Framing Cultural Resource Policies in Comprehensive Plans

Abstract

In the United States, local governments have developed cultural policies, integrating them into the overall policy-making process. Although the research on cultural projects in urban development continues to grow, very few studies focus on American cities. Using a lens based on neo-institutional theory, this study traces the way Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, framed policies for arts and culture in their comprehensive plans. One major finding shows that State law with its focus on historic preservation heavily influences policies for arts and culture within comprehensive plans. Left out are policies pertaining to creative industries, despite their increased consideration in cultural policy.

Keywords

comprehensive planning cultural resources urban cultural policy

Introduction

In the United States, urban local governments have developed cultural policies, and over time these policies have been integrated into the overall urban policy-making process. This integration of cultural policy also affected urban planning through the inclusion of cultural resources into urban plans. Although the research on cultural projects in urban development continues to grow, the bulk of the research focuses on Western Europe (Bayliss 2007; Bianchini and Parkinson 1993; Lees and Melhuish 2013; Mommaas 2004; Montgomery 2003; Vanolo 2008) and very few studies focus on American cities (Grodach and Loukaitou-Sideris 2007; Ponzini and Rossi 2009). In particular, scholars have overlooked the role played by arts and culture in urban planning missing the analysis and understanding of the actual connections of cultural policy within the wider planning context.

The purpose of this study is to understand the connection between cultural policy and urban planning through a key planning document—the comprehensive plan. Using a qualitative case study approach (Mitchell 2006), we only analyze documents. The aim is to assess what the articulation of policy for arts and culture is within the overall planning process by comparing it with the urban cultural policy discourse. This discourse highlights the economic and social values of arts and culture that also are two goals for a city’s comprehensive plan. Specifically, this analysis aims to trace the way two major cities in Wisconsin framed policy for arts and culture in their comprehensive plans and assess how the realm of cultural policy has been integrated into the practice of urban planning.

Looking at the way policies are framed, we focus on the formulation stage of the policy process (Hoch, Dalton, and So 2000) and we use the lens of neo-institutionalism as our analytical tool. Institutions are “the formal rules, compliance procedures, and standard operating practices that structure the relationship between individuals in various units of the policy and the economy” (Hall 1986). If we consider policy as a social construct, then the role of analysis is to uncover its forging factors, unveiling the underlying institutions and analyzing resulting policy formulations (Healey 2004; Alexander 2005; Verma 2007). Drawing from this institutional perspective, this study investigates the following questions: How is comprehensive planning framing policies for arts and culture? What are the goals of these policies? Finally, what are the connections between comprehensive planning and cultural policy?

We start with a review of literature about urban cultural policy in the United States. We proceed by explaining the theoretical framework and then, we describe the research method and the sources of data analyzed. We carry out the analysis of “cultural resources”—as this is how the plans frame arts and culture—spelling out the underlying institutions, which include the state-mandated comprehensive planning law, the organizations and activities involved in arts and culture, the city bureaucracy and its relation with other private organizations, and the rationale that provides the value for supporting the arts. Then we analyze the role that these underlying institutions play in the resulting policy formulation and tease out the connections between comprehensive planning and cultural policy. Finally, we conclude by highlighting a few of the implications of the findings for planning practice and providing suggestions for future research.

Studying the Context of Urban Cultural Policy

In this article, we consider “cultural policy” as a series of actions by the government in support of the arts and culture (Devereaux 2011). This description is based on Dye’s definition of public policy as “what governments do” (Dye 1976). While other organizations play a role in the support of arts and culture, this definition fits our purpose. In the United States, the first national policy for arts and culture is considered the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Early policies on the arts evolved in legislation addressing other issues, such as the New Deal Programs initiated by the Roosevelt administration to help citizens during the great depression. For instance, the Federal Art Project (FAP) was part of the Work Progress Administration and commissioned works from thousands of artists (Gibson 2002; Perone 2004; Wyszomirski 2004). By the end of the 1930s, advocates trying to gain direct federal support of the arts created a growing movement. In the 1950s, animated debates about the necessity of a Federal agency were sustained by presidential reports that peaked in the creation of the NEA in 1965 (Heckscher 1963; Biddle 1988).

