Artists as gentrifiers and victims in urban neighborhoods

.....gentrification" was first coined in 1964 by sociologist Ruth Glass, who commented on the changing "social character" of districts in London (Smith 1996, 33). Glass critiqued the process of gentrification, however inevitable it might seem to a realist, on the grounds that it threatened to undermine social welfare. Gentrification cannot be discussed without reference to the intersections between race, class, and power. However, gentrification may be an unreasonably maligned concept and term. Artists have consistently and historically stood at the forefront of gentrification, as the earliest pioneers of urban gentrification around the world. Ironically, though, artists have frequently been framed as the "victims" of gentrification (Makagon 2010, 26). The conceptualization of artists as victims and not as instigators of gentrification is a racialized critique of the process of gentrification because it ignores, discounts, or even denigrates the contributions made by non-white counterculture and bohemian pioneers of aesthetic urban revitalization. Although it is important to avoid the neoliberal misappropriation of artist-driven gentrification, the process has net positive outcomes in improving quality of life in urban spaces by conjoining disparate social groups and encouraging diversity (Markusen 2006). Gentrification deserves to be reconsidered as a desirable process that only sours when corporate interests undermine the ethos and aesthetics of original art-driven community-oriented progress.

Because artists have higher rates of self-employment versus other urban denizens, they can potentially boost community empowerment and self-reliance overall. With spillover effects to the non-artist residents of the same community, artists generate their own products and services to prosper not corporate entities but local ones. From a Marxist perspective, artists own their own means of production, are not alienated from their labor, and subvert the capitalist labor system. Artists work in ways that deliberately, overtly, and consciously breaks down social, economic, and political barriers of race, class, and gender (Cole 1987). Gentrification can promote social diversity and reduce homogenization (Slater 2004). If the end result of artists' role in impoverished communities is corporate real estate development, then artists themselves cannot be blamed. Their transformative role should not be underestimated or devalued, presumed to be somehow thematically linked with corporate brands of gentrification. As Marukusen (2006) puts it, "artists as a group make important, positive contributions to the diversity and vitality of cities, and their agendas cannot be conflated with neoliberal urban political regimes," (1921). Artist-driven gentrification is not the same thing as the corporate takeover and infiltration of working class, poor, or bohemian communities. If corporate interests to eventually encroach on working class spaces, it is only because of the cultural capital generated by artists and the commodification and co-opting of that cultural capital by neoliberal entities.

Urban geographers usually distinguish between first stage and second stage gentrification to clarify the differential role and perception of the artist. The first wave of gentrification is when the artist(s) move into an impoverished, run down, dilapidated, or simply old working class neighborhood. The second wave of gentrification is when corporate interests recognize the potential to raise real estate values because of artists' perceived cultural capital and the actual capital value associated with the artists' work in aesthetically improving the community and their local businesses. Critiques of the second stage of gentrification often obscure the political and social importance of the first stage. Regardless, gentrification is typically viewed as happening from the bottom-up: an artist-driven grassroots movement that organically shifts an economically depressed urban space into a mainstream one that is welcoming to yuppies. However, urban geographers are now conceptualizing a third stage of gentrification or at least a third type: whereby gentrification is a top-down process instead of a bottom-up process. That third model of gentrification involves active use and diversion of public funds into art-driven gentrification such as through support of public art, street art, and cultural facilities (Cameron and Coaffee, 2006). Matthews (2010) likewise calls the incorporate of art into public policy as third wave gentrification. Barcelona's Hangar Collective is unique in that it represents all three stages or types of gentrification: first, second, and third stages. As Pallares-Barbera, Dot, and Casellas (2012) point out, public outcries over the potential commodification and commercialization of the Hangar Collective led to top-down municipal policies that helped to retain the artist-only community concept. Not only did public funds help to resist corporate injections of finance into the community, they also helped to preserve the architectonic structure and its symbolism (Pallares-Barbera, Dot and Casellas, 2012). In fact, gentrification is both a material process and a symbolic act (Makagon 2010).

Tri-stage gentrification is increasingly becoming normative in urban centers around the world. In fact, Makagon (2010) suggests that gentrification is never accidental, and always requires partnerships between city governments, land developers, and the artist-pioneers who generated the cultural capital that made those gentrification projects possible in the first place. One notable exception to receiving public support might be Istanbul. In Istanbul, artists eschew government support as a means of political protest but attract funding from private sources that support populism and art (Tan n.d.). When artists drive gentrification without public policy support, the process is largely organic and less problematic politically and ethically. Gentrification projects that are not artist-driven is an entirely different geographic and sociological phenomenon, and one far more politically and ethically problematic because of the inherently political and ethical imperatives in art movements, artist lifestyles, and art itself (Makagon, 2010).

