Researching a story on how cities and communities in Norway redefine and reorient themselves by funding culture-based initiatives, I stumbled across the conflict playing out over Glasgow’s future. Today the think-tank Demos published a report called The Dreaming City, by their own words “an experiment to open up Glasgow’ls future to the mass imagination of its citizens.” Among the conclusions, reported by the BBC:

The report argued that recent UK urban regeneration was based on an unsustainable ‘cultural arms race’, with cities competing against each other to attract investment and tourism.

The Glasgow city council didn’t really like the report, and a spokesman called it “bizarre” and an insult to the city’s people.

Demos’ approach is anyway interesting: They have involved citizens in a storytelling project, claiming that it is the first attempt to imagine the future of a city in this way. As more and more cities try to find the right role for culture and “creative industries”, the issue of legitimacy and popular participation is certainly important to consider. A one-sided top-down approach by elites in love with the Bilbao story would be the least advisable…