Peter Ache, Dr.-Ing., Prof .

Helsinki University of Technology

University of Dortmund

Creativity, Innovation and Governance in Metropolitan Development

Creativity and the metropolis seem inextricably connected. Since Richard Florida's invention of the 'creative class' (Florida 2002) research on the 'how to?' focused on specific individuals (preferably the 'super creative') an in spatial terms in particular on the larger agglomeration areas or metropolitan regions (Landry 2003). For instance the most recent report on spatial planning in Germany (BBR 2005) places a lot of emphasis on the leading role of metropolitan regions, not least with respect to innovation and creativity. This particular document continues a debate which started in Germany approximately ten years earlier, when metropolitan regions were detected being the 'motoric engines for the development of society' (Bundesministerium für Raumordnung Bauwesen und Städtebau 1995). The other example can be found in the introduction of a 'spatial' Lisbon agenda, e.g. as what the post-Rotterdam paper presented by the EU informal minister for spatial planning meeting in Rotterdam (2004) and Luxembourg (2005) can be seen, with again the emphasis being mainly placed on large metropolitan regions and their potentially higher contribution towards a growth agenda (EC and Ministers for Spatial Development 2005), thereby focusing in particular on characteristics of knowledge and communication.

All before mentioned sources are concerned with the creation of opportunity structures in a material but even more so in a procedural sense (with potential further reference f.i. to 'untraded interdependencies' (Storper 1995) or 'social capital' (Putnam 1993; European Commission 1998)) for the sake of defining a better competitive starting position of the economy at large and metropolitan regions in particular. In addition, many of these approaches are rather instrumental in the sense of unilaterally defining cause and effect chains between certain circumstances and the act of 'innovating' or 'creating' - despite the fact, that innovation and creativity are far from clearly structured processes, as will be addressed further down. With respect to governance, i.e. the control or design of processes in administrative, political or legitimate terms, the definition of such circumstance mostly comes with a call for abandoning 'state' - the usual suspect of over administrating and regulating - and therefore suffocating creativity. But is it so?

In a seminar preceding a special issue of DISP (162, 3/2005) where the author had the opportunity to participate as a commentator and rapporteur, the following questions related to the topic of creativity and governance were put forward:

Where does creativity come from when talking about governance?

Does it come from technocrats, from leadership, or from participatory round tables?

How can we organize creative action in city regions?

How can we recruit and mobilize creative actors for urban development? And how is this to be done?

Some arguments of that discussion will be used here to shape answers to above questions. They do not entirely follow above sequence but hopefully provide a complete picture in the end. The following short article rather brings together some loose ideas and hypotheses, which definitely need to be refined further. It is more an invitation for comment and discussion. For a start, some of the ideas and options regarding creativity and governance will be outlined (1). Thereafter, the focus will be on features of creativity and innovation (2). Lastly, by way of taking an example, the potential for governance in the context of creativity will be explored (3).

Above mentioned seminar had very many participants, a.o. Patsy Healey. She gave a thoroughly crafted presentation to start the discussions, not only drawing on experience from her hometown Newcastle u.T. but also European experiences. Her main analytical perspective was an institutional one, entering hard (such as infrastructures) and soft structures (such of actors) into the equation, describing processes and their outcomes (as in the case of various projects in Newcastle u.T.). Her final comment took the form of further questions, which in her view need to be answered: What are the dimensions of governance (from actors to formal and informal structures for policing discourses and practices) - and where do we target our transformative effort? What are the modes of governance - and is there a functional fit between modes and the promotion of creativity? And finally, how are governance cultures related to social capital - and can governance cultures deliberately be built?

In their replies, A. Balducci and J. Cabral provided first answers to these questions in different respects. Balducci clearly was in favor of learning processes particularly in institutions. We can not simply demand a new 'creative attitude' on the side of government structures. To make his point clear, Balducci resorted to a range of new creative governance institutions, such as development agencies, bottom-up inter communal planning initiatives, or e.g. charities managing urban projects (instead of the public sector). Cabral emphasized the importance of cultural traditions leading to different approaches and results e.g. in Portugal, where the state is ultimately the 'innovative' driver. But, here also the problem varies to such an extent that the state has to bring in basic infrastructures to allow for further creative action upon these. In the debate, many important aspects have been highlighted, addressing the quality aspects of 'creativity', the 'how to' as distinguished from the 'what is' creatvity, and the process quality as being incremental or in leaps and bounds. A specific focus for some time had been the question of order and disorder, and creative re-ordering. In this context, the point of clarity of purpose was also questioned, e.g. what is guiding the creative process?

(2) The report on the discussion could and can not pay due respect to all participants and contributions in all detail here (the reader is referred to the DISP issue 162, 3/2005, see also Figure 1), so above outline of key aspects has rather to be seen as defining the cornerstones of the following synthesis, providing a potential answer to the starting point of creativity and governance - resorting mainly to analogies and examples, that hopefully make some points clearer.

First, a look to the innovation process in industries might clarify a crucial difference, e.g. that of creativity and innovation. Creativity might be the result of the innovator (creating the new idea), but innovation is a finely structured process to produce the final product which finds a market. Here, contrary to the single person, the Schumpeter'ian innovator, the leader quality person, specific structures and feed-back cycles are important. Creativity in this situation is far from chaos, although unforeseen applications might play a role, as will be described further down. Creativity was also seen as a process of destruction; the 2nd mover, the late comer, who uses copies or increased efficiency to push the 'original' innovator out of the market (Malecki 1991). The message here is, there is need for an innovator, but the main work is done with a set of infrastructures and processes, and in the end, the achieved result might not be long lasting. However, with a view towards the role of governance in such processes it can clearly be expected as providing infrastructures and facilitating processes - meaning also, that the attitude of 'we have all seen this before' has to be abandoned.

