{"id":2223,"date":"2012-11-19T09:16:19","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T16:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2223"},"modified":"2013-06-28T10:10:13","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T16:10:13","slug":"questioning-creative-placemaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2223","title":{"rendered":"Questioning Creative Placemaking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Placemaking<\/a> talk is everywhere these days. \u00a0So too is \u201ccreative class<\/a>\u201d talk.\u00a0 Richard Florida<\/a>\u2014formulator of the creative class concept\u2014combines them in a recent essay for Urban Land<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Many people are on board with the notion that quality of place has something to do with urban vitality and creativity.\u00a0 We aspire to urban settings that are appealing and animated, inspire innovation and risk-taking, and stimulate the economy by producing new businesses.<\/p>\n

Complicating these discourses, however, is the undeniable fact that social and economic inequality is at record levels in the United States.\u00a0 As Florida himself notes<\/a>, American society is becoming increasingly class divided. Only about one third of American workers are employed in the creative class fields of science, technology, business, management, health care, law, arts, culture, design, media, and entertainment.\u00a0 The other 66% are employed in personal care, retail sales, and food service. \u00a0Their ranks are expanding and, as Florida also notes<\/a>, there\u2019s a powerful racial dimension to this class division.<\/p>\n

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Creative Class Share of the Workforce (Bureau of Labor Statistics)<\/p><\/div>\n

For cities, deepening social inequality is translating spatially as increasing residential segregation. As summarized by Emily Badger<\/a>, a recent Pew Research Center Report on “The Rise of Residential Segregation by Income”<\/a>\u00a0found that<\/p>\n

In 1980\u202685 percent of census tracts in America were either predominantly middle-class or mixed-income (this is a pretty impressive number). As of 2010, that figure had fallen to 76 percent. Today, considerably more upper-income Americans live in neighborhoods where the majority of their neighbors are upper-income, too (18 percent, up from 8 percent in 1980). And lower-income households are increasingly clustered in the same neighborhoods, as well (28 percent, up from 23 percent in 1980).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the same time, the Pew Report notes (page 13) that<\/p>\n

Looking at the trends from 1980 to 2010, it is also clear that residing in a majority upper-income tract has not reduced the exposure of its residents to neighbors who are lower income. In 1980, the average majority upper-income tract was made up of 7% lower-income households. By 2010, the typical majority upper-income tract had 10% lower-income households.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thankfully we have observers like Neeraj Mehta<\/a>, Research Director of the\u00a0Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota,<\/strong><\/a> to remind us of what these social and spatial patterns mean for the placemaking enterprise.\u00a0 Last month he had a nice post in Next City<\/em><\/a> framing the key questions that all<\/em> creative placemakers (and not just those who work their placemaking magic through the arts<\/a>) should ask:<\/p>\n

For whom are we trying to create benefit when implementing our creative placemaking strategies?… Which people do we want to gather, visit and live in vibrant places? Is it just some people? Is it already well-off people? It is traditionally excluded people? Is it poor people? New people? People of color?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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“Hot tub parklets are dandy, but for whom are we building them?” (Mehta, Next American City. Image credit: Paul Krueger on Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

Mehta suggests that creative placemaking should benefit not just cultural creatives but also low-income communities and communities of color. \u00a0Florida, in his Urban Land<\/em> piece, implies that creative placemaking depends on accommodating these economic and ethnic differences:<\/p>\n

Creative-minded people enjoy a mix of influences. They want to hear different kinds of music and try different kinds of food. They want to meet and socialize with people unlike themselves, to trade views and spar over issues. A person\u2019s circle of closest friends might not resemble the Rainbow Coalition\u2014in fact, it usually doesn\u2019t\u2014but creatives want the rainbow to be available.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But while Florida extols the virtues of \u201caccessible diversity\u201d as a means to stimulate creativity he says some things about the desired physical<\/em> quality of creative places \u00a0that may not square with the goal of culturally-inclusive placemaking:<\/p>\n

