Aestheticizing Space

Aestheticizing Space: Art, Gentrication and the City
Vanessa Mathews*
Department of Geography, University of Toronto
Abstract
This article explores the relationship between art and gentrication at the urban scale. In particu-
lar, it maps shifting conceptualizations of this relationship through a focus on art, artists and arts
spaces in the successive waves of gentrication. The rst half of the article outlines the conceptu-
alization of the arts in the rst and second waves of gentrication, beginning with artist location
preferences, detailing how and why these areas become attractive for higher income groups, and
the agency prescribed to artists within the process. In the second half, the article places these nd-
ings in conversation with current debates taking place in the eld surrounding third wave gentri-
cation, in particular, how the arts are incorporated into public-policy and urban regeneration with
a focus on public art and arts infrastructure. The conclusion raises questions about how the incor-
poration of the arts in city programming complicates understandings of gentrication, and presents
future avenues for research.
Introduction
What attracts artists to particular areas of the urban fabric? How does the arts community
alter urban spaces in material and immaterial ways? What meaning(s) and understanding(s)
are attached to artists, their productions, and arts spaces, by whom, and for what ends?
These are the questions which frame the basis of the literature on art and gentrication
in the city, and the questions which will direct the paper that follows. Nearly three
decades after Zukins (1982) seminal text Loft Living was published on the subject, empir-
ical and theoretical contributions on the linkages between art and urban change continue
to spark debate and interest. This article begins by outlining some of the main elements
of gentrication and providing denitions of key terms, after which the article is divided
into two main sections. In the rst section, I review the relationship between art and
gentrication in the rst and second waves of the process. In the second section, I exam-
ine how art is incorporated into third wave gentrication through a focus on public art
and arts infrastructure. Research on the role of the arts in the process of gentrication has
contributed a great deal to debates on how, why, and where the process unfolds.
Similarly, the expansive body of works produced on gentrication has contributed to
understandings of how the art world is entrenched within cycles of urban change.
DEFINING THE TERMS
What is gentrication? What are the underlying causes of the process and what explains
its rather forceful (and uneven) parade into urban spaces? Following the coinage of the
term by sociologist Glass (1964) in her research on the working class quarters of London,
debates over the nature of the process have continued unabated. In general, gentrication
is dened as a process of inner-city transition, where low property investment spurs a
Geography Compass 4/6 (2010): 660675, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2010.00331.x
2010 The Author
Journal Compilation 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
process of reinvestment and an accompanying shift in social demographics and built form.
While issues surrounding the term are certainly present in the literature, the most
substantive debates emerge over identifying the underlying causes of the process and the
associated effects. Since the coinage of the term, analysis of the process developed
through the elds of economic and cultural thought. While it is not my intention to
extensively re-ink the divisions (analytical and discursive) that emerged from this early
period, there is utility in outlining the terms of debate [see Lees et al. (2008) and Shaw
(2008) for comprehensive discussions of these trends]. Separations between capital and
culture as the key drivers of gentrication, as Cameron and Coaffee (2005) note,
informed historic and contemporary conceptualizations of the role of the arts in the
process.
Divisions between capital and culture as the key drivers of the process (most clearly
pronounced in the 1970s and 1980s) led to a break between production-led and
consumption-led explanations producing a great deal of energy in the literature. Produc-
tion-led approaches place importance on the cycle of disinvestment and investment in the
property market. Smiths (1979, 1996) rent gap theory the difference between the
current and potential ground rent of a site and the discourse of the revanchist city
(middle class revenge on the inner city) addresses the role of capital in urban property
cycles. These approaches are largely informed by Marxist urban analysis, which places
class (specically through the sphere of production), at the forefront. Consumption-led
approaches on the contrary examine the preferences of consumers as initiating the
process. These approaches are oriented around demand (specically the preferences of
gentriers within the sphere of consumption) and are informed by liberal humanist analy-
sis (see as examples Cauleld 1994; Ley 1996).
What was once a relatively debilitating separation between the two explanations
characterized by Smith (1996) as initiating a vibrant, complicated, sometimes counterpro-
ductive set of arguments has progressed towards a useful understanding of the impor-
tance of the two perspectives, and continued attempts at holding the two sides together
as mutually constitutive elements (see Lees 1994, 2000; Ley, 1996, 2003; Shaw 2002).