After the creation of the NEA, the 1970s were a quiet period for cultural policy. However, with the election of Ronald Reagan, the 1980s were characterized by a general policy of decentralization, devolution, and reinventing government that also impacted cultural policy. The historic budgetary growth trajectory of the NEA stopped, began to decline, and then was dramatically reduced. Slowly, the initiatives within the governmental cultural policy system shifted away from the federal level moving at first to the state level and then to local levels by the 2000s (DiMaggio and Bennedict 1991; Lowell and Heneghan Ondaatje 2006). This spurred the creation of State Arts Agencies and Local Arts Agencies (Mulcahy 2002).

The shift toward local cultural policy is relevant not only for the change in the level of government involved in the policy process but also in the policy model and the definition of arts and culture (Strom and Cook 2004). The former model was based on the need to subsidize arts and culture for their intangible worth; the new paradigm highlights the economic development impact generated by arts and culture in their communities (Florida 2002a; Cohen, Schaffer, and Davidson 2003; Markusen 2006) and shows how arts and culture can offer a variety of local assets that can be engines of urban revitalization (Whitt, Stone, and Sanders 1987; Strom 2002, 2008, 2003, ; Gray 2007; Stern and Seifert 2007). In particular, research measured the economic impact of arts and culture (NEA 1981; Radich and Schwoch 1987; AFTA 2002) and their capacity to generate social vitality (Costello 1997; Stern and Seifert 2008). In this newer model, it appears that urban governments focus their attention on the tangible worth—economic or social—of arts and culture rather than its intangible worth for a community.

As for the definition of arts and culture, urban cultural policy is characterized by a broadening of the definition over time and the types of firms and employment that could be included (Scott 1997; Scott 2010). In the early years of the NEA, high art and elite institutions were the focus of cultural policy. In the late 1970s, Chairman Livingstone Biddle turned the NEA to a more inclusive sense of the arts, broadening the meaning of culture to include the expressive arts such as programs about folk arts (Wyszomirski 2008). The recent research coming from Americans for the Arts, the national arts advocacy group, is directing attention to the economic impact of the creative industries, defined as the wide range of arts-driven businesses involved in the production or distribution of the arts and culture in the nonprofit and commercial sectors (AFTA 2005). This definition broadens arts and culture well beyond high art or folk art to economic sectors that were never included in arts and culture in the past, such as architectural services, display advertising and manufacturers of goods used by artists, such as paper, pencils, and musical instruments. This focus on creative industries broadens the definition, but also fits neatly into the urban cultural policy model of tangible worth of arts and culture.

After cultural policy became one of the concerns of urban policy making, urban planning, as a subset of urban policy making, began to integrate arts and culture into its purview. Leading city planners, arts administrators, and government officials from across the nation convened in San Antonio in 1979 to explore for the first time the potential of collaboration between the arts and city planning (Porter 1979). The mutual concern was the vitality of the city. Efforts then turned toward how the incorporation of arts projects could assist in urban revitalization in the 1980s. Kemp’s (2004) handbook offers an overview of local and regional revitalization efforts that emphasize the arts. Kemp provides examples of best practices by cities working on major cultural projects as a means for revitalization, such as building cultural facilities, fostering public art, and promoting cultural tourism. The literature that empirically analyzes these strategies is still growing (Grodach and Loukaitou-Sideris 2007; Grodach 2010).

Although the research on cultural projects in urban development continues to grow, the bulk of the research focuses on Western Europe (Bayliss 2007; Bianchini and Parkinson 1993; Lees and Melhuish 2013; Mommaas 2004; Montgomery 2003; Vanolo 2008) and very few studies focus on how local governments in the United States develop and implement cultural strategies (Grodach and Loukaitou-Sideris 2007; Ponzini and Rossi 2009). In particular, scholars have overlooked the investigation of comprehensive plans and their connection with arts and culture. Comprehensive plans are important documents for thinking about the city in a holistic way, especially considering that over time the emphasis moved from shaping the use of land to addressing social issues and economic needs (Kelly and Becker 2000; Kent 1964); therefore, it is valuable to understand the role that a comprehensive plan gives to arts and culture in this overall picture of the city. By examining comprehensive plans, we can assess the status of the integration of cultural policy and urban planning.

