Cultural plurality and the creative city: how multicultural communities can help to build creative and sustainable urban habitat

Sustainability and creativity are key words in the town planning studies of the last twenty years more and more. Scientific literature is rich and variegated but the approaches and the same definitions (Taylor, 1988) are not univocal. Some attach great importance to the creative class (Florida, 2002) whose ability to produce development must be geared by promoting a hospitable urban environment. Others underline the need of politics to create a creative field, a humus preparatory to every strategy founded upon creativity (Scott, 2006). Others still hold creativity to be a tool of urban marketing which does not really address the problem of social equity (Peck 2005). We ought to reflect about how much is a fashionable trend and how much is substance. A reference comes from history, even though contexts and dynamics are specific to the period. After all there has been always a reasonable use of resources, except in the contemporary age, when the correct balance between the exploitation of resources and their availability is lost for future generations. As regards creativity, anyway, political leaders have always sought out creative people, trying to exploit their abilities and to make sure that they do not upset the status quo. Today's cities of the world have distinctive features which have never existed before: 1) most of the world's population live in the city; 2) the urban population is increasingly more multiethnic and multicultural. Differences between people and the pluralism of cultures that cohabit in contemporary cities are an important resource for implementing the principles of sustainability in town planning and architecture. Particularly, cultural plurality promotes a favourable environment for creativity and, therefore, for environmental, social and economic development.