While a gentle snow storm has covered the city centre of Copenhagen under a white sheet, we are invited to join in the Science Cafe by tonights gentle host Gert Balling. Questions start popping up from the very start.
 
WHat have been the strategies for creating creative cities in recent years? Some cities (eg Bilbao) have used the James Bond perspective to urban development: 'Just add culture and then stir'. This has not been a very longterm and rather top-down.
Another strategy has been adopted from Richard Florida's 3 Ts: Tolerance, Talents and Technology. The prime example being San Francisco with its diverse population, arts and PR community and the IT superhub Silicon Valley. But is focusing on the 3 Ts enough for any city? Didn't San Francisco have a head start? Would you think of SØnderborg (in the province of Denmark) in the same way? Would you go to Sønderborg or other small-scale provincial towns, if you did not get a job there? How can you attract the creative class for real - and for a longer time?

Cities need to create scenes and cultures for creativity, which reach beyond the arts and the creative industries.