To examine arts and culture in comprehensive planning, we turned to neo-institutional theory as our analytic framework. This theory is based on a constructivist perspective that views public policy as a normative idea resulting from specific ways to conceptualize issues (Hall 1986; Hall and Taylor 1996; Healey 1999, 2004). Neo-institutional theory considers public policies as normative perspectives resting on underlying institutions (Healey 2004; Alexander 2005; Verma 2007). “Neo-institutionalists see political and policymaking practices as grounded in institutions dominated by ideas, rules, procedural routines, roles, organizational structures and strategies which constitute an ‘institutional construction of meaning’ that shapes actors preferences, expectations, experiences, and interpretations of actions” (Fischer 2003).

The meaning of policy occurs through the process of policy making, which in turn is constructed by and through institutions, as distinguished from organizations (Healey 2004). In this formulation, institutions are “the formal rules, compliance procedures, and standard operating practices that structure the relationship between individuals in various units of the polity and the economy” (Hall 1986). Supplying the political and organizational context in which actors interpret their self-interests, institutions play a major role in determining how interest groups, politicians, and administrators decide their policy preferences (Hall 1986; Peters 1999; Fischer 2003).

In particular, the “sociological institutionalists” focus attention on the organizational context, emphasizing how policy preferences are embedded in compliance procedures, organizational fields, organizational structures, and organizational values (Powell and DiMaggio 1991). Compliance procedures signify the law, whereas organizational fields include those organizations that constitute a specific area of institutional life (DiMaggio and Powell 1991). Organizational structures denote the bureaucratic form and organizational values refer to the rationale that explains the benefits of arts and culture (in this case). Overall, these underlying institutions frame policy formulation.

A neo-institutional approach is useful for the study of the connection between comprehensive plans and urban cultural policy because it unveils the influence that laws, organizations, bureaucracy and values play in framing policies and definition of issues. Oftentimes, cultural policy is studied in isolation from the bigger policy picture. A neo-institutional approach helps to root issues of arts and culture within the broader context that impacts urban policy. Neo-institutional theory claims that institutions shape interpretations of reality and normative perspective for future actions (Fischer 2003). Bringing attention to institutions, this analysis shows how issues of arts and culture are contextualized in comprehensive plans and influence how goals are designed as normative perspectives to guide future action. This type of analysis can assist planners in identifying the weaknesses of the integration of cultural policy discourse that can be addressed in the future when planning for the vitality of the city.

Method and Case Overview

This analysis is qualitative research based on a comparative case study. The choice of a case study is intertwined with the assumptions of an interpretive approach that values the understanding of complexity and contextuality (Mitchell 2006). The aim is to reconstruct the situational logic that is not directly observable, through a neo-institutional frame, unveiling the underlying institutions that shape a specific policy (Fischer 2003). In one sense, this is historical research because we are tracing documentary evidence: the evidence that survives individuals and individual choices and decisions.

Wisconsin was chosen because it enacted a law in late 1999 requiring all local governments to create comprehensive plans to regulate land-use decisions. In this way, state government intervened in matters of urban planning. As result of this law, the cities of Madison and Milwaukee each prepared a comprehensive plan. Prior to the enactment of the law, the two cities only had prepared neighborhood and area plans. Madison completed its City of Madison Comprehensive Plan in 2006, whereas Milwaukee released its Citywide Policy Plan in 2010 (City of Madison 2006; City of Milwaukee 2010). The choice of two cities in one state is meant to highlight the impact that different local institutional contexts have on the final shaping of new policies even under one broader institutional framework—the state law.

The main documents of our analysis are the comprehensive plans from both cities. The Madison plan is divided into two volumes: background information and the plan. Each volume is further divided into eleven parallel chapters. Two of these chapters are dedicated to historic and cultural resources. Milwaukee’s plan is divided into nine sections, one of which is devoted to cultural resources. Besides the two comprehensive plans, we analyze a number of other documents in this research: the Wisconsin Comprehensive Planning Law of 1999 (Wisconsin State Legislature), the websites of the city of Madison and Milwaukee and other documents, such as the Madison cultural plan.

Underlying Institutions: Framing the Policies

In our analysis, we examine the following underlying institutions: compliance procedures, organizational fields, organizational structures, and organizational values. Then we proceed, to examine policy formulation and the connections with cultural policy.

