Charles has undertaken city residences for a number of years. These are opportunities for a city to stand back and with a 'critical friend' to review where they are going. They are intense condensed periods of work, where he jointly reflects on a city's future with their leadership focusing on a theme or issue. They range from one week to three months. The most recent residences are:

• He was ‘Creative Capital Thinker in Residence’ for Perth over a 10 week period in 2007. He was brought out by FORM and their director Lynda Dorrington. FORM's strap-line is ‘Building a state of creativity’ and is a cultural change agent which works to stimulate West Australia's competitiveness and creativity through physical, attitudinal and systemic change. Its Creative Capital programme seeks to provide a forum for debate, and a catalyst for action on Perth's future. This highly visible project involved a weekly series of articles which were published by the West Australian and it resulted in a report called ‘Perth: Town Or City?’ (see free downloads) where Charles threw out a challenge to Perth to break through the psychological threshold to positive development summarized in a core proposition to carry out 10 big ideas and 100 small ideas within a framework of 1000 days. Over 1000 people packed His Majesty's Theatre to hear him sum up his conclusions and it seems he tapped the nerve of the city and especially its younger people.
• Previously he had been ‘Thinker in Residence’ in Adelaide, who invented the idea, over a period of three months in 2003. Charles was asked by the South Australian premier "to challenge, provoke and stimulate the city" and to find a way of bringing together the municipalities in the suburbs and the city centre in a joint vision. Over the period Charles held workshops, focus groups and presentations making contact directly and indirectly with 1500 people. It resulted in a publication Rethinking Adelaide: Capturing the imagination, available for free download.
• In Salem, Massachusetts, in April 2004 Charles was asked to help the local creative economy task force think through its next steps and after consultations with creative actors in the region to present conclusions to the annual Salem Partnership event for consideration.
• In May 2004 as part of Canberra's Innovation and Creativity Festival Charles was asked what Canberra's needed to do to ameliorate its image and how the city could keep its young people.