Figure 1 (taken from Kunzmann 2005)

Above outlined process leads us also to the question of order and disorder, and its synthesis of re-order, this almost dialectical relation. Drawing on thermodynamics, order goes along with energy input - as the natural state of our universe is disorder. The result is high entropy, which can only be changed again with more energy input, and so forth; a very demanding process (which f.i. has been used to explain the problems to recover old industrial regions, (Ache, Bremm et al. 1987)). Disorder, that is stages of low entropy can be changed comparatively easily - which results in the hypothesis that creativity might finally be better (or more efficiently) placed in situations of disorder.

Suffice to say, that societal systems can not be compared with physical systems that easily. But this perspective might be easier to take when looking to the literature, especially to the work of A. Anderson (Anderson 1985). He described the 'creative' situation of Vienna at the threshold to the 20th century. At that time, boundaries, both disciplinary and spatial boundaries (psychoanalysis), the encounter with the 'alien' or the 'other', also political chaos were important and led to a historically and spatially contingent creativity. This situation was unique and is way beyond a simple repetition or transplanting to other times and places. Which makes us aware about the intricacies of creativity and creative responses, when change is needed (in Vienna, no change at all was really 'needed').

The example brings us back to the aspect of having an aim for creativity, addressing the immediate need for change, probably resulting from pending challenges (ecology in particular), to which answers need to be found. The clarity of purpose can be stimulating and also keep actors on track, in particular administrations. However, above example prefers chaos, undefined and open situations, no purpose at all, introduces the importance of boundary spanning to facilitate and stimulate creativity. It is very clear, that such a situation sounds hardly comfortable for a clearly structured institution, with sometimes rather rigid rank and file systems like public administrations.

(3) Almost the final point of this short essay can be seen in the following problem: Albert Einstein is reported to have said, that he is more interested in the future as this is the time he will be living in. The discussion on creativity sometimes centers on a controversy between rationality (information), forecasting, application of models (the knowable or the unknowable city), or sustainability. In economics, recent Nobel prize winners came from schools that abolish the rational, optimizing individual and focus their work on irrational behavior (in a way on chaos) or on 'Spieltheorie'.

Can the process of creativity be designed, be forecasted, its results predicted? And, can the coming challenges, to which we need to define creative responses, be foreseen? Both before questions are difficult and the following example has been chosen to provide a preliminary answer: Readers all know 'tesa-film' (or its rival 'scotch tape'), this sticky transparent plastic strip which helps us almost every day and comes in many different shapes and versions. It was invented around the 1930ies by Beyersdorf in Germany, first as a medical plaster manufactured with cotton fabric, also handy to fix punctures due to its strong glue. In the war time, the supply of the cotton base failed creating the need to invent the man made fiber, the acetone as a supplement. From that time onwards 'tesa-film' was transparent. 'tesa-film' has in 2002 been 'discovered' by a totally different research stream (physics) as the most capable storage material for three dimensional holography - and in 2002 the research team did not know why (and it did not work with 'scotch tape') (Röbke 2002).

By way of conclusion and in terms of the debate about creativity and governance, lessons to be learnt from this example are the importance of crisis (supply of fabric), the importance of time or longitude (70 years), the importance of boundary stepping (holography), simple curiosity, simple effect but no ready made explanation (why it works) - and the 'trans-utilisation' of an old product in a completely new context. What seems to be clear when looking at creativity, governance and metropolitan development is the absence of any 'instrumental' characteristics and rather the dominance of chance and opportunity. What seems to be needed here are 'opportunity structures', i.e. various test beds for experiment, trial - and probably also error. This is the big challenge for metropolitan development and the actors involved in this, in particular government as opposed to governance. What needs to be created is a 'response capacity', capable of mobilizing across boundaries actors and resources, and to develop a sort of vision about the future.

Sources:

Ache, P., H. J. Bremm, et al. (1987). Emscherzone im Umbruch - Analyse des räumlichen Strukturwandels und Möglichkeiten einer planerischen Strategie des kontrollierten Umbaus. Fakultät Raumplanung. Dortmund, Universität Dortmund.

Anderson, A. (1985). "Creativity and Regional Development." Papers of the Regional Science Association(56): 5-20.

BBR (2005). Raumordnungsbericht 2005. Bonn, BBR.

Bundesministerium für Raumordnung Bauwesen und Städtebau (1995). Raumordnungspolitischer Handlungsrahmen. Beschluss der Ministerkonferenz für Raumordnung in Düsseldorf am 8. März 1995. Bonn.

EC and Ministers for Spatial Development (2005). Territorial state and perspectives of the European Union. Towards a stronger European territorial cohesion in the light of the Lisbon and Gothenburg ambitions. Scoping document and summary of political messages. 20/21 May, Luxembourg.

European Commission (1998). Sixth Periodic Report on the Socioeconomic Situation in the European Regions.

Florida, R. (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class, and how it is transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life. New York, Basic Books.

Kunzmann, K. (2005). "Creativity in Planning: a Fuzzy Concept?" DISP(162 (2/2005)): 5-13.

Landry, C. (2003). The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators. London, Earthscan.

Malecki, E. J. (1991). Technology and Economic Development - The dynamics of local, regional and national change. New York, Longman Scientific & Technical.

Putnam, R. (1993). "The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Life." The American Prospect.

Röbke, T. (2002). Nicht im Sinne des Erfinders. Die Zeit. Hamburg: Nr. 44 / Seite 28.

Storper, M. (1995). "The Resurgence of Regional Economies, Ten Years Later: The Region as a Nexus of Untraded Interdependencies." European Urban and Regional Studies 1995 (2): 191-221.