Compliance Procedures

In 1999, the State of Wisconsin passed the comprehensive planning or “Smart Growth” law, requiring that land-use decisions made by towns, villages, cities, or regional planning commissions be guided by an adopted comprehensive plan (Ohm 2000). The state’s planning law gives local governments the authority to undertake the preparation and adoption of a comprehensive plan.

The most significant part of the law for the purpose of this article is the definition of a comprehensive plan. The law defines a comprehensive plan as “a guide to the physical, social, and economic development of a local governmental unit” (Wisconsin State Legislature). The law provides a detailed definition of a comprehensive plan, requiring the inclusion of nine elements: (1) issues and opportunities; (2) housing; (3) transportation; (4) utilities and community facilities; (5) agricultural, natural, and cultural resources; (6) economic development; (7) intergovernmental cooperation; (8) land use; and (9) implementation (Ohm 2000).

According to element number five, “Agricultural, natural and cultural resources,” the law requires comprehensive plans to address issues of arts and culture in terms of “cultural resources.” More specifically, the law requires local governments to pay attention to “historical and cultural resources.” The connection between historic and cultural resources emphasizes the link with the preservation movement that is also further articulated by the guide prepared by the Division of Historic Preservation of the Wisconsin Historical Society titled A Guide to Smart Growth and Cultural Resource Planning (Bernstein 2009). In this document, cultural resources are defined as “include[ing] historic buildings and structures as well as ancient and historic archaeological sites” (ibid., 5). The guide is solely focused on historic preservation with no mention of other possible types of cultural resources.

Moreover, we noticed that cultural resources are combined with agricultural and natural resources. This way of thinking about cultural resources does not emerge in the traditional discourse of cultural policy, but it is not unusual in the context of the historic preservation movement (Lee 2008; Tyler, Ligibel, and Tyler 2009). In the United States, preservation has followed two distinct paths. First, the private sector promoted activities revolving around important historical figures and associated landmark structures. Second, the federal government was focused on the preservation of natural features and the establishment of natural parks. In 1949 the National Trust for Historic Preservation was passed that merged preserving historic landmarks and natural parks. Seventeen years later in 1966, the government assumed a leading role in historic preservation with the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act.

Although cultural resources are combined with agricultural and natural resources in the comprehensive planning law, there is no state requirement to combine all three resources into a single chapter in the final plan. Both the comprehensive plans of Madison and Milwaukee created an independent chapter dedicated solely to cultural resources rather than combining it with agricultural and natural resources like many other Wisconsin communities have done (Edwards and Haines 2007; Schilling and Keyes 2008).

Organizational Field

Both comprehensive plans provide an overview of historic and cultural resources before describing issues and goals. In these overview sections, a description of the organizational field of cultural resources in each city emerges. Madison’s plan considers two main aspects: historic preservation and the arts. The historical districts and particular historic sites and structures are identified in the plan and all of which are cared for by the city. There is a register of historic places that is not administered by the city but by the Wisconsin Historical Society.¹ The arts are described as performing arts, galleries and museums, art in city building, arts education and public art. The plan lists several performing arts companies, including companies started by dance professors of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the growing number of festivals run by a variety of organizations. The biggest museums are the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the Madison’s Chazen Museum, surrounded by numerous gallery spaces.

Milwaukee’s plan includes an array of organizations that is much vaster than the one described by Madison, including the zoo and sport facilities. The plan also talks about arts and cultural facilities including libraries, religious institutions, and artist’s live/work spaces. Performing arts companies include opera, ballet, theatre, and repertory theatre. The visual arts are represented by the Milwaukee Art Museum and several public and private galleries. Public art has also a noticeable role. Interestingly, the Milwaukee plan mentions the crucial role of higher education in supporting arts development and education. Historic preservation plays a role in Milwaukee’s plan as well, which describes the importance of heritage such as architecture, landscape, and historic and iconic buildings.

It is interesting to note the unique aspects each city chose to focus on. Madison’s festivals are a key part of their cultural resource base, but Milwaukee, known for its festivals along the City’s waterfront, and called “City of Festivals” (December Communications, Inc. 2012), does not mention them in the description of cultural resources.

