Peter Kresl: Creativity plays an important role in building world cities
On May 18, the International Summit of Beijing Metropolitan Area Development 2011, entitled “Capital Economic Circle,New Development Opportunities” was held grandly in Langfang, Hebei Province. PeterKresl, President of Global Urban Competitiveness Project, said in theinterview with reporters from finance.chinanews.com and other media that a veryimportant part of building a world city would be creativity, and that in orderto develop the creative industry, the government has to gradually loosen control.
‘Worldcity’ today is the positioning of many cities. It is high-end positioning. Tobecome an international city, it is a must for a city to achieve comprehensivedevelopment and do really well in all aspects. Metropolises like Beijing mustachieve all-round, comprehensive development and overall progress in order tobe called a world city.” Peter Kresl said so.
Meanwhile,he stressed that a very important part of building a world city is creativity.Vienna before and after WWI, Paris and Berlin after WWII, and New York and theSilicon Valley after WWII all had one thing in common in their development,that is, the floating of talented people. A huge number of creative people cameto these cities with original ideas and creative concepts and made greatcontributions to the development of such cities into metropolises.
To better control the population floating from the countryside to the urban areas,problems in many aspects like housing, education and medical services have tobe solved. To better control the speed or size of population floating, we wouldhave to distinguish the creative ones from those who come just for a job. It isnot easy to tell the difference or distinguish between them. Beijing hasrestrictions in some aspects, which is detrimental to developing the creativeindustry in Beijing.
When answering the question of “What considerations should Beijing take into whenmaking policies?” Peter Kresel held that the government had to gradually loosenrestrictions on instead of managing too strictly the creative industry if it intendedto develop the creative industry. To develop the creative industry in Beijingis not to simply innovate on the current art industry or music or similarindustries, but to conduct institutional innovations, that is, to build aninstitution capable of promoting the development of the creative industry.