The publication addresses issues of artistic and creative practices within city planning and local communities, particularly in Osaka and Copenhagen. Such approach opens to broader fields of urbanity in relation to governance, citizenship, and identities, including aspects of creative industries, popular culture, and aesthetic values.

Central to the discussion will be concerns about the social dimension in city planning as well as social reactions to and appropriations of urban redevelopment. There are two key questions we wish to highlight in presentations and discussions:
•    How is the diversity of urban life facilitated through urban planning?
•    How does practices of cultural creativity manifest itself in the city?

Particular attention will be given to artistic or cultural projects mediating between the planed and the improvised city – between built form and urban mobility. In what ways does such projects, in the form of planed spaces, events, critical interventions or collaborative projects, lend visibility to minor cultures and practices while at the same time enhancing urban or local character? And how might the addition to urban environments of sensorial qualities such as light, sound, colors etc. add to the development of a socially inclusive, safe, lively, active urban culture?

The aim of the publication is to investigate actual, site-specific projects, particularly in Osaka and Copenhagen, and from this attempt to draw broader theoretical conclusions regarding models for cultural planning and social inclusion in cities for the future. By focusing on the similarities and differences between cities such as Osaka and Copenhagen, it may be possible to detect patterns related to broader models of Asian and Scandinavian urban planning, their histories, cultures and social contexts.