"Creative energy is the only inexhaustible resource we have."  - Pier Giorgio di Cicco, poet laureate for the City of Toronto.

The conversations at the Chicago Humanities Festival are always a pleasure.  Last weekend, I heard Saskia Sassen (she of Global City fame), her husband and author Richard Sennett (power couple extraordinaire), Ricky Burdett of Urban Age and Philip Enquist, SOM partner in charge of Urban Design and Planning lecture. 

Today, I had a chance to hear two more programs:  Go To 2040 and Offshoring Audacity.

The morning session had a consistent message:  Chicago must dream big to compete with London, Paris, Beijing and Shanghai. These four cities were mentioned repeatedly, and the clear ambition is for Chicago to compete with these cities.  But what made the first presentation this morning especially exciting was Rick Harnish, who runs Midwest High Speech Rail Coalition.  He makes a compelling, detailed, persuasive case for high speed rail in the U.S.  The coalition is pushing a high speed system for the Midwest that connects Minneapolis to Cincinnati, Detroit to St. Louis, with Chicago at the hub of the "X".  If the increasing calls for federal investment in infrastructure continue, high speed rail could move from plan to reality.  Putting all of these cities within 3 hours of comfortable travel from downtown Chicago will increase productivity, help centralize business in these city centers, likely lead to increased density around stations and 

Rick is planning a trip to Madrid and Barcelon in January to show off Spain's high speed rail system.  Last week Californians approved their own high speed rail (although sadly, the referendum to extend BART to San Jose failed by less than 1 percent.).  President-elect Barack Obama has talked openly and repeatedly about his support for high speed rail and, according to Rick, high speed rail also has the support of Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin.  Could high speed rail really be in the near future of America? 

Offshoring Audacity was a discussion of architecture as a manufacturer of identity of place.  The discussion picked up on a theme sounded by Saskia last weekend:  Uniqueness of place is what is most valued but our system of global finance (and architecture?) pushes in the direction of sameness.

The session's other provocative theme was this:  If it is Western architects designing buildings in the Middle East financed with Russian oil money, where exactly is "offshore"?  Who is us and who is them?  Where is here and where is there?  All of the panelists were under 40 (and several much younger), and it strikes me that the concept of "offshore" has little relevance to them. 

This echoed the discussion at the CEOs for Cities national meeting and our Friday Creative Cities Network gathering on the increasing challenges to institutions by the next generation. Think about those severely challenged:  newspapers, churches, big arts institutions, old-style nonprofits (instead, we reward "social entrepreneurs").  The question is, is it worth tweaking the existing institutions?  Or will something completely new appear to take their place?  Instead of an "either/or" situation, will this be a "yes/and" sort of response?  Questions worth pondering...

Good column today in the NYT on Innovation is relevant to our upcoming meeting of the CEOs for Cities Creative City Network.  Some thoughts:

++ Five core values are needed to entrench innovation in the corporate mind-set:  questioning, risk-taking, openness, patience and trust.  All five must be used together. 

++ Bad times focus the mind, and the best-focused minds in the down times are looking for opportunities. 

++ Our biggest challenge right now is fear. 

++ As Howard Lieberman, serial entrepreneur and founder of the Silicon Valley Innovation Institute, told NYT, "Creativity doesn't care about economic downturns.  In the middle of the 1970s when we were having a big economic downturn, both Apple and Microsoft were founded.  Creative people don't care about the time or the season or the state of the economy; they just go out and do their thing." 

Some quick lines from today's conversations...

"Creativity is the only inextinguishable resource we have."

There are 3 principles of the creative ecology from John Howkins: 

1.  Everyone is creative.
2.  Creativity needs freedom.
3.  Freedom needs markets.

Creativity does not equal the arts. Creativity is not the same as innovation.

Creativity needs freedom of expression, dialogue, collaboration, education and learning, cities and clusters, and acceptance by family and society.

Creativity is not deferential.  You don't do it (creativity) because something thinks it's a good idea.  Otherwise, it becomes the repetitive economy.  The creative economy thrives on novelty and meaning.

The creative economy is an economy of failure.  It we skirt that truth, we are back to repetitive economy.

The creative ecology is niche where diverse individuals express themselves in systematic and adaptive ways, using ideas to produce ideas and others support this even if they don't understand it.

It's easy to build a building.  It's hard to fund creativity.

Diversity -> Change -> Learning -> Adaptation

Education is only important if it enables learning.

Cities must ask, "How big is our learning capacity?"

With creative cities strategies increasingly gaining the attention of city leaders around the world, the Creative Cities Summit being hosted in Detroit October 12 – 15 will engage leaders with ideas on how to “rethink and redesign our cities for this age of innovation, knowledge and creativity”. 

By hosting this event Detroit hopes to draw from the expertise that will be shared through the conference and inspire “cities shaped by the industrial revolution that now look forward to a new, vibrant creative economy” in their endeavors.

The extensive line up of speakers and sessions includes a discussion between “The Creative Big Three” Charles Landry, John Howkins, Richard Florida and our own Carol Coletta.

More information at the Creative Cities Summit website here.

The Creative Cities Network will convene for its third meeting following our National Meeting.  This post-conference session will be held Nov. 7, 2008 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Between two existing paradigms for cities expressed by Tom Friedman’s ‘race-to-the-bottom,’ flat world view versus Richard Florida and Bill Bishop’s spiky world, perhaps a third paradigm emerges in the creative cities world view.

In this ‘Third Way,’ all cities have the inherent potential to succeed in today’s social and economic context by tapping the potential that exists in their assets, connections and people. The key differentiator for cities and their success will depend on how a city unleashes, connects and grows this creative capacity.

This third meeting will build upon the insights of the Network’s conversations to date to generate ideas and strategies for enriching the creative performance of our cities.

CEOs for Cities members interested in joining this conversation can contact Rebecca Eggleston at reggleston@ceosforcities.org or by reserving your spot online by logging onto www.ceosforcities.org/meetings.

Yesterday, I visited with Aly Khalifa and his partner Beth (and dog Angus) in their DesignBox offices in Raleigh, NC.  Aly is my new Starfish guru, the man who with colleagues created the open source potluck festival, SparkCon.  Aly explained the concept behind DesignBox.

For more from Aly, we talked to him last week on "Smart City."