Creative Economies in Post-Industrial Cities

Manufacturing a (Different) Scene

Myrna Margulies Breitbart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138277083
• eBook ISBN: 9781317158318
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

There has been much written on the new creative economy, but most work focuses on the so-called 'creative class, ' with lifestyle preferences that favor trendy new restaurants, mountain biking, and late night clubbing. This 'creative class, ' flagship cultural destinations, and other forms of commodity-driven cultural production, now occupy a relatively uncritical place in the revitalization schemes of most cities up and down the urban hierarchy. In contrast, this book focuses on small- to medium-size post-industrial cities in the US, Canada, and Europe that are trying to redress the effects of deindustrialization and economic decline through cultural economic regeneration. It examines how culture-infused economic opportunities are being incorporated into planning in distinct ways, largely under the radar, in many working class communities and considers to what extent places rooted in an industrial past are able to envisage a different economic future for themselves. It questions whether these visions replicate strategies employed in larger cities or put forth plans that better suit the unique histories and challenges of places that remain outside the global limelight. Exploring the intersection between a cultural and sustainable economy raises issues that are central to how urban regeneration is approached and neighborhood needs and assets are understood. Case studies in this book examine spaces and planning processes that hold the possibility of addressing inequality by forging new economic and social relationships and by embarking on more inclusive and collaborative experiments in culture-based economic development. These examples often focus on building upon the assets of existing residents and broadly define creativity and talent. They also acknowledge both the economic and non-monetary value of cultural practices. This book maintains a critical edge, incorporating left critiques of mainstream creative economy theories and practices into empirical case studies that depart from standard cultural economy discourse. Structural barriers and unequal distributions of power make the search for viable urban development alternatives especially difficult for smaller post-industrial cities and risk derailing even creative grassroots initiatives. While acknowledging these obstacles, this book moves beyond critique and focuses on how the growing economy surrounding culture, the arts, and ecological design can be harnessed and transformed to best benefit such cities and improve the quality of life for its residents.

Chapter 1
Introduction: Examining the Creative Economy in Post-Industrial Cities: Alternatives to Blueprinting Soho

Myrna Margulies Breitbart

We are in the development business, not the arts business … We find that actors walking around the streets, theater activities in general, give off good vibrations; they make an area more renewable. If cement factories did that, we would be putting them in.

(Frederic Papert, former President of the
42nd Times Square Street Development Corporation)

Much has changed since such commentaries drew the attention of urban policy makers to the economic role of the arts and culture in global cities such as New York. Cultural forms of regeneration and the cultivation of creative industries are now common elements in most urban economic development lexicons. Many pages have been written, and stories told, of how cultural tourism, historic preservation, and the Soho-like transformations of old factory districts attract new business, consumers and a young “creative class”. Two decades ago, Sharon Zukin began to take note of the growing relationship between culture, design, and urban redevelopment (1982; 1995). The story has since been retold in several versions. The most common scenario begins with a neighborhood that may contain everything from less populated warehouse districts to low income and working class residential areas, but has seen better days. For a variety of reasons, including a long period of disinvestment, the neighborhood starts to attract the quintessential starving artist in search of cheap living and working space. Once the numbers of such artists rise to a certain level, amenities (e.g. cafes, galleries) move in and the area is secured and considered “desirable” enough to attract a middle class, and perhaps also a large-scale public/private redevelopment scheme. A familiar gentrification process follows in which the arts and artists shift from pioneer to victim. As outside perceptions of the neighborhood change and land values rise, increasing rents lead to the displacement of marginal occupants (including the starving artists), and a generalized cleansing of surrounding public space occurs (e.g. MacLeod 2002; Dutton 2005; Shaw 2006). Depending on the relative location and importance of this neighborhood to downtown and larger capital interests, the process goes on to engender the harsh fortressing measures aptly described by Mike Davis (1990), Neil Smith (1996), Roslyn Deutsche (1996) and many others.

