Was at a really interesting seminar today from the Centre for Cultural Policy Research at the Gilmorehill Centre. The theme was Creativity and the Artist.
Seems that when the Guru Richard Florida was recently on one of his whistle stop tours, some of the Glasgow Council people got a hold of him and were keen to learn how they could 'get onto the creative cities thing' and make appropriate plans. He seemingly somewhat tartly told them they they 'could not plan creativity'. His advice was that the best local authorities can do, is just lay down the local infrastructure, stand back and let creativity happen. Florida is the guy who identified culturally diverse minorities as essential to the regeneration of creative cities throughout the world. For the popular press, the presence of a vibrant gay minority population was one of his most controversial indicators on this. It's not just gays he uses as indicators, it's all sorts of cultural minorities - the bad news is that Glasgow scores very poorly on this diversity score, even in comparison within the UK.
Some of the participants at the seminar strongly argued against Florida's remarks about 'not planning'; they argued that the local authority, along with other stakeholders, must actively plan ahead.
I was thinking about how this argument relates to preserving our built heritage in Glasgow. On the one hand the Council 'just standing back' seems to result in odd wee destructive fires in listed buildings followed by demolition and ugly redevelopment - on the other hand the Planning Laws seem sometimes unproductive for all concerned and sometimes seem designed to generate opposition and confrontation on new developments (versus conservation) when what is needed is partnership and compromise.
Incidentally, talking about redevelopment versus conservation, has anyone seen the proposed development by Bishop Loch Developments at the old Govan Graving (?) Dock.... Ugh!