‘Our Wellington’: A civic profile of Wellington
Wellington City Council, 2004
Chapter 1: ‘Epitome of a creative city’
Advances in technology have meant that creativity is the most highly prized commodity of the global economy. Creativity is at the heart of innovation, and innovation drives economic growth — the Holy Grail of cities and regions everywhere.
In turn, the people who drive this creativity, whose ideas, knowledge and skills are so prized in the fields of IT, engineering, architecture, science, arts and media, and so on, are redefining the basic tenets of modern society. Almost everything, from contemporary values, to people’s use of time and increasingly their choices of where to live, are changing.
This has profound implications for our cities. Creative people are moving away from traditional corporate and manufacturing centres to places where creativity of all kinds can flourish. They are seeking authenticity, community, quality of life, and a genuine spirit of individuality as well as tolerance, openness and diversity.
For Wellington’s civic leaders, this description of what constitutes ‘a creative city’ is a powerful confirmation that Wellington is a remarkable place that stands out internationally.
This was confirmed recently in a Washington Monthly (January 2004) article by Richard Florida, an American regional economist and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, who travelled to New Zealand in 2003, and visited Peter Jackson’s Miramar film studios.
Of all the cities in the world to choose from, he led his article with a focus on Wellington as the epitome of an international creative centre rivalling the top creative cities of the United States. He called Jackson’s studios one of those “paradigm-busting creative industries” that help to “change the ways cities flourish”, and labelled Wellington “exciting and cosmopolitan”…