Specic to the role of art in the process, Zukins (1982, p. 17690) notion of an artistic
mode of production represented an early attempt to correlate capital and culture by link-
ing the real estate industry to the culture industry. The artistic mode of production repre-
sents the use of culture by investors to attract capital in the built environment. Research
on the arts as a catalyst of urban change illustrates how the preference of consumers and
the realm of consumption are highly intertwined with economic shifts and production.
The rise of what is labeled post-recession, third wave, or positive gentrication has
produced a great deal of debate in the gentrication literature over the past decade.
1
Hackworth and Smith (2001, p. 468) dened the decade of the 1990s as holding the
following characteristics: the expansion of gentrication into more remote areas; the
participation of large scale developers early on in the process; the decline of activism and
resistance surrounding the process; and greater state involvement. In the 2000s, gentrica-
tion has become increasingly state-led rather than developer-led, and is now characterized
as a global urban strategy which is highly linked with global capital circuits (Smith
2006; see also Lees et al. 2008, p. 16393). As part of the changing role of the state in
the process, the creation of federally funded Business Improvement Associations work to
re-package the image of space (often through the inclusion of the arts community) for
higher order consumption practices, fueling a process of social and economic upgrading
(Slater 2004). The term gentrication itself has received a makeover of sorts, removed
from a great number of policy and planning discourses, alongside the class relations and
Art, gentrication, and city 661
2010 The Author Geography Compass 4/6 (2010): 660675, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2010.00331.x
displacement issues that typically accompany the process. Instead, the preference for terms
such as renaissance, regeneration, and revitalization directs attention away from the
contested nature of urban revival (Lees 2003; Wyly and Hammel 2008). Mirroring trends
within popular discourse and policy, there are growing claims that critical scholarship on
gentrication emerging from the academic community is waning (Slater 2006, 2008;
Smith 2006).
2
This criticism is directed towards research that addresses the positive
effects of gentrication on an existing set of residents (see Freeman 2006; Freeman and
Braconi 2002). The argument here is that increasing property values are not necessarily a
catalyst for displacement, and that the economic opportunities afforded by the process
may outweigh the negative aspects. Smith (1996, p. 39) argues that the term gentrica-
tion must be expanded to document a broader process underway towards the class
remake of the central urban landscape (see also Smith 2006). I take up this latter position
in the review, to outline how art is used within a broader process of aestheticizing space
to attract particular forms of capital and culture.
The incorporation of art into public policy as a catalyst in urban economic develop-
ment is touted in cities from coast to coast. Floridas (2002) argument that creativity is
leading the new economy provides a dictum for policy and programming that includes
the arts for its ability to drive public consumption and naturalize capital investment (see
Markusen 2006; Peck 2005 for useful critiques of the creative class). The art world is
relational, meaning that it is made up of a number of different positions and forces that
preserve the structure (Becker 1982; Bourdieu 1993). Captured within this category are
artists, art galleries, art dealers, arts services, educators, critics, and consumers. This article
focuses on the role of art, artists, and art spaces in the process of gentrication. This focus
is consistent with the literature. The term artist refers to an individual who professes a
skilled art and who produces creative works of aesthetic value (such as photographers,
painters, dancers, and writers). Art galleries legitimate art works and, dependent on their
typology (experiential, commercial, international), they enter into the process of gentri-
cation at different stages. Public art is used in this article to refer to street art and art in
public spaces within the urban environment (see Hall 2007, p. 13767 for a discussion
on alternative denitions).
Art, artists, and gentrication
Some of the earliest research linking the arts community with the process of gentrica-
tion emerged from the New York context, in particular from the Lower East Side, Trib-
eca, and the SoHo neighborhoods (Cole 1987; Deutsche and Ryan 1984; Zukin 1982).
From these reections, it was evident that the arts community was playing a vital role in
the process of gentrication, and that further empirical and theoretical analysis and debate
was necessary. The relationship between art, artists, and gentrication in the literature is
contextual, reective of the agents and interests involved and the underlying conditions.
In this rst section, I review three elements, which map out the rst and second waves
of gentrication (described below): (i) where artists locate; (ii) how artists change the
locations in which they reside and what attracts other users; and (iii) lastly, how the
agency of artists in the process is constructed.
