Culture at the Crossroads:
Culture and cultural institutions at the beginning of the 21st century
Marc Pachter & Charles Landry

Culture at the Crossroads re-imagines the 21st century cultural landscape. For the perplexed it is the book we have been looking for.

"The discussions on which Culture at the Crossroads is based were one of the most stimulating occasions I have experienced, provoking deep thought about how culture has changed in the last half century and how cultural institutions have - and should - be responding to such changes." Charles Saumarez Smith, director of the National Portrait Gallery, London

Innovative and Sustainable Cities
Sir Peter Hall & Charles Landry

An assessment survey and evaluation of over 500 urban innovations and best practices from over 20 countries in Europe, covering environmental, social, business and cultural initiatives to complete a six year study by the European Foundation for Living and Working Conditions. Includes a taxonomy of urban innovations.

Riding the Rapids
Urban life in an age of complexity

Riding the Rapids outlines a framework within which to view the future urban landscape paying particular attention to British cities. Deep-seated, intractable and contentious issues that shape our entire world-view we call faultlines. They may create insoluble problems and permanent ideological battlefields, such as a market driven world-view or one based on environmental ethics or secular views of the world or one based on religion.

Discussions and policy debates within faultlines often become battlegrounds because the nature of debate is intense and contested, such as focusing on multiculturalism or interculturalism, policies on social equity, whether we compact or disperse our cities or how to maintain distinctiveness in a globalizing world.

Riding the Rapids explores paradoxes affecting urban life, which are seemingly contradictory incongruities that create different outcomes from those envisaged. They include the simultaneous rise of a risk culture whilst we focus on the need for creativity or how accessibility can destroy the places or projects we want to make accessible. Some trends are 'drivers', because they shape how the urban system unfolds and how cities as a consequence look, feel and operate.

In pulling the threads together Riding the Rapids assesses the spatial implications of change and how change can be managed in an urban setting