Can You Transform Your City?

Hello Steemians! This week I wanted to start a series that looks into both my passion and career – the cultural innovation of places around the world. As an architect and artist, I'm a firm believer that focusing and transforming 'culture' through design, activity, and planning is one of the most effective (and unfortunately still highly undervalued) ways to better to the world.

Objectifying Abstract Values

• Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

One the most glaring weaknesses of creative professions is a lack of focus and understanding of how exactly creative work affects the world. We all grow up with a vague idea that museums, parks, public spaces, festivals, etc. are something we need in general society, but the comprehension of how these works actually impact the economies, policies, social structures, and so forth of various places is still very elementary in all but a few cities.

Creative professionals often draw a distinct line between design and logistics, simply pushing away the responsibility of a mathematical or structural understanding of design's impact onto accountants or economists or planners and a plethora of other professions.

I believe this to be a fault that should be discussed. If we are to fully take accountability and have authority with our creative work, we should be at least fundamentally versed in the real-world manifestations and consequences of design.

A Broad Outlook with Specific Goals

The definition of culture is incredibly diverse and every neighborhood, town, city, country, continent, or international organization tackles the issue of culture in a different way. Cultural efficacy can be a seasonal baseball game, a yearly festival, or a massive undertaking of heritage and planning for all civilizations. Although cultural is scalable, it is imperative to situate how culture works in different places at different times.

• Old-town Geneva

Despite the vast variety, it is of no doubt that culture is what sustains us at least partially throughout our lives. They engender within us a sense of societal belonging, they impress and enlighten us with unbelievable creative feats, they buoy hard days at work with a fun hobby to look forward to after business hours.

And yet the exact benefits and effects are so easily ignored.

With this series, I intend to look at various scenarios, throughout history and existing today, of how we as humankind have created incredible places and scenarios with our collective creativity. I'll look at the cultural development of cities, the efforts of transnational institutions, and the initiatives of singular practitioners.

• You don't need farm animals for this Hay festival!

Stay tuned for the 2nd installment of this series where I'll be looking at the David that became a Goliath in the literary world, the Hay-on-Wye book festival!

And if you have any place you know, been to, or learned about, please comment below! I'm always open to new places of suggestions that I can look into for future studies.

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