Hackworth and Smith (2001, p. 467) provide a timeline of the successive waves of
gentrication drawn in relation to New York: following investment by developers into
areas undergoing declining property rates wherein numerous buildings were bought at
recessed values and renovated through sweat equity (rst wave), in the late 1970s and
1980s, gentrication was anchored (second wave), entering into new neighborhoods
662 Art, gentrication, and city
and assisted by the arts community which served to smooth the ow of capital (see Ley
1996, p. 199 for the Canadian ideal case for stage models). Ley (1996, p. 199) positions
artists and cultural professionals as rst stage gentriers, the rst to establish a presence in
the inner city who are then followed by successive stages of gentriers, a point I will
return to below. While the stage model approach does not t perfectly into every city or
neighborhood undergoing gentrication (see Van Criekingen and Decroly 2003), the
process nds application in this discussion in marking out how art becomes incorporated
in the process. Cameron and Coaffee (2005, p. 46) mark the rst two stages of the model
in relation to the arts as a shift from the creation by artists of a milieu for the production
of art to the commodication and private consumption of this artistic milieu (emphasis
original). While the shift from production to consumption is certainly visible, capital and
culture are mutually constitutive parts in the cycle.
WHERE ARTISTS LOCATE IN THE CITY
[I]f cities have been essential to artists, artists have been
essential to cities (Solnit 2000, p. 19).
The inner-city gures prominently into art milieus, providing convenience to the down-
town, proximity to a consumer base, and institutional support (galleries, critics, educa-
tors). Artists are attracted to marginal spaces of the downtown for their central location,
social tolerance, aesthetic, and monetary appeal (Cole 1987; Deutsche and Ryan 1984;
Lloyd 2002). Bain (2003) uses the term improvisational spaces to characterize the unor-
dered quality of these areas and their openness to multiple usage. Artist locations are typi-
cally described as edgy, run-down, and experimental. In rejecting contrived and
overly planned spaces, Ley (2003, p. 2534) observes that artists are attracted to authentic
spaces of the urban. In a series of interviews conducted by Ley (1996, p. 187201) with
artists in Vancouver, authenticity emerges as a desired urban trait for its perceived open-
ness. As one sculptor suggests Every artist is an anthropologist, unveiling culture. It helps
to get some distance on that culture in an environment which does not share all of its
presuppositions, an old area, socially diverse, including poverty groups (cited in Ley
1996, p. 195). Similarly, as Cameron and Coaffee (2005, p. 40) explain,
What the artist values and valorizes ismore than the aesthetics of the old urban quarter. The
society and culture of a working-class neighbourhood, especially where this includes ethnic
diversity, attracts the artist as it repels the conventional middle classes.
Areas which house a high number of artists provide important networks for experimenta-
tion and social interaction (unexpected and planned). In addition to the aesthetic and
atmospheric elements that attract artists to particular urban spaces, artists are attracted to a
range of building types, from derelict warehouse spaces to Victorian row houses.
Buildings which offer appropriate conditions for live work and performance space,
based on generous space, lighting, high ceilings, and low rent are valued for their aesthet-
ics and functionality for the arts community (Zukin 1982). Following the decline of
industrial manufacturing and the rise of the service sector, a great number of vacant and
underused industrial spaces remain in the inner cities of North America and Europe. The
adaptive reuse of industrial architecture for artistic purposes (artistic production, consump-
tion, and distribution) is well documented in the literature. For example, when artists
took up residence in the declining industrial district of SoHo, New York, they popular-
ized the aesthetic of industrial chic. The mass-market popularity of industrial chic allowed
a transference of the image value from industrial spaces to contemporary apartments and
condominiums which advertise loft living for middle class tastes (Zukin 1982). Conse-
quently, the mass-market appeal of loft living is rarely affordable or popular amongst
artists from whom this aesthetic was originally derived (Ley 2003). Older housing stock
in the inner city is also considered to be an attractive location for some artists and galler-
ies given the generous space, cheap rents, and aesthetic appeal (Ley 1996; Mathews 2008)
(Figure 1).
The vulnerability of artists within the gentrication process, while tied to property val-
ues and aesthetics, also extends into the realm of urban planning. Loft spaces are desired
by artists for their live work potential, but for the most part, industrial spaces are not
zoned for residential or commercial purposes. This means that unless land uses for a
particular parcel or area of land are transferred or relaxed, artists are placed in a tenuous
position, risking eviction (see for example Bain 2006). These evictions resulting from
zoning were witnessed in earlier periods when the multiplying effects of the arts were
not understood. Zoning is increasingly relaxed in areas to promote artistic presence as a
way of regenerating derelict lands, a point I will return to in the third wave section.
Fig. 1. Gallery Gevik and Feheley Fine Arts in Yorkville, Toronto making use of older Victorian housing stock.