Organizational Structure

This section focuses on the city’s organizational structure as it pertains to arts and culture. Madison has two formal agencies focused on arts and culture. Historic preservation is supported by a municipal agency called the Madison Landmarks Commission, created in 1971, whereas the arts are supported by the Madison Art Commission, created in 1974. Both agencies are under the Department of Planning, and Community and Economic Development, in the urban design unit of the planning office (City of Madison 2012). One of the main goals of the Arts Commission is to ensure all community members have access to the arts in addition to providing planning and policies for arts resources, arts education programs and public art. It is worth pointing out that Madison’s comprehensive plan displays structural integration among the agencies involved in the preservation and administration of arts and culture. In its policies, the plan includes directions for both governmental agencies, the Madison Landmark Commission and the Madison Arts Commission. Madison is experiencing cultural policy integration both from the planning department and its arts and culture subagencies.

Milwaukee has a more robust organizational structure to support the arts and historic preservation than Madison. There are several organizations in the private sector, besides the agencies included in the city bureaucracy (see Figure 1). The Milwaukee Historic Preservation Commission, established in 1981 under the City’s Clerk Office, is responsible for designating historic landmarks, historic districts, national register properties, and for issuing certificate of appropriateness for permission to alter historic buildings. But there are also a number of private organizations dedicated to historic preservation, such as Historic Milwaukee Inc. and the Milwaukee Preservation Alliance. Also, the University is actively involved through the Milwaukee Preservation Institute.

Figure 1.

Madison and Milwaukee organizational structure.

The Department of City Development (DCD) created the Milwaukee Arts Board (MAB) to enhance the cultural life of Milwaukee citizens and is staffed by the DCD. The Board provides grants to support innovative projects and programs. There is also a non-profit organization called the Cultural Alliance of Greater Milwaukee—recently renamed the Creative Alliance Milwaukee² (CAM). This non-profit organization created in 2005 serves Milwaukee’s seven-county region acting as an umbrella organization to fuel the arts and culture.

Organizational Values

Besides describing the city’s cultural resources, both plans provide a rationale highlighting the value of arts and culture that provides the reasons to support them. Madison’s plan states that the role of the arts entails several important elements for a livable city: they affect the community’s quality of life, play a significant role in placemaking, and advance economic development and education. Considerable attention is given to the importance of building a livable city through the creation of a culturally diverse community as an expression of a democratic society. Visual, performing, and literary arts are considered an integral part of the character of the community.

The Milwaukee plan explains why it is important to support the arts: they generate jobs, stimulate neighborhood development, contribute to economic impact, are a key educational opportunity, add inestimable value to quality of life, and attract talent and people. “Milwaukee’s art and cultural heritage, its ethnic diversity, and historic resources provide a rich sense of identity, diversity, pride, and creativity that improves the quality of life for residents and the city’s attractiveness as a destination” (City of Milwaukee 2010, 132). The plan argues that (1) the quality of life of residents is improved because arts and culture bring enjoyment and inspiration while engaging people in common experiences; (2) these same experiences generate tourism and attract new businesses and residents; and (3) by supporting and enhancing these amenities, regional growth and an innovative community will be fueled.

Goals: Formulating the Policies

Policy formulation is the final step of a planning process in which policies are designed through goals, midrange strategies, and recommendations for operational actions (Hoch, Dalton, and So 2000). When we examine policy formulation for cultural resources in these two plans, first we need to note that each plan uses a slightly different terminology. Madison’s plan breaks down its recommendations into goals, objectives, and policies. This terminology follows the planning literature that provides normative processes for creating a comprehensive plan (Haines et al. 2005; Hoch, Dalton, and So 2000; Kelly and Becker 2000). Milwaukee’s plan uses only the term “policies,” and even though the plan has more and less abstract levels of policies, some of which could be labeled “goals” and others as “objectives” or “policies”; the plan does not use different terms to label the level of specificity.

We focus on the goals of policy formulation by considering the general aims of the community in both plans and highlighting some recommendations for operational actions (see Table 1). What emerges is that there are two main categories: one using arts and culture as a means for other purposes, another one where arts and culture are the ultimate goal. Each of the next sections is derived from the actual policies reported in Table 1.

Table 1.

Cultural Resources Policy Formulation.