While this familiar scenario does not play out in exactly the same way from place to place, many large cities continue to transform abandoned manufacturing cores into enticing consumer landscapes of visual appeal. Spatial evidence is found in the proliferation of downtown corporate plazas bedecked with public art, festival marketplaces, loft conversions, and riverfront and sidewalk cafes. In spite of cautionary warnings about the uneven development this can engender (Bianchini 1993; Grodach and Loukaitou-Sideris 2007), the momentum to enhance and market urban cultural amenities grows, as one city after another vies for recognition as a premier cultural enclave. As Zukin points out, what is produced and consumed are not traditional manufactures, but rather, art, food, fashion, tourism, and the industries and services that cater to them (Zukin 1995). The processes used to achieve these economic makeovers vary, but nearly always involve the transformation of physical spaces of decline to new uses and functions, and the re-formation of the public’s image of these spaces (and the city as a whole) – a process that both results from, and provides justification for, the former. Culture, in Zukin’s words, has become the “business of cities” (1995: 2).

The use of the arts and culture to enhance the economy and draw attention to the rising importance of a city is not as new a phenomenon as it would seem. Connections between culture, urban space and capital have a long history that includes the diffusion of ideas and practices from large and growing cities to smaller ones (Hall 1998). As Evans points out, the urban renaissance in continental Europe in the 16th century quickly spread to London and, by the early 17th century, to a number of smaller provincial cities and towns that would try to mimic its cultural developments and attractions (Evans 2001: 51). While based on a long history, the replication of models of urban cultural regeneration and their diffusion from large global cities, such as New York and San Francisco, to more medium-sized and even smaller cities and towns, has accelerated. Attention to the particulars of this largely uncritical dissemination and translation process has not kept pace with its extent, impact, or potential. This is one of many circumstances that motivate this book.

Creative Economies in Post-Industrial Cities follows in the path of Bell and Jayne (2006) and van Heur (2010) in its movement away from a focus on large global cities and towards an examination of how culture-infused economic opportunities are being understood and incorporated into planning, often in very distinct ways, in smaller former industrial cities and working-class neighborhoods. Authors consider to what extent places rooted in an industrial past are enabled to envision a different economic future. They examine whether these visions replicate strategies employed in larger cities or put forth plans that better suit their unique histories and challenges.

Many writers within the vast and growing literature on the creative economy note what one critic calls “eclectic conformity” – a type of cultural homogenization process that masquerades as local distinctiveness (e.g. Holcomb 1993: 142l; Breitbart and Stanton 2006). The case studies in this volume consider whether smaller places outside the global city limelight employ similar culturalled planning and creative industry development strategies, or ones that look to build the capacity of residents and envision a wholly different economic future. The contributors consider many questions: Where are the visions for change in post-industrial communities derived, and how, if at all, are residents brought in to the planning process? How do efforts to appropriate space help residents resist regeneration strategies that ignore their needs? In what ways are everyday spaces beyond downtown the site of socially engaged creative activity? How does the application of cultural development initiatives in post-industrial cities depart from mainstream approaches to build upon assets or envision a more sustainable future? What new relationships, networks of exchange and economic opportunities are fostered and obstacles encountered? What, too, is the potential of these approaches to effect long-term change?

Many of the authors included in this volume examine the potential role of the built environment in sustainable urban regeneration. They consider to what extent space can be used to disrupt old modes of planning and provide a new context for the incubation of more durable forms of economic and cultural development. There is also a focus on the creative appropriation of space by residents who resist regeneration schemes that ignore local assets or reinforce uneven development. This draws attention to everyday neighborhood spaces and locations other than downtown as potential sites of socially engaged creative work. How, for example, might new spatial formations (e.g. networks and alliances among diverse residents) facilitate the transfer and exchange of knowledge, or provide connections to new skill-building and income-generating opportunities in the growing creative sectors of a sustainable economy? Case studies consider such questions and begin to shift the focus to a critical examination of the potentials inherent in less conventional grassroots initiatives. Examples also focus on a diverse array of creative actors who would not necessarily be recognized as members of a “creative class” by those who research or promote the creative economy.