HOW ARTISTS CHANGE A LOCATION AND WHAT ATTRACTS OTHER USERS
According to Ley (1996) artists work as a colonizing arm for the middle class, opening
up new spaces of the inner city through the image and identity attached to their lifestyle
and productions. Similarly, reference to the pioneer function of artists (Ley 1996; Smith
1996) responds to the ability of this community to tame and naturalize the real estate
market (see Bondis 1991 critique of the frontier mythology in gentrication research).
The ability for artists to alter space in symbolic and physical ways (including renovations
using their own labor, a process labeled sweat equity) makes them an attractive ingredient
in revival initiatives (Cole 1987; Ley 1996, 2003; Smith 1996; Zukin 1982, 1995).
Drawn to the milieu created by the arts community, and attracted to the property
investment potential, a variety of users are attributed as successors in the process. As Ley
(2003) documents,
Typically, social and cultural professional and pre-professionals are early successors to artists,
including such cultural producers as intellectuals and students, journalists and other media work-
ers, and educators, to be followed by professionals with greater economic capital such as lawyers
and medical practitioners, and nally by business people and capitalists.
This is not necessarily the exact succession that takes place in all cases of gentrication.
While experiential art galleries, arts organizations, and small collectives may also be pres-
ent in the early stages of the process, commercial art galleries often enter into art spaces
when consumer demand is high (Cole 1987; Mathews 2008). In this way, commercial art
galleries often work as successors to artists, forcing rents to increase, and displacement to
occur. As Molotch and Treskon (2009, p. 519) suggest, while there is generally a level of
sympathy amongst commentators when artists enter into a space (see Ley 2003), there is
less sympathy when art galleries enter into the cycle. Following the refashioning of space,
artists are often driven out as those with greater purchasing power take possession of local
cultural forms. This can result from rising rents as well as a shift in atmosphere.
In his work on Chicagos Wicker Park, Lloyd (2004, p. 346; 2006) outlines how artists
(and cultural producers) have retained their presence within the area, becoming avatars
of urban consumption, wherein urban cosmopolitans (skilled service workers) ock to
the area for bohemian and offbeat fare and to consume authentic experiences and cul-
tural offerings. Artist milieus readily become a mineeld for creative labor, enabling
artists to nd economic stability through menial jobs (Zukin 1995). This produces a labor
source for creative and cultural industries which locate in close proximity to art spaces.
As Lloyd (2004, p. 368) explains, capital interests associated with the production and
distribution of cultural commodities also benetinsofar as the symbolic and material
resources of the local eld enable artists to engage in creative work for deferred and
highly uncertain compensation. The attraction to art spaces is not limited to property
investors and local retail and commercial venues who benet from the buzz of the area,
but includes a host of cultural intermediaries also termed a critical infrastructure who
serve to legitimate and mediate taste and lifestyle (Featherstone 1991; Zukin 1991). These
actors range from writers and critics to service workers who direct the experience of con-
sumption (Zukin 1991, p. 258).
CONSTRUCTING THE AGENCY OF ARTISTS
Whether artists fall victim to the process of gentrication or are active participants precip-
itates a great deal of debate in the eld. Artists are politicized for their displacement of
lower income groups and romanticized for their willingness to live in run down parts
of the city. According to Deutsche and Ryan (1984) artists were complicit in the
process of gentrication in the Lower East Side, New York, placing their own needs
above those of the working class and the homeless, and rendering the latter invisible
under aesthetic delight (compare Mele 1996; Smith 1996). These positions are highly
intertwined wherein artists may catalyze a process of displacement and then become
displaced themselves. The creation of coalition forces with the middle class also emerges
as a way to defend art spaces against destruction and resident displacement (Zukin 1982).
Drawing on examples from major Canadian cities, Ley (2003) argues that blaming
artists for cycles of capital is misplaced: monocausal explanations do not account for the
societal valorization of the cultural competencies of the artist and the attraction to this
valorization by populations with higher economic capital. Leys position is informed by
Bourdieu (1993) who is used by a number of gentrication scholars (Lloyd 2002; Zukin
1982) to engage with the position of the arts within urban change and the urban econ-
omy. Artists, according to Bourdieu (1993) are high in cultural capital and low in
economic capital placing them in a position of domination within the dominant class.
This position is structured by two factors according to Zukin (1989, p. 204). First, cycles
of property investment combined with the marketability of responsible renewal means
that cultural capital has become a necessary part of some types of economic capital expan-
sion. Second, increasing numbers of producers and consumers of art (the democratization
of art), led to the realization that marketing for them and marketing of them is economi-
cally lucrative.
