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.
“A City Is a Drama in Time”
Charles Landry, our Festival President, has spent nearly fifty years arguing that culture is a city’s operating system rather than its ornament — and that the software of a place outlives its hardware.
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.
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.
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.