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Municipal Mind: Manifestos for the Creative City
In Municipal Mind, Toronto's Poet Laureate offers a blueprint for building sustainable cities in a global era, predicated on city soul. By weaving bold and savvy strategies for urban creativity and civic prosperity, together with a reasoned appeal for mutual respect, understanding and interaction among citizens, he persuades us that Ð in the delicate balancing of universal values and individual needs Ð cities can do far, far better. Municipal Mind offers up a whole new way of civic being and thinking that puts wonder before commerce and nothing before human encounter.
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First published June 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 9, 2021
As far as I’m concerned, this is the only book on city-building you need to read.
July 8, 2017
Di Cicco was the poet Laureate for the city of Toronto and while this is not a collection of poems it is rumination, or as Di Cicco calls them, manifestos about urban living.
"...and the beautiful is not landscape, or cityscape or architectonic; the beautiful is what people have built in the spaces between each other-a reciprocity, an exchange of ideals and a shared vision." 23
"Where there is excessive rule-consciousness, the citizen is inhibited and banished from the public forum, and discouraged from the free play of creativity. Ingenious design cannot redress the contradictions of bylaw and injunction. This rule-consciousness is anathema to the creative city." 37
"The private self is the child in us that seeks protection, that space in which we devise our defence against complexity, that space which houses our nerve zones of skepticism, alerting us to what is familiar and to what is foreign. It is the space we carefully renegotiate and defend with virtuality. The private self is nemesis of the city and is threatened by the city, though it uses the city to hide in, by the containment of the self in condos, by the protection of self by boundary laws, bylaws, gated communities, ordinances and privacy laws." 41
"When we feel welcome in our structures, we are at home, at ease and prone to be creative, and that "buzz" of creative and rejoiced ambience is felt, and passed on; and a city that is too big in many ways is then bonded, made to cohere to an atmosphere of conviviality and trust." 46
"Urban components should be in conversation with each other. To add to the conversation that is already there: this is the particular genius of planning. Not to eradicate and create the consistent, but to let the elements, already there, speak to each other. And to join in. And the conversation is varied. Buildings and land allude to each other, infrastructure and housing parley to each other. There is even a murmuring, there is a plea and a request for sharing between a grove of pines and a cloverleaf, between telephone lines and storefronts, between power plants and ravines." 49
"The citizen feels for the city that has fallen between the cracks and has escaped the brute exercise of wealth creation. The inadvertent, the under-planned, the randomly evolving city left to itself-this draws the affection of the civic lover." 52
"The soul of a city is about the finding of intimacy and stimulation in the streets that are a wardrobe and not just a place of business: on shorelines that lyrically address the urban; in residences that speak conviviality, under skylines that don't intimate, but invite aspiration.
The style of delight is in the way a city looks and the way the city breathes as you watch its citizens moving with and between each other and towards each other." 59
"In any event, diversity must be seen as larger than the ethno-racial, multicultural, or socio-cultural. It is the ideological. It is lifestyle, it is gender affiliation, it is religious. It is the political, independent of "ethnos." It is the ideation of references by which people make meaning of their lives. But meaning is more than concepts. Meaning is made up of aspirations, dreams, rejoicing, hopes, fears-elements that run deeper than a conventional study of values." 63
"People must emerge from heritage and lifestyles into a common forum, where their uniqueness is a given, but where their universality is defined." 67
"And where is home? Home is not a neighbourhood, not in a community. Home is in the unexpected welcome of the stranger. Home is in the charity reflected in the chance encounter. Home in what you want to make of the city where you are the object of kindness. Home is what you return to in the gatherings of people, in coffee shops, street corners-in those zones where you met the human eros." 76
"...and the beautiful is not landscape, or cityscape or architectonic; the beautiful is what people have built in the spaces between each other-a reciprocity, an exchange of ideals and a shared vision." 23
"Where there is excessive rule-consciousness, the citizen is inhibited and banished from the public forum, and discouraged from the free play of creativity. Ingenious design cannot redress the contradictions of bylaw and injunction. This rule-consciousness is anathema to the creative city." 37
"The private self is the child in us that seeks protection, that space in which we devise our defence against complexity, that space which houses our nerve zones of skepticism, alerting us to what is familiar and to what is foreign. It is the space we carefully renegotiate and defend with virtuality. The private self is nemesis of the city and is threatened by the city, though it uses the city to hide in, by the containment of the self in condos, by the protection of self by boundary laws, bylaws, gated communities, ordinances and privacy laws." 41
"When we feel welcome in our structures, we are at home, at ease and prone to be creative, and that "buzz" of creative and rejoiced ambience is felt, and passed on; and a city that is too big in many ways is then bonded, made to cohere to an atmosphere of conviviality and trust." 46
"Urban components should be in conversation with each other. To add to the conversation that is already there: this is the particular genius of planning. Not to eradicate and create the consistent, but to let the elements, already there, speak to each other. And to join in. And the conversation is varied. Buildings and land allude to each other, infrastructure and housing parley to each other. There is even a murmuring, there is a plea and a request for sharing between a grove of pines and a cloverleaf, between telephone lines and storefronts, between power plants and ravines." 49
"The citizen feels for the city that has fallen between the cracks and has escaped the brute exercise of wealth creation. The inadvertent, the under-planned, the randomly evolving city left to itself-this draws the affection of the civic lover." 52
"The soul of a city is about the finding of intimacy and stimulation in the streets that are a wardrobe and not just a place of business: on shorelines that lyrically address the urban; in residences that speak conviviality, under skylines that don't intimate, but invite aspiration.
The style of delight is in the way a city looks and the way the city breathes as you watch its citizens moving with and between each other and towards each other." 59
"In any event, diversity must be seen as larger than the ethno-racial, multicultural, or socio-cultural. It is the ideological. It is lifestyle, it is gender affiliation, it is religious. It is the political, independent of "ethnos." It is the ideation of references by which people make meaning of their lives. But meaning is more than concepts. Meaning is made up of aspirations, dreams, rejoicing, hopes, fears-elements that run deeper than a conventional study of values." 63
"People must emerge from heritage and lifestyles into a common forum, where their uniqueness is a given, but where their universality is defined." 67
"And where is home? Home is not a neighbourhood, not in a community. Home is in the unexpected welcome of the stranger. Home is in the charity reflected in the chance encounter. Home in what you want to make of the city where you are the object of kindness. Home is what you return to in the gatherings of people, in coffee shops, street corners-in those zones where you met the human eros." 76
July 14, 2022
Loved these meditations on the creative city. Municipal leaders should be forced to read this book.
August 12, 2016
This book read like it had cornered me at a social gathering to deliver a condescending lecture about what makes art "real" while holding a fancy glass of cheap red wine.
Format was interesting, though.
Format was interesting, though.
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December 14, 2018A couple golden nuggets that hit me really hard and inspired me, but overall the book left me underwhelmed, sometimes confused and a bit disappointed.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews