Urban Imagination: As 58 New Cities Join the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, We Re-examine What "Livable" Really Means

At six in the morning, by Lake Victoria in Kisumu, the tunes fishermen hum as they haul in their nets echo the brass sounds from jazz bars in New Orleans at night. Twelve thousand kilometers apart, the two cities crossed paths in the autumn of 2025 because of a shared identity—both were accepted into the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, one for music, and the other for music too.

This is not a cold list update. With 58 new members, the network, which began in 2004, has expanded to 408 cities. When you read the list closely, you will find that it is more like a map of contemporary urban lifestyles: Riyadh joined for design, Giza for film, and Rovaniemi became the first city to join under the "architecture" theme—the network's newly added eighth theme, and the most forward-looking footnote in the process of urbanization.

Creativity, the New Infrastructure of Cities

In the past, we tended to judge a city by its GDP, the number of skyscrapers, or the level of its transport hubs. But today, more and more cities are realizing that what truly makes people want to stay, work, and create is an unquantifiable yet omnipresent cultural atmosphere. That is exactly what the UNESCO Creative Cities Network aims to capture.

Matosinhos, a small port city in northern Portugal known for seafood and traditional canned goods, is now being seen through its gastronomy. Its selection was not due to Michelin-starred restaurants, but to how locals use a single cod to sustain community bonds across generations. Similarly, Cuenca in Ecuador—this colonial mountain city has found a modern narrative connecting history and future through pottery and candy-making crafts.

These cities lack the halo of Silicon Valley and the voice of first-tier metropolises. But in the most local of ways, they prove that cultural creativity is not an accessory to economic development, but something far more fundamental: a driving force. As UNESCO Director-General Azoulay put it, these cities are using creativity to boost local initiatives, attract investment, and promote social cohesion—the latter being especially precious in today's highly mobile era.

When Cities Begin to Compete on Culture

If you spend an afternoon in a seaside bookstore in Aberystwyth, or watch an experimental animation screening at an independent film studio in Malang, you will notice a common thread: these cities are deliberately building a perceptible cultural identity. This is no longer just the job of a city marketing department; it has become a collective creation of the city's residents.

The digital nomad wave has changed the traditional relationship between work and space. As remote work loosens geographic constraints, people's criteria for choosing a city have quietly shifted from "where are the job opportunities" to "where is it worth living." This is why the Creative Cities Network feels especially important in 2025—it offers an alternative logic for city rankings, yet one that pays more attention to texture and warmth than any list.The newly emerging "architecture" theme is particularly intriguing. Finland's Rovaniemi, located on the Arctic Circle, is famous for Santa Claus Village and the northern lights. But the reason for its selection is not these tourist symbols, but rather its wooden architecture tradition and sustainable design experiments developed in the harsh cold climate. This reminds us that urban renewal doesn't necessarily require demolition and rebuilding; it can also be a wise response to the existing environment.

The Everyday Significance of the Global Network

Essaouira, Morocco's coastal city of winds, will host the Creative Cities Network annual meeting in 2026. In this small city proud of its music, the low-frequency vibrations of Gnawa music drift through the streets all year round. When representatives from 408 cities gather here, what they will discuss is not abstract cultural policy, but more concrete questions: how to set up music creation workshops in a community library? How to turn a derelict industrial zone into a designer incubator? How to make a corner square a permanent exhibition hall for public art?

The answers to these questions ultimately land in the minutiae of daily life. Perhaps it's the wall you pass every day being painted with a mural by a local artist; perhaps it's an originally vacant shop being transformed into a handmade leather goods workshop; perhaps it's the streets having more subtle lighting design at night. A city's creativity never floats in midair; it changes everyone's commuting, leisure, and social rhythms in tangible ways.

In Kisumu, young people mix traditional music with modern electronic beats, turning the lakeside Sunday market into an open-air party; in New Orleans, brass band parades never stop — they are the city's breath. These scenes remind us: the value of the Creative Cities Network lies not in a shiny label, but in its ability to make experiments from around the world seen and shared.

When a city decides to keep company with creativity, it is in fact making a promise: here, accidents are allowed to happen; here, different expressions are respected; here, life itself is believed to be worthy of careful design. This promise is becoming a new standard for measuring a city's attractiveness.

The next time you arrive in an unfamiliar city, consider not going to check in at the landmarks first, but instead walking into the locals' market, or listening to the sounds of the alleys at midnight — perhaps at that moment, you'll understand why more than four hundred cities around the world are willing to define themselves as "creative cities." Because true creativity never issues press releases; it lurks in the capillaries of the city, waiting to be discovered in every moment of daily life.