Authenticity\u2014as in real buildings, real people, real history\u2014is key. A place that\u2019s full of chain stores, chain restaurants, and chain nightclubs is seen as inauthentic. Not only do those venues look pretty much the same everywhere, but they also offer the same experiences you could have anywhere.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It seems to me that \u201cauthenticity\u201d can easily serve as code for the kinds of upscale restaurants, retail outlets, and other amenities enjoyed by white, middle-to-upper class culture. And, it can easily price people of color out of urban settings where their involvement is otherwise required if creativity is to be stimulated.\u00a0 At the very least such establishments often manifest a set of visual symbols or \u201ccues\u201d\u2014Mike Davis<\/a> might use the term \u201carchisemiotics<\/a>\u201d\u2014that signal who\u2019s welcome in a way that can work against social mixing.\u00a0 The chances of encountering The Rainbow is undoubtedly higher in places that judiciously meld “authentic” creative class desires with the \u201cvalue alternatives\u201d required (if not altogether desired) by the majority urban underclass.<\/p>\n

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Experience says the creation of such hybrid settings\u2014at least here in Denver\u2014is not going to be easy. For example, the exercise in placemaking \u00a0at 9th<\/sup> and Colorado<\/a> that we\u2019re following on this blog has generated great local resistance to accommodating the sorts of value shopping alternatives that attract \u201cThe Other.\u201d \u00a0This, despite the fact that ethnic and class diversity in the trade area is palpable.\u00a0 Specifically, 16% of residents in the primary zip code in which the 9th<\/sup> and Colorado development is located are in poverty. This puts the area in the low to middlin\u2019 range of urban poverty if we accept Pew Economic Mobility Project<\/a> definitions of low poverty (less than 10% of the population live in deprivation) and high poverty (more than 30% of the population live in deprivation) neighborhoods. \u00a0The three Denver neighborhoods immediately adjacent to the 9th<\/sup> and Colorado site together contain around 10% lower income households, a number that\u2019s consistent with what the Pew Residential Segregation Report (quoted above) considers typical for the nation as a whole.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus, better-heeled citizens in the re-development area have exposure<\/em> to income (and ethnic) diversity but they\u2019re still not keen to pay much placemaking attention to it (nor are their elected city councilpersons<\/a>). \u00a0Interestingly, I’ve noticed that the most vocal local opponents to the kind of development that might attract social diversity are people who work in the arts and other creative class industries.\u00a0 Thus, the \u201ctolerance for strangers\u201d that Bonnie Menes Kahn (referenced by Florida in his Urban Land<\/em> piece) says is an important hallmark of cosmopolitan culture<\/a> doesn\u2019t seem particularly well-developed in this part of Denver.\u00a0 Nor is it likely to be well-developed elsewhere in the city: Denver\u2019s overall Residential Income Segregation Index (RISI) rose 21 points between 1980 and 2010, a rate of increase exceeded only by three cities in Texas:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Richard Florida has done great work to track the growing social and economic inequality of American society. Now, creative placemakers need to acknowledge the existential reality of the urban underclass when devising their schemes, and not simply that group\u2019s potential to serve as a conceptual foil for the creative pleasure of cultural elites. By now it should also go without saying that all<\/em>\u00a0community stakeholders–including those representing the urban underclass–should have a place at the table when discussing placemaking alternatives. Neeraj Mehta nicely articulates the challenge:<\/p>\n

We need to create an explicit pro-equity agenda to our creative placemaking efforts <\/em>[and] be explicit about who benefits from the beginning\u2026 It\u2019s really an issue that all of us working on ways to build stronger, healthier communities should be willing to ask, over and over again<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Placemaking talk is everywhere these days. \u00a0So too is \u201ccreative class\u201d talk.\u00a0 Richard Florida\u2014formulator of the creative class concept\u2014combines them in a recent essay for Urban Land.\u00a0 Many people are on board with the notion that quality of place has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,18,16,20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-intercultural-city","category-new-urbanism","category-placemaking","category-urban-studies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-zR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2223"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2854,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223\/revisions\/2854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}