The presented paper encompasses four threads of deliberation that show the essence, cognitive value and utility of the concept of creative cities in the shaping of the future of contemporary cities. These threads are: creative development, a model of a creative city, preconditions of a creative city, and the use of a creative city as a vehicle of development.

The paper presents a review of concepts for the development of city centres in response to social and culture processes, economic, technical and environmental developments taking place at present on those areas. This review proves that concepts tend to change over time from those based on economic dynamics to those based on collaborative commons and on governance. On the example of a few city centres situated in the Silesian Region an analysis was carried out of the concepts being presently applied and with the use of which projects Silesian cities strive to maintain and strengthen the dynamics and vitality of city centres.

In a rapidly changing environment due to globalization, we are constantly looking for appropriate paths and strategies for cities and regions while taking into account the territorialisation of growth factors. As a result, we can observe an increase in development concepts that seek to define the conditions for urban resilience that could result in sustainable development despite an unstable environment. The author places his reflections in the context of Upper Silesia’s conurbation development challenges. He examines the current path of the region’s development and analyses the role that the application of “smart city” and “creative city” concepts could play in this process. Rather than comparing the efficacy of the two approaches, he suggests a reflection on the proportions of different bundles inside the development process. He also highlights the limits of a smart city approach and shows to what extent those limits can be exceeded through the application of a creative city strategy. Due to the economic and social diversity of the Upper Silesian metropolitan area, there is a significant opportunity for the development of the creative economy that could determine the competitive advantage of this area in the coming decades.

The article contains new approach to creating future of cities and urban regions based on the concept of creative cities. The core of this approach is to treat the genetic code of development as a tool for creating future of the territorial units. The combination and synergy of development genes that were considered as creativity, innovativeness and entrepreneurship allows the use of the fundamental elements of strategic analysis. On one hand, these elements are future challenges of cities and urban regions that they face in the perspective of global trends; on the other hand, they are strategic capabilities of sectors inseparably linked with creativity – sectors of culture, science and business, the integration of which is based on cultural heritage of cities and urban regions. The next issue of the article is the description of the way genes of urban development are manifested in the four sectors. It allows to present the genetic code of development function as a generator of strategic capabilities of creative sectors in cities and urban regions. Finally, the ideas of cross-sectoral undertakings for Polish big cities and urban agglomerations that enable facing intellectual and strategic global challenges were presented. This takes place through the use of strategic capabilities based on the genes of creativity, innovativeness and entrepreneurship; in this way, the genetic code of the development of large cities and urban agglomerations served as the new prospective approach to creating their future.