Plan use	Madison	Milwaukee
Arts and Culture: a means for other purposes	• Maintain and enhance Madison’s identity as a center of historic and cultural assets and activities • Maintain and enhance downtown’s historic and cultural resources	• Preserve, enhance and promote cultural heritage, beauty and identity of the city of Milwaukees • Integrate arts and cultural resources and diversity into neighborhoods
Arts and Culture: the ultimate goal	• Develop a fundamental vision of the arts • Continue to grow Madison’s municipal arts program so that it remains responsive to the changing community and supportive of the local arts community	• Support and promote the arts and cultural resources

Arts and Culture as a Means for Other Purposes

Both cities rely on cultural resources to promote their identity. Madison aims to maintain and enhance its identity as a center of historic and cultural assets and activities. However, this goal is spelled out focusing mainly on the city’s historical assets and activities. The breadth of cultural resources described when providing an overview of the organizational field is not followed through into the policy formulation part of the plan. However, while a narrow formulation occurs in the comprehensive plan, the more current cultural plan recognizes identity and views it quite differently, defining Madison’s identity through its values, which includes its history and landscape (City of Madison 2013).

The same narrow approach to cultural resources, focused on the enhancement of its heritage, emerges also in the policy formulation of the Milwaukee plan. Milwaukee calls for collaboration with the Historic Preservation Commission and state and federal agencies in order to build its identity, which confirms its primary focus on historic assets. This attention to historical preservation is the result of the compliance procedure of the “Smart Growth” law that explicitly requires the management of “historical and cultural resources.” The way the law frames cultural resources is linked to the tradition of the preservation movement which has a stronger influence on comprehensive planning policy making, rather than the way in which each city perceives the field. For instance, Milwaukee’s plan recognizes the important role of the Milwaukee County Park System in providing a number of facilities and cultural experiences, when describing the organizational field of arts and culture in the overview section. This aspect shows how even the discourse about the organizational field of cultural resources in Milwaukee is very much influenced by the historic preservation movement that started with the creation of national parks. Thus, this thread from federal government carries through to state law and further into local comprehensive plans.

While historic preservation plays an important role in policy formulation, both cities’ history of neighborhood and area planning, including downtowns, remains an enduring legacy and central to their thinking, though in differing ways. Prior to the enactment of the “Smart Growth” law, both Madison and Milwaukee had worked on neighborhood plans, with a lot of attention given to the downtown (Robertson 1990; Ward 2007; Weisbrod and Pollakowski 2007). The idea that downtowns are critical for vibrant communities has also been promoted by the academic literature (Strom 2008; Turner 2002) and by initiatives such as the Wisconsin Main Street Program and the Wisconsin Downtown Action Council.³ This privileged attention to downtown is still dominant in Madison’s comprehensive plan policies. In fact, two of the four policies are concerned with historic preservation of older buildings downtown. This stress on downtown and its historic preservation is inconsistent not only with the city-wide scope of comprehensive planning, but also with the city’s vision of arts and culture. Focusing mainly on historic preservation, Madison fails to incorporate all the arts and culture aspects described in the organizational field.

In contrast, Milwaukee’s plan promotes the integration of arts and culture into neighborhoods. In particular, Milwaukee aims to enhance the diversity of its neighborhoods through arts and cultural resources by identifying and preserving each neighborhood’s historical and cultural legacy. These goals are in line with the stated value of arts and culture that are said to stimulate neighborhood development. At the same time it incorporates the idea of a citywide plan while paying attention to the diversity of each neighborhood. As a suggestion for future steps, the plan encourages the need to work and collaborate with the Historic Preservation Commission, which is part of the City Clerk’s Office.

Finally, Milwaukee’s plan, when addressing the integration of arts and cultural resources into neighborhoods, does not limit its view of the arts field to the historic aspect. It calls for the organization of arts programming, which includes fairs and festivals. This is interesting because the plan’s introductory overview fails to account for festivals.

Arts and Culture as the Ultimate Goal

Madison’s concern about the arts was articulated in policy through its aim to develop a “fundamental vision” of the arts and cultural life of the city. The objectives for a separate cultural plan were to raise awareness of the arts, sustain arts resources in the city, and coordinate the work of organizations and individuals to provide a thriving arts environment. As a result of the recommendations given in the comprehensive plan, the city commissioned a cultural plan in 2008. Five years later, Madison’s Cultural Plan was adopted by the city council (City of Madison 2013). This plan defines cultural resources very broadly, looking at community arts, science, and history. While science is new in the definition, it does not reemerge in the rest of the plan. This plan holds to tradition, with historic preservation and natural resources (such as lakefront and greening the urban landscape) playing prominent roles. The creative economy is also part of this plan, but only one of many foci.

