The arts, Bohemian scenes, and income

ABSTRACT

Where and how does arts activity drive neighbourhood revitalization? We explore the impact of arts establishments on income in US zip codes, nationally and across quantiles (from four to seven subgroups) of zip codes stratified by disadvantage (based on income and ethnicity/race). We focus on what is new here: how neighbourhood scenes or the mixes of amenities mediate relationships between the arts and income. One dramatic finding is that more bohemian/hip neighbourhoods tend to have less income, contradicting the accounts from Jane Jacobs, Richard Florida and others. Arts and bohemia generate opposing effects, which emerge if we study not a few cases like Greenwich Village, but use more careful measures and larger number of cases. Some arts factors that distinctly influence neighbourhood income include the number of arts establishments; type and range of arts establishments; levels of disadvantage in a neighbourhood; and specific pre­ and co­existing neighbourhood amenities. Rock, gospel and house music appeal to distinct audiences. Our discussion connects this vitalizing role for arts activity to broader community development dynamics. These overall results challenge the view that the arts simply follow, not drive, wealth, and suggest that arts-led strategies can foster neighbourhood revitalization across a variety of income, ethnic, and other contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Neighbourhood revitalization
• income growth
• arts
• scenescapes
• culture-led regeneration
• creative placemaking
• local economic development

Notes on contributors

Yasemin Arikan uses futures and social science research methods to help organizations and communities discover robust and meaningful areas of opportunity, especially in economic development and health. Her work includes developing trends, forecasts, and scenarios on the futures of public health, health care, society and technology for associations, foundations, government, and business. She also co-led the first-ever examination of US community health centres’ role in improving population health by addressing community conditions that underlie and shape the health of patients. She earned her master’s degree in social sciences with a concentration in sociology from the University of Chicago.

Terry Nichols Clark is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He has published some 40 books mostly on cities. Clark is international Coordinator of the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project, which is surveying city officials across the US and in thirty-five other countries.

Douglas S. Noonan is a Professor at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI. His economic and policy research addresses issues in urban environments like revitalizations through creative placemaking and cultural districts, entrepreneurship in the arts and digital media, and community resilience. He is director of the Arts, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation (AEI) Lab in partnership with the NEA, and he is the director of research initiatives for the Center for Cultural Affairs at Indiana University. He serves as the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cultural Economics and is a board member of the Association of Cultural Economics International.

George Tolley is Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago’s department of economics, where he has been on the research faculty since 1966. Prof. Tolley is an urban economist who helped establish the study of the economics of amenities. From 1978 to 1985, Tolley directed the Center for Urban Studies at the University of Chicago from 1978 to 1985. He also founded the journal, Resource and Energy Economics. Tolley was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003.

Notes

1 See National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (2015) for a brief on state level policies; the US National Endowment for the Arts’ “Our Town” grant programme, https://www.arts.gov/grants-organizations/our-town/grant-program-description; the EU “Capitals of Culture” initiative, https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/creative-europe/actions/capitals-culture_en; ArtPlace America, https://www.artplaceamerica.org; and Artspace, https://www.artspace.org.

2 See https://scenescapes.weebly.com.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Endowment for the Arts [grant number 1844331-38-C-18].