Sliding Down the Urban Hierarchy

During the heyday of industrial capitalism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries many paternalistic manufacturers designed social structures, and built whole cities, to try to remedy the horrors of factory life prevalent in early manufacturing centers. In New England, the first home of industrial capitalism in the United States, a variety of industries that produced consumer necessities, such as apparel, textiles, paper and shoes, dominated prior to the Second World War. By the early 1970s factory-based employment in these industries fell to one-tenth of the jobs in the region, engendering severe unemployment and out migration (Harrison 1982: 5). Once a “metaphor for social and technological progress”, the image of abandoned New England factories and declining cities made their way into the popular imagination (Breitbart and Stanton 2006). Marketing brochures that feature once bleak manufacturing environments as the backbone for cultural and economic rebirth now challenge these images.

The incorporation of culture-based planning into urban regeneration schemes did not happen over night in most post-industrial cities. Indeed, a lot of convincing of planners and politicians was necessary before this path was considered. Much of the “buzz” that led policy makers to consider such options can be traced to the multitude of research reports that were commissioned at the turn of the millennium confirming the positive economic impact that creative industries and arts-related activities had on individual cities and regions. For example, an early study presented by Mt. Auburn Associates to the New England Regional Council presented a wide variety of data to measure the “creative sector”. This included cultural organizations, non-profit and commercial enterprises, workers within these enterprises, and individual artist-entrepreneurs (Mt. Auburn Associates 2000). Claiming to support a “new way of looking at the arts and culture”, the report examined these activities as it would any industrial or financial sector, assessing its potential to contribute to the region’s competitive position. The report also used some rather traditional analytical tools, such as cluster analysis, to group art-related activities geographically, and measure their concentration and impact on one competitive variable, quality of life.

Although the methodology and analysis within this and a multitude of reports that have been written since may be criticized (Markusen and Gadwa 2010), the enthusiasm with which policymakers eventually greeted such findings is key. This can be seen either as a real shift of paradigm or as an extension of an old one. As Robert Goodman pointed out in The Last Entrepreneurs (1979), the standard response to deindustrialization had been to enhance a city’s competitive advantage by offering traditional tax and other incentives to manufacturers in an effort to lure them back to create what were often very undesirable and precarious jobs. Influenced today by what is now referred to as the “creative economy,” the spotlight has shifted from manufacturing to cultural and creative production. Not surprisingly, the economic development packages look quite different, as they seek to retain, develop and attract entrepreneurs and tourists rather than lure a multinational corporation or factory back from Mexico or China.

Charles Landry in the UK and Richard Florida in the U.S. are two high profile figures responsible for promulgating and disseminating the idea of a creative economy and creative city planning. A big turn in urban and economic policy in the U.S. occurred after the publication of Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class in 2002. Challenging the conventional wisdom in urban economic development, Florida suggested that companies do not necessarily drive innovation, and that policies geared only towards providing incentives for industries miss the mark. Rather than emphasize manufacturing or service jobs, he points to the importance of attracting creative people and to the increasing dominance of occupations that involve creative work – everything from idea-generating jobs and the arts to advertising, engineering, design and computer graphics. While there were always select concentrations of culture in places like Greenwich Village, Florida points to the wholesale international sorting of metropolitan areas into categories that either welcome and grow creative enterprise, or remain a bastion of the working class and low level services. He argues that communities need to come to grips with those qualities that attract creative workers because these newcomers will generate and attract new business. Among the qualities he notes are a vibrant cultural life, a sense of place, tolerance for diversity, hip cafes, and historic buildings. In this and subsequent writing, Florida sets out the three criteria for cities aspiring to creative city status: “technology, talent and social tolerance”. He goes on to produce many indices ranking cities from best to worst in terms of their success in these three broad areas (2005a, 2005b).

