Modena is the typical small city in the North of Italy, not far from Bologna and relatively near to Florence. Most people may know it in relation to beautiful cars like Ferrari, De Tomaso and Maserati. Food lovers will probably know that balsamic vinegar comes from Modena. The city itself with almost 200.000 inhabitants has a University that dates… Read More
Just south of Leblon, not so very far away from the center of Rio de Janeiro, on a mountain side overlooking the Atlantic Ocean lies a spectacular park. Mauro Quintanilha started to clean the site near the favela of Vidigal around 2006 when he became extremely frustrated with the smell, the sight and the whole… Read More
The first time I entered the Gasholder of Amsterdam’s Westergasfabriek must have been around 1990. I had just started to work for the Amsterdam district council of Westerpark and was appointed as manager for public space. One of my projects was going to be the remediation of this former gas factory. Gas production had stopped… Read More
Travelling to places around the globe you sometimes hit upon the unexpected. Some three years ago I travelled to Recife in Brazil to find out that this city has a history that connects it strongly with the Netherlands, especially with the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The man responsible for that was Maurits von Nassau Siegen. Family of the Dutch Nassau’s but born… Read More
Travel with me to a city in Brazil. A city that might as well represent hundreds of other cities elsewhere in the world. A city with an interesting history. But also a city that encounters real problems. I had the pleasure to be there again the last week of May 2014. Let me tell you more about it… Read More
Most people know about Casablanca because they know about a movie with that name. The movie was not even filmed there, but it stands somewhere in the top 10 of most watched films ever. Every city needs that identity. A fantastic movie with an intriguing name certainly helps. I learned to know that city better when I was working… Read More
Went to Taiwan last week to speak on a conference. It’s really great to be invited to do a thing like this. Since I’m not an academic and I don’t have a research department behind me it’s great to do these kinds of lectures, to be able to communicate my views on creativity, on talent… Read More
Here is the story they told me at Strijp-R last week. We went there with a group of project managers from Amsterdam. Eindhoven is not that far and we were really interested on how they do things there. We went to see the redevelopment of the former Philips Electronics factories. In the afternoon we visited… Read More
Talked to Astrid and Boudewijn earlier this week. We were sitting in their office of the Vechtclub XL. I was asking them how things had grown like this. Having been there two weeks earlier I had really gotten inspired. This is why I decided to go back. Everywhere else these places are built with subsidies… Read More
Eindhoven was always an industrial place. It was never a real city. More a collection of villages like Strijp, Woensel, Stratum and others. It was Philips (the electronics company) and DAF (cars and trucks) that made the place look big. I was born in Veldhoven which is one of the smaller villages to the south… Read More
Creative Cities