Abstract
On May 12, 2006, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) officially declared Montréal as an international City of Design. As the only North American metropolis to have received this designation from UNESCO, Montréal is the ideal location to begin a program of research interrogating and questioning the merits of a “Design City.” This paper outlines the early stages of a transnational investigation connecting all ten UNESCO cities through comparative case study analysis. For six days in May 2011, a diverse group of 22 designers, artists and researchers from seven countries explored Montréal’s designation as a design capital. This collaborative research residency was organized in partnership with DesignInquiry, a non-profit educational organization devoted to researching design issues in intensive team-based gatherings. Participants engaged in a critical examination of the qualifying criteria invoked by UNESCO during the selection process for prospective cities. The evaluative rubric published by the organization is profoundly weighted towards the presence of existing creative economies, almost exclusively privileging industrial development. By contrast, this research residency focused on the social realities and impacts of design in constructing individual and collective experiences within the built environment. The long-term objective of this project is to conduct similar research events in each of the UNESCO-designated cities, in order to address how design can fundamentally influence the quality of life for each city’s inhabitants. The study will also evaluate the validity of applying a universal model of assessment to geographically, culturally, and economically disparate regions of the world—an approach that is seemingly antithetical to the UNESCO vision.
Keywords
cultural diversity, the built environment, UNESCO creative cities network, urban planning, economic sustainability, collaborative research
Citation
Moore, C. (2012) UNESCO Cities of Design: Montréal as prototype, in Israsena, P., Tangsantikul, J. and Durling, D. (eds.), Research: Uncertainty Contradiction Value - DRS International Conference 2012, 1-4 July, Bangkok, Thailand. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2012/researchpapers/93
UNESCO Cities of Design: Montréal as prototype
On May 12, 2006, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) officially declared Montréal as an international City of Design. As the only North American metropolis to have received this designation from UNESCO, Montréal is the ideal location to begin a program of research interrogating and questioning the merits of a “Design City.” This paper outlines the early stages of a transnational investigation connecting all ten UNESCO cities through comparative case study analysis. For six days in May 2011, a diverse group of 22 designers, artists and researchers from seven countries explored Montréal’s designation as a design capital. This collaborative research residency was organized in partnership with DesignInquiry, a non-profit educational organization devoted to researching design issues in intensive team-based gatherings. Participants engaged in a critical examination of the qualifying criteria invoked by UNESCO during the selection process for prospective cities. The evaluative rubric published by the organization is profoundly weighted towards the presence of existing creative economies, almost exclusively privileging industrial development. By contrast, this research residency focused on the social realities and impacts of design in constructing individual and collective experiences within the built environment. The long-term objective of this project is to conduct similar research events in each of the UNESCO-designated cities, in order to address how design can fundamentally influence the quality of life for each city’s inhabitants. The study will also evaluate the validity of applying a universal model of assessment to geographically, culturally, and economically disparate regions of the world—an approach that is seemingly antithetical to the UNESCO vision.