While some theorists have positioned artists as anti-capitalist rejecting market forces
and the commercialization of their productions and spaces of residence (Bain 2003; Ley
2003; Zukin 1982), others note how some artists prot from the speculative development
which in turn provides them with greater location choices (Cole 1987; Currier 2008).
Whether artists resist market forces or prot from them speaks to the unevenness of resis-
tance to urban change, and their structural position within the economy. The agency and
identity of artists beyond economic measures (as walkers, producers, consumers, and
actors) is underdeveloped in the literature, despite its inuence in dening space (Math-
ews 2008). As Bain (2003, p. 305) suggests
if artists are to be understood as anything other than urban pioneers and initiators of urban
revitalization efforts, they need to be appreciated more fully in their own right, as a social group
with a distinctive occupational identity and a heightened awareness of the availability, regulation
and character of urban space.
The call for more nuanced understandings of the particularities of artists in urban space
will proffer greater understanding of their role within processes of urban change.
The issue of artist displacement via gentrication is negligible for the real estate and
tourism industries which are able to capitalize upon the memory of artists and the
commodity of the artist milieu (Bain 2003; Ley 2003; Mathews 2008). In other words,
by the time that artists are displaced, the area is already branded as a safe, interesting (and
protable) locale within the urban fabric. Meligrana and Skaburskis (2005) called for an
extension of research in previously gentried areas to develop understandings of the cycle.
Further examples of the function of artistic memory in place following displacement of
arts production in a global context are encouraged in this regard. Similarly, research that
draws on the succession of art galleries in urban spaces would add to the understanding
of the gentrication waves specic to the art world. For example, a recent article by
Molotch and Treskon (2009) on the changing state of art in two New York districts
(SoHo and Chelsea) offers evidence of a different cycle of transition in two art gallery
districts. Rather than focusing on shifting property values to explain the changeover, the
authors examine the changing tastes for different kinds of art arguing that the economic
value of the sector and its product are as relevant in art cycles as the real estate market.
Comparative research in art markets in a national and international context would allow
this thesis to be tested.
Third wave gentrication and art
Writing about the conditions of urbanism in San Francisco, Solnit (2000, p. 13) suggests
that Gentrication is just the n above water. Below is the rest of the shark. The rest
of the shark refers to the emergence of a new economy which lay waste the citys exist-
ing culture culture both in the sense of cultural diversity, as in ethnic cultures, and of
creative activity, artistic and political (p. 18). There is widespread recognition by the
state, private investors, and corporate developers of the regenerative potential of the arts,
drawn from the experiences of cities which underwent earlier waves of gentrication.
Specically, there is marked evidence of how the arts prompted local property values to
rise, fashioned a place-image that spurred investment, and fostered a place identity that
could be marketed within and beyond the local urban economy. Within the new econ-
omy, art is one of the leading place-making devices, and renewal processes are a leading
force in restructuring the urban. The arts sector is incorporated into policy strategies to
enhance place image, build social cohesion (quality of life and livability), and to diversify
the economy.
Cameron and Coaffee (2005, p. 46) dene the relationship between art and third wave
gentrication as follows: The emphasis in the third phase, with the more explicit public-
policy engagement and link to regeneration, is on the public consumption of art, through
public art and artistic events, and particularly through the creation of landmark physical
infrastructure for the arts, such as galleries, museums and concert halls (emphasis origi-
nal). Ultimately, the shift from the production of art to the public consumption of art has
promoted a more visible (yet proscribed) presence of the arts in the urban fabric. In this
section, I focus on instructive examples of arts-led regeneration and examine two dimen-
sions of art in the city: public art and arts infrastructure.
PUBLIC ART AND ART IN PUBLIC
The incorporation of public art into regeneration strategies continues to rise as govern-
ment ofcials, developers, and private investors recognize the value in framing urban
change through the aestheticization of space (see Harvey 1990; Jameson 1991). As Hall
and Robertson (2001) note, policies drafted in the United Kingdom by the end of the
1980s were already incorporating public art into urban regeneration schemes. Public art is
recognized by city ofcials on the basis of its ability to contribute to community building,
education, a sense of place, civic identity, social inclusion, and social change (Hall and
Robertson 2001). Armed with a list of these potential contributions, art constitutes a
major component in a multifaceted strategy to alleviate the social ills characterizing con-
temporary urban spaces, including declining population rates, high unemployment, dere-
lict and underused lands and buildings, and a waning sense of place.
