Artists Fight Urban Blight: Casualty of the Recession?

The process by which neglected and depressed urban areas are revivified by artists, who are always seeking cheap rents and spaces in which to do their work, has been written and examined so closely and for so long that I’m unsure if there’s anything else to be said about the dynamic beyond the writings of Richard Florida, whose marvelous and visionary Creative Class Exchange is the first, last and final word on this. Indeed, at the height of the real estate boom here in New York City, it became rather a parlor game: What would the artists colonize and gentrify next? Would it be the South Bronx or would it be Harlem? Funny — the New York Times did that story, more or less, in October 2006.

Meanwhile, this is all pre-crash, pre-Obama, pre-recession talk — who knows what the story is in the South Bronx and Harlem these days. It more than likely depends on what metrics you use, but my strong suspicion is that most of the metrics are not encouraging. If there are very hard times underway south of 96th Street, it probably means there are excruciatingly horrible times to the north of it. How we might yearn for a time when a reporter might begin a story with these three sunny paragraphs:

For weeks, Holly Block and Patricia Cruz have been trying to BlackBerry a dinner date. Friendly from the downtown arts scene, they’re near-neighbors in Chinatown. And now they also have a kind of shared identity: they are the new headliners uptown.

In July Ms. Block, 47, started as director of the recently expanded, architecturally enhanced Bronx Museum of the Arts. Two weeks ago Ms. Cruz, 59, executive director of Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis Hall Inc., opened the Gatehouse, a performing arts space at 135th Street and Convent Avenue, the first new one in Harlem in 20 years.

That means they are poised to become two of the most visible and influential forces in the creative revitalization spanning Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, a movement that has been attracting audiences both locally and, increasingly, city- and worldwide. Joining such other force fields as Thelma Golden, director of the Studio Museum in Harlem; Jonelle Procope, president and chief executive of the Apollo Theater Foundation; Rosalba Rolón, artistic director of the Pregones Theater in the Bronx; and Kate D. Levin, New York’s cultural affairs commissioner (who arranged $19 million in financing for the Gatehouse and $16 million for the Bronx Museum), they stand at the center of northern New York City’s artistic development.

My purpose here is not to wistfully recall the pre-bust boom days of yore. Rather, it’s to call your attention to this piece in the Wall Street Journal. Called “Artists vs. Blight,” it examines the artist = urban development equation anew. For the most part it affirms the Florida view — with one important caveat that made me want to do some research and write a piece. That caveat suggests that the aforementioned equation could, should circumstances warrant, become one more victim of the recession, one more piece in the radically reordered economic chessboard.

To read more of this story, visit The Clyde Fitch Report, the nexus of arts and politics.