Milwaukee’s comprehensive plan also called for a strategic plan for the arts, as one of the specific actions listed under the goal to support the arts. An overall arts plan for the city has not been developed yet. However, the CAM has published a vision statement and strategic plan to lead the organization, and it has a citywide focus (Creative Alliance Milwaukee 2012).

The state mandate asks not only for conservation of historical and cultural resources but also for their promotion. Each of the two cities analyzed goes about it quite differently, as Madison focuses on the internal capacity of the city, whereas Milwaukee asks for better collaboration with external sources. Madison focuses on its internal capacity by providing directions to the municipal arts program lead by the MAC. The city’s goal is to grow the program to remain responsive to the changing community and supportive of the local arts. The issue addressed is the need to guarantee access to the arts that will improve community quality of life. This reflects the organizational value, stating that the arts affect the community’s quality of life.

In contrast, Milwaukee focuses externally by asking for resources to support and promote arts and culture. In particular, the issue that the plan wants to address is the lack of adequate funding for cultural organizations and facilities, encouraging collaboration between the Milwaukee Arts Board, the CAM, Milwaukee County, and the private sector. The attention to the need to support and promote cultural resources is based on the belief that developing the arts and cultural infrastructure and activities will attract people and talent. This attention to the capability of arts and culture to attract people and, specifically, talent, echoes the rationale developed by Richard Florida. The ideas of the book The Rise of the Creative Class (Florida 2002b) are mentioned at the beginning of the plan and clearly guide the way the values of arts and culture are articulated in the plan. In Madison, the value of arts and culture as a catalyst for attracting people and businesses is not considered.

Both cities call for more educational programs for youth. Madison stresses the need to broaden access and Milwaukee emphasizes how school district budgets need to be compensated through community offerings.

Assessment: Connections between Comprehensive Plans and Cultural Policy

This analysis allowed us to make an assessment about the connections between comprehensive planning and cultural policy. The most relevant relationship between comprehensive planning and cultural policy is the request for a cultural plan. However, only Madison followed through and created one. On the other hand, Milwaukee mentioned Florida’s work about the creative class, showing knowledge of the most popular ideas in urban cultural policy. Also, Madison encouraged the promotion of the arts considering only the municipal program led by the MAC, whereas Milwaukee encouraged collaboration between several public and private actors.

The big difference between comprehensive planning and cultural policy is the way cultural resources are defined. The comprehensive plans combine cultural resources with agricultural and natural resources, which is not unusual in the context of the historic preservation movement, but it is absent in the current cultural policy discourse. Moreover, both comprehensive plans do not include the concept of creative industries, which is central to cultural policy (AFTA 2005) and widely discussed by the international cultural policy literature (Caves 2000; Hesmondhalgh 2002; Power and Scott 2004; Garnham 2005; Hartley 2005; Pratt 2008). Even in the sections of the plans dedicated to economic development, there is no mention of the creative industries, neither to increase them nor to point out their contribution.

The arts community and economic development groups in both cities have started to pay attention to this way of framing cultural resources and developed an argument about their economic value. The Wisconsin Arts Board, the state agency dedicated to promoting the arts, has developed an initiative to tout the value of creative industries in the economy in addition to the non-profit arts sector (Wisconsin Arts Board 2010; Worland 2010). In Milwaukee, the Cultural Alliance of Greater Milwaukee and the Greater Milwaukee Committee prepared a report titled “Creative Industries. A New Economic Growth Opportunity for the Milwaukee 7 Region” (Mt Auburn Associates 2011). However, this discourse has not yet been translated to written policy and it has not been included in these two comprehensive plans.

The organizational values that articulated the rationale describing the importance of the arts and culture included several themes promoted by cultural policy: they generate jobs, stimulate neighborhood development, contribute to economic impact, enhance quality of life, and attract people. However, neither city transferred these values into actual policy formulation where the main ideas are shaped by the historical preservation movement. Only Milwaukee briefly includes the need to enhance arts programming such as fairs and festivals.