The form of public art which is promoted in ofcial policies at the local and national
scale is qualitatively different than the politicized messages inscribed during earlier gentri-
cation cycles. The oft cited slogan Die Yuppie Scum expressed in grafti, voiced in
chants and posted on signs during anti-gentrication protests in the Lower East Side in
the 1980s falls outside of these strategies. Miles (1997) notes how the experience of art is
mediated by two factors: how the artwork is framed in a location and what venue the
work was created for. Displays of public art, while able to express multiple values, are at
times incorporated into renewal strategies to foster state control and the domination of
capital over a population (Deutsche 1996; Miles 1997). This is often a product of the
installation and selection process as raised by several researchers (Bailey et al 2004; Sharp
et al 2005) which can lead to homogenization and exclusion. Percent for art legislation is
active in cities across North America and Europe to promote publicly accessible art works
tied to development (Hall and Robertson 2001). The programs work by ensuring that a
certain percentage of the budget for new developments is earmarked for public art
(Figure 2). These legislations have proved highly successful in adding aesthetic interest
and spurring economic regeneration, although there are still issues surrounding inclusion
and exclusion and their relationship to (the identity and meanings of) place.
While public art can sustain dominant values and interests, it also has the potential to
challenge the dominant order of space, place, and time (Hubbard et al 2003; Jacobs
1998). For example, Somdahl-Sands (2008) writes about how Mission Wall Dance, a site
Fig. 2. Located in the Distillery District, Toronto, Koilos by California-based artist, Michael Christian is an example
of public art which is tied to development. The Distillery is an example of arts-led redevelopment.
specic performance piece in the Mission District, San Francisco, engaged with notions
of civic identity by politicizing the effects of gentrication in the neighborhood. Given
that the setting and context of art conditions and frames its meaning, it is necessary to
question why works are created and for whose interests. On the ipside, in the case of
the (now) iconic sculpture by Anthony Gormley Angel of the North located near Gates-
head, the piece was meant to evoke a shift in the image of the region from a post-indus-
trial to a cultural landscape. As Sharp et al (2005, p. 1014) note, In claiming to be a
signier for the city as a whole, of course, it hides the inclusions and exclusions inherent
in any singular vision for a community.
An area which has received little attention in the literature (beyond passing mention) is
the role of urban arts festivals in regeneration strategies. Quinn (2005) outlines how arts
festivals need to be conceptualized beyond their ability to generate income and to x
the image of place. Understanding the social value of festivals can promote dialogue
within the community, but only if programming is able to move past the notion that
residents are spectators, and acknowledge the multiple realities and conicting meanings
that can be hidden beneath their image conscious stage-managed veneers (Quinn
2005, p. 940). Arts festivals are increasingly global in orientation, witnessed in the expan-
sion of Nuit Blanche, an all night arts festival, which began in 1997 and is now held in
cities from Montreal to Lima. While these events can work to showcase the diverse array
of arts activities in a city, the selection process can singularize the public consumption of
art, and mediate public experience.
Local particularities must be drawn upon to avoid the potential homogenization that
can arise through cultural import and to stress the potential of art to express and evoke
multiple meanings. Similarly, local populations need to be involved in the selection pro-
cess and the selection must be tied to place to thwart feelings of exclusion. The visibility
of public art and art in public in the city when drawn into regeneration strategies is often
smoothed of contestation and served up for aesthetic delight.
ARTS INFRASTRUCTURE
Arts-led regeneration often includes investment in cultural agships museums, galleries,
precincts to harness public consumption. There is an expansive base of research which
attempts to work through the nature of these large-scale investments, their ability to re-im-
age place, and their effects on existing residents. These efforts to attract inward investment
respond to the need to restructure markets once dependent on industry and manufacturing
trade. Competition between places for economic enterprise has resulted in the need to sell
the image of a particular location to tourists and residents (Philo and Kearns 1993). While
inter-urban and intra-urban competition should draw out more variegated spaces within
the increasing homogeneity of international exchange, instead there is a regressive pattern
where place identity draws on previous molds (Harvey 1990, p. 295; see also Boyer 1988).
As Gomez (1998) suggests, competition for improved status often results in imitation
despite the difculty in transferring polices and experiences from one place to another.
