The Routledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning (Routledge, 2024) provides a manual for planning for arts and culture in cities, featuring chapters and case studies from Africa, the Americas, Australasia, the Middle East, South and East Asia, and more. The handbook is organized around seven themes: arts and planning for equity and social development; incorporating culture in urban planning; the intersection of creative and cultural industries and tourism planning; financing; public buildings, public space and public art; cultural heritage planning; and culture and the climate crisis. Urban planners are often tasked with preserving and attracting new art and culture to a city, but there are no common rules on how practitioners accomplish this work. This handbook will be an invaluable resource for city planners and designers, cultural workers, elected officials, artists, and social justice workers and advocates seeking to integrate creativity and culture into urban planning.

Rana Amirtahmasebi is an economic development and cultural planning strategist and researcher. She is the founder of Eparque Urban Strategies in New York and previously worked at the World Bank, Aga Khan Programme on Islamic Architecture at MIT and several other entities.

Jason Schupbach is the dean of the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design at Drexel University. He is a nationally recognized expert on support systems for creatives and the nexus of creativity and equitable community development.

This interview was conducted by Timi Koyejo, a graduate student in urban studies at the University of Vienna. He has worked professionally as a researcher at the University of Chicago and as an urban policy advisor to the City of Chicago.

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