The Digitized City

Charles Landry, author of The Digitized City, gives us a glimpse of how digitization affects people and cities, and what it takes to create a sustainable, balanced city.

An international authority on the use of imagination and creativity in urban change, Landry is the man who invented the concept of the Creative City in the late 1980’s. The focus of the Creative City is how cities can create the enabling conditions for people and organisations to think, plan and act with imagination to solve problems and develop opportunities.

As urbanisation engulfs the world and citizens migrate en masse towards urban centres, it has become crucial for local governments, city planners and communities to think about quality of life issues. The author’s book – The Digitized City – Influence and Impact, describes the tectonic shift unfolding where digital devices with their disruptive potential are changing cities, society and social life, connectivity, the economy and culture.

His belief extends beyond giving urban citizens the infrastructure and accompanying intelligence on navigating city systems, but states that there has to be a bigger vision in order to find balance and sustainability.

Listen to our conversation here:

 


Charles Landry is an author, speaker and international adviser on the future of cities best known for popularising the Creative City concept. His book ‘The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators’ became a movement to rethink the planning, development and management of cities. He is currently a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin.

This story was first published under the now-defunct “Think City Channel”.

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