Monocle's The Urbanist recently published an episode on three projects shaping very different kinds of cities: Ion Riva in Turkey, Diriyah in Saudi Arabia, and London's Fleet Street Quarter.
Three Futurecity clients: an ambitious place focused public art masterplan for Diriyah Company l شركة الدرعية. A new culture-led people-centric creative district for Ion RIVA in Istanbul and Fleet Street Quarter where a radical new approach to culture led destination led by the Business Investment District (BID).
A new neighbourhood. A reimagined heritage capital. A historic district being rewritten. On paper they share nothing. Different continents, different scales, different stages of a city's life. What connects them is a decision each made early: to put culture at the centre of how the place is conceived, not at the end as decoration.
Futurecity has worked on cultural strategies for all three.
Ion Riva, Turkey
A cultural placemaking strategy to shape an authentic identity for a new neighbourhood next to the Black Sea.
Diriyah, Saudi Arabia
A place-focused public art masterplan that weaves contemporary cultural expression through a historic capital, helping one of the region's most significant heritage sites speak to a local and global audience.
Fleet Street Quarter, London
A cultural strategy that positions the BID as custodian of the historic district's stories, using culture to reconnect old and new and put Fleet Street back on the map.
The reason these projects embraced culture isn't aesthetic. It's about two kinds of value.
The social value is in liveability: places people feel they belong to, that hold community, identity and meaning, and that stay relevant as a place changes around them. The economic value follows from this. A distinctive, culturally rich place commands attention, attracts investment and talent, sustains footfall and dwell time, and protects long-term asset value in a way that generic development simply cannot. In the language of the sector, culture is what moves a scheme from sustainable to genuinely liveable, and, at its best, regenerative: a place that gives back more to its environment than it takes. Software first There's also a discipline behind it that we'd argue matters more than any single intervention. The instinct in development is to perfect the hardware of place: the buildings, the public realm, the infrastructure; and treat the software, the meaning and life of a place, as something that arrives later. We think that's backwards. Working with the software of place early, before the masterplan hardens, is what allows an authentic, place-based story to emerge rather than be retrofitted. That story is what culture programmes, partnerships and people then bring to life. It's also what makes a place legible, to residents, to investors, to local authorities, and what gives it a reason to exist beyond its square metres.
That three projects this diverse arrived at the same conviction is the clearest case we could make for the work.
The Urbanist episode is worth 30