To verify the standing of arts and culture within each city, we looked at the budgets of both cities to see if they aligned with our analysis (City of Madison 2011; City of Milwaukee 2011). Madison’s Cultural Arts district in the downtown area, created to run the Overture Center, is budgeted at $1.796 million. The Overture Center for the Arts not only includes performance but education and outreach programs, supporting the city’s value to provide access to arts and culture as a way to improve the quality of life in the community. In addition the Neighborhood Planning and Design function of the Planning Division is budgeted at $1.215 million. The mission of this function is in part “to protect and enhance the City’s natural, cultural, aesthetic and historic resources” (City of Madison 2011, 140). However, it is unclear how the funds are distributed under this budget item.

In contrast, Milwaukee only budgets $160,000 for MAB projects with no clear staffing and then budgets additional monies for two historic preservation staff under the City Clerk’s office. The budget identifies as responsible parties to implement Milwaukee’s goals and policies related to cultural resources and historic preservation the MAB, the historic preservation commission, business improvement districts (BIDs), and outside entities including non-profits, the regional economic development organization, and the arts community, among others. This distribution of responsibilities substantiates the city goal to ask for better collaboration with external sources, instead of focusing on the internal capacity. While $7.342 million is budgeted to BIDs, the emphasis of that funding is unclear. The differences in the budgets of the two cities confirm the stronger engagement of Madison as it already implemented one recommendation of the comprehensive plan, which was to create a cultural plan.

Conclusions

This analysis of two comprehensive plans from the major cities in Wisconsin deepens our understanding of the interaction between urban cultural policy and urban planning and suggests directions for a stronger integration that can benefit the vitality of a city. The comparative analysis of two cities showed that the underlying institutions can be different as they express local characteristics. For instance, Madison and Milwaukee have different organizational structures and include arts and culture in different ways within the bureaucratic organization of the city (see Figure 1) and this is reflected in budgetary priorities as well. This finding highlights the local role of cultural policy where great flexibility is exhibited and results in different levels of local government involvement. An important recommendation for planners is the need to analyze the institutional context of their city so that they can involve the key actors for arts and culture and recognize how the process of framing policy for cultural resources not only can be different in each city but can influence the policies that planners are including into plans.

In both cases, the most influential institution is State law. When formulating policy that relies on cultural resources to foster their identity, both cities focus mainly on historic cultural resources. This focus is impacted by the “Smart Growth” law that mandates local governments to address “historical and cultural resources,” which in turn was influenced by the historic preservation movement and the way in which cultural resources are shaped and defined through it. What is missing is a broader definition of the arts that includes the creative industries. In both cities, the arts community and economic development groups have promoted this broader definition of the arts and culture organizations and highlighted their economic value. However, this discourse was not included in the comprehensive plan. These observations invite planners to create stronger collaborations with the arts community to better incorporate the current research in the field to benefit the vitality of the city.

Finally, the analysis found that comprehensive planning is framing policies for arts and culture under two main categories (see Table 1): one using arts and culture as a means for other purposes, such as the promotion of city identity or the enhancement of specific neighborhoods; the other one using arts and culture as the ultimate goal, such as the promotion of arts and culture, and the development of a cultural plan. This twofold policy approach is a fruitful strategy that should be encouraged among planners to make the best of including arts and culture in comprehensive planning.

Future steps of this research could consider the law and comprehensive plans of other states to examine how they formulate policy about cultural resources. It would be interesting to verify if collaboration between planners and cultural policy makers is more integrated in other places. Bernstein (2009) pointed out that only seven states mandate that local governments address cultural resources in their comprehensive plans. Another question that arose is, How do cultural policymakers diffuse their ideas to other fields? Further research would improve the empirical knowledge of how cities are using arts and culture in their planning efforts and provide further insights about the current connections between the arts community and planners.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Eleonora Redaelli is an assistant professor at University of Oregon. After working in the cultural sector in Italy, she got her PhD at the Ohio State University. She specializes in cultural policy, cultural planning, and arts management education.

Anna Haines directs the Center for Land Use Education and is a professor and extension specialist at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. Her research and teaching focuses on land use planning, community development, and sustainable communities.

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