Artists have the potential to mitigate and minimize the damage that can be done during the third wave gentrification process, as corporate interests overtake -- or attempt to overtake -- whole communities and swathes of urban landscape. Because artists have critical cultural capital, artist support and their aesthetic contributions are required to keep market values high. Markusen (2006) claims that even when artists receive financial and other critical support from "elites," artists are almost by definition "opposed to the elite's values -- aesthetic and political," (1922). If a third wave gentrification project leads not to a Hangar Collective-type space but instead to a row of chain stores, then the neighborhood loses credibility. The reason why even art-driven gentrification continues to be criticized from a social justice perspective is because even after the neighborhood loses its credibility from a cultural capital standpoint, the working class people have still been displaced. A response to the potential exploitation of gentrification by the elites has been the "emancipatory" perspective and related public policy (Slater, 2004, 304). The emancipatory perspective suggests that municipalities can and should couple all gentrification projects with mandatory public housing and other social welfare services -- which has been public policy in many Canadian cities including Toronto and Vancouver (Slater, 2004). Cole (1987) also shows how gentrification projects throughout New York City have successfully integrated social justice with economic development in public policy. Slater (2004) claims that in Canada anyway, evidence is not supporting the efficacy of the emancipatory perspective because of the more visible disparities between the high-end condominiums and low-end social housing within the same gentrified neighborhood.

Artists play a role in mediating the competing needs for economic development and social justice. If fact, artists often recognize the ways economic development can promote social justice when it is properly managed. As Cole (1987) points out, artists can drive sustainable urban development without resorting to an aggressive elite stance that supports neoliberal land use policy. The Hangar Collective in Barcelona is a prime example of how artists can work with developers, the city, and residents to create sustainable urban development. Artists control their means of production, and therefore can control the means by which their aesthetic contributions to the community are valued. Public art, for example, can be informed directly by artists with political and ethical integrity and not driven by the blandness of pop art that diminishes both the cultural capital and the long-term value of the community's aesthetic outlook. As the public is sold on the concept of public art in their communities as something that adds value, cities generate new urban aesthetics -- a phenomenon that has been dubbed the Guggenheim Effect or the Bilbao Bounce because of the way the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao strategically gentrified a "declining industrial city" (Cameron and Coaffee 2006, 46).

An unwarranted critique of gentrification is based on the assumption that the non-artist working class does not directly benefit from artist-driven gentrification. While artists and other members of the "creative class" can sometimes sell out to corporate and neoliberal interests, urban gentrification can be an organic and ethical process (Markusen 2006). Spatial proximity to artists can enhance overall quality of life in cities for members of all socioeconomic groups, dismantling outmoded and patriarchal social structures and institutions (Ley 2003). Although gentrification still has negative connotations, dating back to its historical connection with "embourgeoisement," artists and community leaders can work together to limit the power of corporate interests (Smith 1996, 35).

Bibliography

Cameron, Stuart and Coaffee, Jon. 2006. "Art, Gentrification, and Regeneration -- From Artist as Pioneer to Public Arts." International Journal of Housing Policy 5 (1): 39-58.

Cole, D.B. 1987. "Artists and Urban Development." Geographical Review 77 (4): 391-407.

Ley, David. 2003. "Artists, Aestheticisation, and the Field of Gentrification." Urban Studies 40(12): 2527-2544.

Makagon, Daniel. 2010. "Bring on the Shock Troops." Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 7 (1): 26-52.

Markusen, Ann. 2006. "Urban Development and the Politics of a Creative Class: Evidence from a Study of Artists." Environment and Planning 38 (10): 1921-1940.

Matthews, Vanessa. 2010. "Aestheticizing Space: Art, Gentrification, and the City." Geography Compass 4 (6): 660-675.

Pallares-Barbera, Montserrat, Esteve Dot, and Antonia Casellas, 2012. "Artists, Cultural Gentrification and Public Policy." Urbani Izziv 23 (s1): 104-114.

Slater, Tom. 2004. "Municipally Managed Gentrification in South Parkdale, Toronto." The Canadian Geographer 48 (3): 303-325.

Smith, Neil. 1996. The New Urban Frontier. New York: Routledge.

Tan, Pelin. N.d. "Self-Initiated Collectivity." Art***.org.