A number of scholars have drawn upon the transition of Bilbao, from an industrial to a
post-industrial centre, as an instructive example of regeneration through arts infrastruc-
ture. The transformation pivoted around the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, a Frank
Gehry creation opened in 1997 which aimed to symbolize a new image and representa-
tion of the region. The Guggenheim art museum is a global chain, with offshoots in such
cities as Milan, New York, and Abu Dhabi. In the case of Bilbao, the relationship to
place was fractured under the global stamp, noted by the lack of acquisitions of local or
regional artists made within the rst three years following its opening (Evans 2003). The
success of the site is negotiable, with some criticizing the regeneration strategy for its lack
of employment creation (Gomez 1998) and others stressing the multiplying effects that
may not be immediately visible (Plaza 1999). Plaza (2008) recently offered a set of criteria
for evaluating the effectiveness of these forms of cultural heritage, applicable also to the
Tate brand, a national line of British museums (now housed in four locations). These
include the impact of the regeneration site on the tourist trade, dependency on the cul-
tural heritage within the economy as a whole, the level of market integration, and the
citys overall economy. The inclusion of star architects such as Gehry in cities around the
world to boost tourism and re-image place is now a common feature of renaissance or
regeneration planning (see Figures 3 and 4).
In his work on Los Angeles, Molotch (1996, p. 225) notes that Art counts for far
more than the volume of salesor the urban renewal a museum may stimulate; it is
deeply embedded within everyday life where it crafts moments of play and packages
and repackages dominant established viewpoints. Investments into arts infrastructure can
be unstable as a number of researchers have pointed out. As Evans (2003, p. 433)
explains:
City location alone is not sufcient to generate interest symbolic association is needed to
overcome the arbitrariness of the new and novel architecture, as well as inherited cultural facili-
ties. Where memory or the sense of a place is effectively absentmassive capital investment
and revenue is likely to be required and success still cannot be guaranteed.
Similarly, drawing on the cultural quarter of Hoxton, London, Pratt (2009, 1057) illus-
trates how creating a place image through marketing is not a long term practice, espe-
cially when that development is rooted in consumption. Drawing from research from
the state capitals of Australia, Atkinson and Easthope (2009, p. 71) outline how selection
processes often nd in favour of large arts infrastructure or commercially oriented arts
projects, such as key exhibitions and festivals.
Floridas (2002) marketing campaign that creativity is a necessary component in eco-
nomic growth and development poses a challenge to the contemporary link between art
Fig. 3. The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto was recently transformed under the direction of Frank Gehry.
and the city. Beyond crafting a set of conditions that will attract businesses and residents,
the emphasis on creativity devalues the political, social, and cultural potential of the arts.
Specically it values creative types based on their ability to attract and retain skilled
service workers. Artists need to be disaggregated from an occupational classication that
places them alongside engineers (Markusen 2006), and the term creativity needs to be
appropriated, and placed within research (and policy) which allows for contested mean-
ings and expression outside of the dominant class. As Catungal et al. (2009) argue in rela-
tion to the creative city script being employed in Liberty Village, Toronto, the emphasis
is on public consumption (tourism, experience) over cultural production, leading to issues
surrounding displacement and place-making.
Urban redevelopment strategies which pivot around art and culture are increasingly
popular in the urban policy toolkit. Festive redevelopments, drawn from the template of
the development strategy of Bostons Faneuil Hall Marketplace, are one such example. In
North America, these include South Street Seaport in New York, Harbor Place in Balti-
more, Fishermans Wharf in San Francisco, Granville Island in Vancouver, Ottawas
Byward Market, and Torontos Distillery District. These spaces generally deploy
restorative efforts to retain historical built form, carry an atmosphere of conspicuous con-
sumption through independents, are typically housed on historical waterways, and claim
uniqueness despite their relation to one another (see Hannigan 1998). The rise of themed
retail environments predicated on the arts illustrates the reliance on the public consump-
tion of art for capital accumulation. There are a number of risks in these strategies, as
Miles (2005, p. 890) suggests, wherein place histories are often erased and replaced with
aesthetic gloss, and the potential for gentrication to arise is present, a shift from multi-
ple to single occupancy and from rent to owner-occupation of housing being a key
aspect of this and a marginalization (or peripheralization) of dwellers who become
constituted as a residual public.
Degen et al. (2008) recently argued that the relationship between urban design in the
built environment and visual experience must be expanded to better understand the
Fig. 4. The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a recent addition to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, was con-
structed under lead architect Daniel Libeskind, and represents one of a number of projects underway in the Citys
cultural renaissance.
experience of designed spaces, and to allow multimodal ways of seeing and more active
modes of participation (and encounter). Further work in this area will provide a vehicle
for measuring the effect of designed spaces and visual culture (arising from renaissance
and regeneration programming) on a local populace.
