Room for Creativity

E-ISSN： 2473-5809|2|1|73-80

ISSN： 1833-1866

Source： The International Journal of the Arts in Society: Annual Review, Vol.2, Iss.1, 2007-01, pp. : 73-80

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Abstract

As the competition for skilled knowledge workers heats up, urban policymakers around the world have begun to use arts and culture to create attractive and distinctive cities that will draw this talented and mobile workforce. Digitization has not made “place” irrelevant. Agglomeration still provides economy of scale and access to markets. Additionally, the clustering of talent provides the incubator for milieux of innovation, a necessary draw for high tech industries. When the arts are employed to drive urban revitalization, they eventually create gentrification that prices them out of their own created neighborhoods. Without public policy intervention, the artists are driven out and community sustainability becomes threatened by a lack of vibrancy and mixed-income economic activity. Cultural policy research is just beginning to grapple with these new realities, starting from a disadvantaged position of never having created the kinds of statistical indicators that have served the other social sciences in advocating with policymakers. Nevertheless, based on overwhelmingly consistent accumulated anecdotal experience, cities around the United States have begun to explore strategies to sustain the arts, so as not to exhaust the resource that is serving them so well. These strategies include programs to create affordable artists live/work spaces. The result is that New York City, which has no such strategy, is losing its arts base to these cities.