White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 3Chapter 3Creative Cities and Territory3.1 Changes to 20th-centuryurban systemsThe recent trends observed in theurban systems of most advancedeconomies show that deeptransformations are underway. Theirmain features have now been outlinedbut their repercussions are still farfrom being fully understood. In 1938Louis Wirth wrote what was tobecome a seminal article for theAmerican Journal of Sociology: “Urbanismas a way of life”. This text had anenormous influence on theconceptions of contemporaryurbanism not only among socialscientists, but also architects and townplanners. Wirth suggested that citiescan be defined by three variables: size,density and (correlatively)heterogeneity. Half a century later, bythe last decades of the secondmillennium, these criteria had becomeoutdated in defining urbanism, eventhough so far no one else has managedto come up with such a neatinterpretation. The population in largecities is declining everywhere, and, oncloser examination, we no longer evenknow what area to use in measuringurban population size. Metropolitandensity has diminished to such anextent that in the United States thedensity of metropolitan areas is equalto the overall density of countries likeItaly. Heterogeneity is still animportant element, but newsegregation processes have emerged,no longer based on social classes buton different populations, especiallynocturnal and diurnal populations.Cities worldwide are being affected bythree macro-processes which aredeeply changing the nature ofurbanism: continually recedingboundaries, which transformpreviously easily circumscribableentities into “unbounded territories”whose limits and size elude easydefinition; the advent of “non-residentpopulations” (NRPs), especiallycommuters, who use new forms ofmobility to distribute businesses inbroad, low-density areas; and, lastly,phenomena linked to the diffusion ofthe media and mass culture, whichhave brought deep changes to theforms of governance and also to thecommonly perceived image of socialreality, thus contributing to thephenomenon of “doublehermeneutics”.These major trends affect both themacro-system of housing, i.e. theWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 58