Conclusion
The relationship between art and gentrication in the city has altered over time given
the underlying political, economic, cultural, and social forces at play. Over the past
couple of decades, the arts have been placed in a position of privilege by city ofcials,
development agencies, and private investors for their ability to catalyze and naturalize
reinvestment in declining or underdeveloped areas of the inner city. This has resulted in
the stimulation of gentrication to accelerate growth and development and to mitigate
the effects. Stimulating gentrication for these ends has meant severing the ties to the
oft-cited dirty language of displacement and class relations that accompany the process.
The inclusion of the arts as a seedbed for gentrication has led to the rise of controlled
and contrived spaces designed around the public consumption of art, artists, and art
spaces. Flagship architecture, cultural quarters, festivals, and public art displays are used to
promote a livable and beautied urban core, aspects that are highly valued in attracting
the middle and upper-middle classes. Under this spatial restructuring for mobile tastes,
the arts are valued for their ability to smooth the ow of capital (Hackworth & Smith
2001). But if the arts are to remain a part of the urban fabric, it is necessary to value their
role beyond economic fodder. As Evans (2003, p. 417) evocatively notes, Hard branding
the city through cultural agships and festivals has created a form of karaoke architecture
where it is not important how well you can sing but that you do it with verve and
gusto.
How artists negotiate the city for live work space is an important part of understanding
the re-imaging of space through art. Their attraction to particular areas of the city, their
differential needs within these spaces, and the ways in which these areas become attractive
to other users with greater purchasing power, offer insight into the familiar cycle of
displacement. Artists are constructed in a number of ways in gentrication research: as
victims and aggressors; as vital in the (re)construction of place identity; and as useful
intermediary tenants in catalyzing change in underused or vacant spaces in the urban fab-
ric. The utilization of the arts to naturalize change and attract investment, draws in artists
as bridge gentriers where they receive little protection against displacement (Zukin
1995, p. 111).
In arts-led regeneration programming, artists are often offered space, a process which
Atkinson and Easthope (2009, p. 71) suggest is based on a tacit understanding of the
ways in which encouraging artists provides a seedbed for a kind of staged gentrication.
The valuation of artists as pioneer or rst stage gentriers limits creative expression as
well as their location choices. On the latter, artists continue to be priced out of the
downtown corridor under uctuating real estate prices (Bain 2003; Cole 1987; Ley 2003;
Williams et al. 1993) and residences are set up as temporary and tokenistic devices to
legitimate investment. The cycle of art galleries in the process of gentrication, while
analyzed in several places (Mathews 2008; Molotch and Treskon 2009; Zukin 1982),
requires further analysis and comparative studies. In addition, future research on the role
of the arts in state-led gentrication in cities across the globe is needed to build under-
standing of the shifting terrain of the process as a global strategy, and the place of art
within this expanded eld. As Harris (2005, p. 38) argues, this means shifting attention
away from New York as the preeminent centre (where it holds paradigmatic status) for
research on art and urban change.
If, as Solnit (2000) and Smith (1996) suggest, gentrication is simply the most visible
element in a complex makeover of the urban landscape, it is vital to continue critical
research on the links between art and urban change. Art has emerged as an important
element in the urban economy, a tool through which to build and expand the image and
representation of place using a neoliberal urban agenda. It is critical that future research
explores the art world beyond its economic measures, and that pressure is placed on ensur-
ing that the incorporation of art in the urban provides an opportunity for local (and con-
tested) meaning production and expression (surrounding where art is placed, how it is
selected and by whom, and what meanings are attached to the works and their producers).
Short Biography
Vanessa Mathews is a cultural, urban geographer with research interests in processes of
urban change, visual culture, and critical theory. She is currently a PhD Candidate in the
Department of Geography at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation draws on the
Distillery District, an arts-led redevelopment in Toronto, to examine strategies and tactics
of place differentiation and their effects on art, history, and space. She received an MA in
Geography at York University, Toronto and a BA in Geography at Queens University,
Kingston, Ontario. Her work has appeared in Urban Studies, Progressive Planning, and Social
& Cultural Geography.
Notes
* Correspondence address: V. Mathews, Department of Geography, University of Toronto, St. George Campus,
100 St. George Street, Room 5047, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G3. E-mail: vanessa.mathews@utoronto.ca
1
For example, Lees and Ley (2008) edited a special issue of Urban Studies dedicated to the theme of policy and
gentrication (Volume 45(12)). In addition, Lees et al. (2008) examine these debates at length in their recent text-
book, Gentrication.
2
See also Butler and Hamnetts (2009) response to Slater (2006, 2008).
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