Thoughtful observations, Brian.
Brooks may have a nose for arts ... less so for real estate. There are
huge areas of Philadelphia where housing values remain low and boy,
could they use some fixing up by Bohemians! Some of these areas aren't
so far removed from University City; indeed, they are logical extensions
of University City. The stems of Lancaster Ave. beyond 38th St.,
Baltimore Ave. beyond 49th St. and Woodland Ave. beyond 46th St. are
right there, waiting for Brook to move in.
Brook is wringing his hands about the inherent dynamism of a healthy
metropolis. I.e., the character of its neighborhoods is always changing.
You can't freeze them in the past, no matter how sentimentally attached
you are to them. I feel this same urge, to mourn the loss of the Good
Old Days in my neighborhood. But what I am really mourning, is my youth.
Well, guess what? I can't have it back. And neither can anyone else on
this thread. The best we can hope for, is a little management of change.
I'm deeply dubious of any effort to mandate or legislate retention of
starving artists in a neighborhood by some sort of time-capsule
approach, in which we simply snarl at anyone who wants to improve the
area beyond the level that starving artists have already improved it to.
I don't think you can command urban communities not to go up in value
anymore than you can command them not to go down in value.
Please don't tell me about New York's intellectual woes; let us
concentrate on Philadelphia's prospects. If artists can't afford to live
in the Big Apple, too bad! They should move here, and let their
industries follow them.
-- Tony West
Brian Siano wrote:
brook writes: "The pace of gentrification has accelerated to the
point where bohemian communities can no longer take root in major
cities like new york. the greenwich village bohemia lasted for
decades, soho for ten years, the east village for five, williamsburg
for two. the game is over.... the rising cost of living in major
cities snuffs out the forms of noncommercial intellectual creativity
for which our most cosmopolitan metropolises have long been known."
Well, this does raise a couple of interesting questions about creative
communities. The general pattern we're discussing is that there are
marginal or run-down areas of cities. Bohemians, artists, gays, and
radicals move in, because it's cheap to live there. Some of them are
motivated enough to fix the places up, make'em appealing, and suddenly
affluent people decide they want to live there as well; after all,
they have some taste, artists need audiences, and maybe they can bring
something to the community that's not necessarily artistis or radical,
but useful (grocery stores, coffee shops, boutiques, etc.) Now there's
more money in the nabe, the demand for housing goes up, and the bohos,
artists and radicals who _didn't_ get in on the ground floor can't
afford it anymore. So they move on... maybe to some other place, where
the next Talented Tenth will do the work to make things more interesting.
There's just one small change I'd make to the above account. Instead
of saying that the Creative Class moves in because it's cheap to live
there, I'd add that the areas are also _easily changed_. Which is
easier to reshape to your own desires-- a fully-preserved Victorian
rowhouse in West Philadelphia, or a run-down two-story row home in
Northern Liberties? Which is a blanker canvas-- an unused warehouse,
or a recently-built set of condos? Which is more fun to customize-- a
brand-new Lexus, or a vintage '68 Mustang? Where are creative people
more likely to exercise their creativity for the community-- a
tightly-regulated and policed Historic District, or a community with a
laissez-faire attitude towards one's fellow man?
There's a lot that bothers me about this creative-class discussion.
For one thing, if we cite these nomads of creativity as an engine for
urban improvement, and wail about their being priced out of
neighborhoods, we tend to forget about the _really_ poor people that
_they_ displaced in the first place. For another, it plays up a
distinction between creatives and non-creatives-- which appeals to a
lot of peoples' taste for snobbery and self-importance. You know:
someone who designs posters for metals bands is an artist, while
someone who edits commercials for an ad agency is a corporate drone.
The guy who makes wall mosaics with pottery is more an artist than an
computer game designer. Thing is, for every creative community, you
need an audience. So why disparage people who have taste merely
because they don't create the same kinds of things that artists-- real
or imagined-- create?
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