Q&A – Charles Landry | Urban planner: ‘Green buildings have a higher value, so financially it can work’

Charles Landry, a British urban planning expert and author of several books, among them “The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators,” was the keynote speaker of Sunday’s “Lectures by Masters of Culture” event organized by the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC).
Last Friday, on the sidelines of a press conference regarding his lecture, Landry talked to the Times about some of his ideas about Macau and urban planning around the world.

Macau Daily Times (MDT) – How is it possible to make large scale urban plans amid an economic recession?
Charles Landry (CL) – I think quite often, when the economy isn’t doing well, it forces planning people to think hard about what works. When the economy is doing well, often people then go over the top. And so what often happens is they make plans that might very well fall through, even when the economy is doing well. When the economy is doing badly, you then think harder about, for example, how do you take an old building, how can you renovate it, all of these sorts of things. So often, you take more care, I found. And in terms of having a vision there are two sides; when the economy is going well, your vision is like this [broad], whereas when it is going badly, it’s more constrained but you can also be rather interesting and creative within constraints – that’s my main point. In terms of social things, usually when the economy is not doing well, of course these problems are merged strongly. In times of economic hardship, in Europe at least, people have tried to find different ways of dealing with problems. For example, co-creating solutions with the people affected, so working with the community, rather than providing for the community.
MDT – How do we keep building without diminishing the attractiveness of cities?
CL – It depends on how you build. I feel that we could have much more imaginative buildings. At the moment, most buildings we see here always adhere to a standard. Some of the new buildings I have seen here [in Macau], they are a bit depressing. But you know, in Singapore, for example, you have got sort of hydroponic buildings, buildings that have green layers like gardens on every layer. So these buildings are broken up, that’s good for the environment, because it looks more attractive. […] So it’s all about imagination, or good design, or thinking together with other people. So I think the people who are doing the building shouldn’t just think I am the architect, or I am the construction engineer, they should collaborate with other disciplines.
MDT – How can urban planers build green?
CL – If your ambition is to be green, there are two things to that: green buildings have a higher value, so financially, it can work. Secondly, there is a financial pressure on a city state, like Macau, because if you want the best people, they are beginning to expect green, energy efficient buildings. I don’t think that’s a contradiction, green and so on. In the past, it clearly was more expensive, but now that is becoming a cross-over point. Particularly, if you take a wider view of profitability, if you take it in terms of the city state as a whole, or the long life of the building, then it’s actually quite cheap.
MDT – Do you think the world sees Macau as an attractive location in terms of creative urban planning?
CL – Macau needs to send a  signal to the world. If it sends a signal to the world that it’s trying to be like this, then of course people will be attracted. They are waiting, they are hungering, they want to places to act in this new way. Macau is already on the map in many ways and it could also come to be known as a hub of creative urban planning.
MDT – What would you advise to maintain a balance between the preservation of resources and cultural heritage and the constant increase in construction?
CL – Every city knows, if you just went according to the market in a wild way, then of course, you are knocking all these buildings down and putting skyscrapers on them. It would be easy to not put these buildings down here, and put more skyscrapers, people would make more money. We need a wider definition of profit. If you only take into consideration the profit received from the building, then you can say a culturally significant building is inefficient. If you add all the different forms of capital, heritage capital, cultural capital, social capital, memory capital, all of these capitals, this makes this building very valuable  –    more valuable than 20 stories’ of apartments here. Cities that are lifeless and soulless, tend to have unhappy people, so it’s a question of whether Macau wants people to be more or less happy.
MDT – Do you think education, here in Macau, produces creativity?
CL – Probably not, that’s the same in many other places. That is a general problem, but I am sure it’s the same in Macau. We call it rote learning, that means repeating, this is the answer, this is what it is and so on. That does not help to strengthen creative thinking skills. Creativity requires a different skill set, which is about learning how to put different things together, understanding how to communicate, which is a different type of skill from learning a specific subject. I am not against learning but it is important to note that there are different forms of education. Julie Zhu