Where curiosity about cities gets somewhere
Essays, films, field notes, photography and gatherings on how cities are actually made.
Most of it is open to everyone. A growing part is held for Fellows, whose subscriptions keep the Commons free for the rest.
Carla & Viola Bartoli: what a small town can teach a big one
A notary, a lawyer and a set of derelict Sicilian courtyards. The second generation of Farm Cultural Park on art as a political act — and why residency, not spectacle, is the method that travels.
Helen Marriage: wonder as infrastructure
Seven years of negotiation, one three-storey elephant, and a million people in the street — the Anchor Resident of our inaugural Creators in Residence programme on why permission is the medium.
A placemaker's guide to Singapore: seven districts to walk before The Art of Citymaking
Marina Bay, Jurong Lake District, Kampong Gelam, Tiong Bahru, Punggol Digital District and the Bras Basah arts belt — a working guide to the Singapore districts where placemaking is most legible, and the questions worth asking when you walk them.
A room of one hundred and fifty: The Citymaking Circle, previewed
Notes from the Founding Preview of The Citymaking Circle at The Nanson, Singapore — one week before the inaugural festival at the Glass Dome.
Financing Regenerative Citymaking
Eight working principles on the capital structure regeneration actually requires — patient seed, stewardship instruments, honest value capture, and anti-displacement as a financing covenant rather than a wish.
Creative placemaking: a working definition for the next decade
Creative placemaking is the deliberate use of arts and culture to shape a place — not decorate it. A working note on what the term names, what it doesn't, and how it cuts across Adaptive Neighbourhoods, Urban Software, and Placemaking & Legacy.
Adaptive Neighbourhoods: notes on regeneration
Seven working principles from inside the Adaptive Neighbourhoods theme — stewardship, editable rules, and anti-displacement as design constraint.
The Conscious Cities Index, v1
Three pillars, twelve indicators, one equation — a first reading of twelve cities against a framework that asks a different question of urban success.
From the Drawing Room: notes from the KL salon
Four lenses, three rounds, one question — what would it take for KL to be a city for all? A field record from a Friday morning at Yap Ah Shak House.
The Art of Citymaking: Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur as a City for All — what came up in the room.
Being versus doing: unlocking new dimensions of liveability
If liveability 1.0 measured the environment in service of human doing, liveability 2.0 must be concerned with the felt impact of that environment on human being — the conscious city.
districtBE: before the doing, being
On the edge of Jaipur, a living district inside Dhun is rehearsing a slower civilisation — ecology, community and attention held on a single ground.
Field: a commonplace book
An invitation to a slow scroll of poems, haiku, koans and photographs — the long-tail sensibility that sits behind the Conscious Cities Index.
Collections
Bodies of work that keep growing — a festival, a series of rooms, a way of walking a city.
The Festival, 17 June 2026
Everything the inaugural Art of Citymaking left behind — films, photography, field notes and the arguments that ran all day.
Voices
The citymakers who took the stage on 17 June 2026 — who they are, what they have built, and the argument they came to Singapore to make.
Salons
Small rooms, long conversations. Closed-door gatherings of citymakers across the region, written up in the open.
Placemakers' Guides
How to walk a city and actually notice it — district by district, written by the people who work there.
Themes
Adaptive Neighbourhoods
How cities adapt to the people who live in them — across a lifetime.
Urban Software
How connection, participation, and lived experience shape cities in practice.
Placemaking & Legacy
How culture and identity shape places that endure and evolve.
Field Notes
Correspondence from the people building better cities.
Occasional notes on the festival, the field, and the Circle. Unsubscribe any time.