Creative City Planning: Integration of Cultural Assets in Planning the Vibrant City

Abstract

Cultural-planning has been a popular topic among urban planners as a strategy to regenerate city centres. Helsinki started adapting the concept of creative-city, a prodigy of cultural- planning, after being named the European Capital of Culture in 2000. This annual crowning is parallel to the embracement of the creative-city paradigm in North America, where the societies are diverse and polarised. The complexity of social value in the North American city may have found refuge in this concept to unite its urban landscape. More homogeneous Helsinki is readopting its industrial core for creative industries thus initialising city?s intention to exploit this impulsive regeneration to embrace its cultural diversification. Our research focused on Arabiaranta, a regenerated urban district where the School of Arts and Design forms the nucleus of a new urban living. City authorities took progressive steps, removing constraints to implement cultural-planning, by reforming land-use planning, zoning, and organizational structures to create socio-culturally diverse urban spaces. The place-specific strategy improved the liveability of Arabiaranta without compromising its morphology. Our study, based on qualitative research, documents a case of adopting the concept creative-city to instigate regeneration within a city-wide master plan.