Conference Imagining: culture, co-existence, and the city in an unstable world

Thinking

105′

Imagining: culture, co-existence, and the city in an unstable world

May 23rd | 02:30 PM
Auditório da Biblioteca Municipal

Charles Landry [UK]

Facilitation: Isabel Lucas [PT]

The city is never silent. It speaks through storefronts and square corners, through chance encounter, celebrations and conflicts, through the invisible codes that organise how we meet, trade, argue and care. Every person, every business, every interaction leaves a trace. We shape the city through our decisions and habits, and the city shapes us in return, influencing how we perceive reality and how we relate to one another. If this mutual influence is constant, the question is not whether we are involved, but where this shared trajectory is leading us.

In a time marked by instability, imagining demands more than optimism or the quiet maintenance of what no longer holds. Public discourse is saturated with urgency, and the language of adaptation often replaces the language of vision. The present feels compressed, dense with overlapping crises and competing narratives. Within this atmosphere, imagination risks being reduced to small gestures that stabilise without transforming. This conference proposes another stance, approaching imagining as a deliberate civic act that accepts friction, ambiguity and responsibility as necessary conditions for meaningful change.

The city is where these tensions materialise. It is not only a physical environment but a complex web of economic systems, institutional frameworks and cultural narratives that shape collective experience. Coexistence is enacted daily. Who occupies space, who defines value, who participates and who remains unheard? Culture is not peripheral to this process. It frames belonging, difference and the negotiation of our common ground, shaping the depth and intensity of urban experience.

The work of Charles Landry offers an important lens for approaching these questions. His reflection on the creative city challenges urban environments to unlock human and institutional potential often constrained by rigid systems and habitual thinking. The Imaginarius Conference draws on this perspective not to provide ready-made answers, but to create a space for shared reflection. Beyond strategies and policies, there is a more immediate layer of urban life, one that is felt before it is explained. This gathering invites us to engage with that dimension of the city, recognising that imagining must be rooted not only in analysis, but in lived experience.

Charles Landry is a prominent figure in city development and innovation and has helped cities across the world. Best known for writing “The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators and the “Art of City Making” his work reimagines city-making by exploring the nomadic world, intercultural cities, cultural resources and creative economy, the psychology of urban spaces, risk and fragility and measuring creativity. In 2003 he developed the ‘creative bureaucracy’ notion and argued that public administrations needed to become more imaginative so as to regain trust with citizens and stakeholders. This way the value of the public good could be rekindled. Initially the idea was dismissed. But publishing the Creative Bureaucracy book in 2017 (co-written with Margie Caust) and the launch in 2018 of the Creative Bureaucracy Festival in Berlin which he co-founded with Sebastian Turner has given the idea credibility and momentum.

Isabel Lucas is a journalist and literary critic. She holds a degree in Communication Sciences from Universidade Nova de Lisboa and began her career in television journalism, later working in the newsrooms of several of Portugal’s leading newspapers and magazines. A freelancer since 2012, she writes regularly for Público and contributes to the magazine Ler, to Quatro Cinco Um and to Antena 3. Her work has appeared in a range of national and international publications. She is the author of Isabel_Lucas — Conversas com Vicente Jorge Silva (Temas e Debates, 2013), Viagem ao sonho americano, Viagem ao país do futuro and Conversas com escritores, the latter three published by Companhia das Letras. She is also co-author of several books in the fields of dance and visual arts. In 2022, she curated the programme of the Pavilhão de Portugal at the Bienal do Livro de São Paulo. She is curator of the Prémio Oceanos de Literatura and a visiting assistant professor at the Escola Superior de Comunicação Social of the Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa. In 2021, she won the first edition of the Prémio Jornalismo de Excelência Vicente Jorge Silva.