The concept of creative industries within the creative city and its implications on the quality of public space

Abstract

The goal of the presented paper is to investigate the potential positive influence that integrating the creative industries within the concept of the creative city can have on the quality of public spaces. The primary supposition is that the concerned idea can formulate an important part of the integrated urban renewal strategy, bringing a response to the declining attractiveness of city centres as well as to the growing outward migration of their inhabitants. Particularly, situating the creative industry plants within an urban context can be considered as an action that can potentially lead to the economic revival of the neglected neighbourhoods and, in consequence, can initiate their effective revitalisation process, leading to the urban landscape’s vital improvement. The concept of such a strategy constitutes of the substantive basis of the design task being commissioned to architecture students at the Poznań University of Technology within the framework of the regular training program. The exercise is to design a creative industry plant within an urban context and it has for its preliminary step to identify a district that requires modernisation. Then, by introducing the heterogeneity of both architecture and use, the students’ projects aim to diversify the functional profile of the neighbourhood as well as to create new public spaces or to revitalise existing ones. Concentrated mainly on the agglomeration of Poznan, the presented paper resumes the outcome of the concerned academic projects and investigates the prospective influence of the concept of creative industries within the creative city on the quality of the urban space.