The community and the city; Eco-town planning; Landscape planning and design; Environmental management; Sustainable energy and the city; Transportation; Quality of life; Waterfront development; Case studies; Architectural issues; Cultural heritage issues; Intelligent environment and emerging technologies; Planning for risk; Disaster and emergency response; Safety and security; Waste management; Infrastructure and society; Urban metabolism.

This book provides an up-to-date, critical review of theoretical concepts connecting artists and urban development. It focuses on the multidimensionality of potential and actually observed interactions between artists and cities and their impacts on urban space, its form, functions and perceptions. Departing from the viewpoint that a more nuanced geography of artists is still needed to fully conceptualise the diversity of roles artistic creatives play in urban transformations, the book presents contributions with a common denominator of distinguishing artists as a unique professional and social group. The essays focus on the complexity of the artists’ spatial preferences and analyse a myriad of expressions of artists’ presence in urban centres in different geographic, political, economic, social, and spatial contexts drawing on experiences from 16 cities across Europe. The book presents several case studies ranging from Spain to Russia and from Scandinavia to Slovenia, and offers new pathways into understanding the implications of artists’ residence and activities in contemporary cities. Apart from presenting less obvious expressions of artists’ involvement in urban transformations such as their participation in urban planning or grass root urban movements, the volume explores the ambivalence of artists’ interactions with cities. Particular chapters test several divergent narratives of artistic creatives as inspirers and instigators of urban changes, pioneers of gentrification, contesters and resisters of neoliberal urban policies or mere indicators of transformations inspired by other actors, instrumentalized by public and private stakeholders.