Paralleling the exponential growth of interest in the “creative class” and the creative economy are an ever-expanding number of critiques of Florida’s research that come from both the Right and the Left. The range of criticisms move from challenges to Florida’s Creativity Rankings of cities according to various indices (Bohemian, Gay, Melting Pot etc.) to more encompassing critiques of the overall theory and its lack of complexity (see, for example, Daly 2004; Shea 2004; Kotkin and Siegel 2004; Malanga 2004; Christophers 2007). One of the most salient critiques centers on social class. It argues that Florida places far too much emphasis on quantitative occupational data generated for large cities, and on a young creative class whose demographic devalues the traditional working class, failing to see, let alone look for, creative assets in unexpected places (Peck 2005; Bell and Jayne 2006). Rather than bemoan the loss of well-paid manufacturing employment, Florida seems more interested in the possibilities that disinvested property hold for new uses such as loft apartments. Other critiques take note of cultural barriers that can be erected between rich and poor, young and old, when new entrepreneurial types move into more ethnic and working class communities (Zukin 2005).1 Still others suggest that Florida’s urban revitalization theories mistake the “side effects” of a once-booming economy for the causes of growth, and that his ideas have been incorporated into neo-liberal political agendas to justify the removal of social safety nets and support for community-based cultural organizations, in favor of an entrepreneurialization of the arts and culture (McRobbie 2003; Maliszewski 2004).

Florida actively addresses these criticisms in paid lectures and through his website, arguing that he is not elitest, and that he believes that every person and town has the capacity to be “creative”. Officials in smaller post-industrial cities searching for a foundation upon which to build a new economic base, fear becoming “a Detroit” if they do not, in Peck’s words, adopt the city planning mantra, “be creative or die” (Peck 2005: 740). They receive Florida’s message that any place can become a creative city with enthusiasm. Whereas large-scale flagship cultural tourist complexes require a massive infusion of capital, the “takeaway” from Florida’s work for many local officials seems to be that a beautiful physical setting, and proximity to a healthy natural environment, along with smartly transformed historic structures that reference a gritty past, or even just a liberal political climate to support alternative lifestyles, may be sufficient to attract and keep the creative class. These amenities do not necessarily require massive investment. The fact that many formulaic urban development strategies designed to promote these ideas end up supporting neoliberal planning based on place branding, middle-class consumption, gentrification and competition among individual entrepreneurs and cities, generally goes unnoticed (Harvey 2005).2

In spite of the critiques, the proliferation of festival marketplaces, artist live/work spaces and riverfront walks in large cities provide evidence to planners working in smaller post-industrial cities, of culture as the new urban “business”. Lowell, Massachusetts provides an early example of culture-led regeneration in New England that is often touted as a success. By the 1920s most of the industry was gone from Lowell and it was considered to be one of the region’s most down-and-out cities. Officials have worked feverishly to replace its old abandoned manufacturing core with a more enticing consumer landscape based, in part, on a Heritage Park that capitalizes on the city’s unique labor history. The city also created a new Artist Overlay District that seeks to promote the renovation of historic abandoned buildings for commercial use, encouraging artists to live and work in downtown (Breitbart and Stanton 2006).

North Adams, Massachusetts provides a similar example. Abandoned by manufacturing, including its premier manufacturer, Sprague Electric, North Adams was described in the 1980s as the “city with no future”, and was next to last in per capita income in the State. The tale of how one of the largest museums of contemporary art, MASS MoCA, ended up in the complex of the abandoned Sprague Electric buildings is told in brief by Sharon Zukin in The Cultures of Cities (1995) and more personally in the film DownsideUp by Nancy Kelly, a California filmmaker who grew up in North Adams and returned to document the change. The presence of this new museum with massive modern art installations the size of a football field has been accompanied by the attraction of a growing number of high tech dot.com companies and a “new media industrial park”. On a field trip with a class several years ago, we visited a few of these companies, including Kleiser-Walczak, the computer animation firm that made “Spiderman” and “The X-Men”. Keiser-Walczak was attracted to this remote city many years ago by what was then a $7.00/square foot cost of space. Its North Adams site went on to become its main headquarters, with subsidiaries in NYC and Hollywood California, paying about $45/square foot for space. While these developments have brought some change to the town in the form of renovated Victorians, a new coffee house right beside the local barber shop, the renovation of tenements into a high-priced inn, and a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Examining the Creative Economy in Post-Industrial Cities: Alternatives to Blueprinting Soho
• PART I: EXPLORING ALTERNATIVES TO THE CULTURAL “BUZZ”
• PART II: MOVING BEYOND NEOLIBERAL METHODOLOGIES IN THE STUDY AND PRACTICE OF CREATIVE ECONOMY PLANNING
• Index