Abstract
Creative Communities: Art Works in Economic Development is the result of a Brookings Institution symposium sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) held on May 10, 2010, called The Arts, New Growth Theory, and Economic Development. New growth theory argues that economic growth results more from innovation and new ideas in advanced economies rather than neoclassical economics’ assumption that greater growth results from obtaining additional capital. In other words, new growth theory assumes new ideas—like the creativity and entrepreneurship associated with the arts—lead to increases in economies of scale without decreases in resources. By applying new growth theory to the role of arts in economic development, the volume pivots the research in a new direction from the dominance of export base theory in economic development and toward the human capital involved with the arts. There is a recent review of the role of arts and culture in urban and regional planning and a critique of the emphasis on export base theory in this journal (Markusen and Gadwa 2010).
In the book’s foreword, Rocco Landesman, former chairman of the NEA, writes of the collection and the NEA’s interest in new growth theory, “There have been numerous well-intentioned and often compelling studies of the arts’ local economic impact, yet a common weakness has been that it is nearly impossible to tell whether the arts’ effects on, say, local tourism spending could have been replicated by the introduction of non-arts-related activities” (p. viii). He argues that the effects of arts activities in those studies are likely to be “undervalued, simply because the tools used are not precise enough to account for the effects independently of other economic variables” (p. viii).
New growth theory dominates the foreword and introduction and then is occasionally explicitly engaged by only a couple of chapters; others appear agnostic about the theory while the chapter by Ann Markusen, Anne Gadwa Nicodemus, and Elisa Barbour argues for a consumption base theory—in direct response to the dominance of export base theory rather than new growth theory—for understanding the arts in economic development using their study of California’s arts and cultural activity.
The entire volume of chapters is from an economic perspective with aims of influencing policy—although most contributions stop short of policy prescriptions. Eight of the nine case-study chapters in the book rely entirely on quantitative methods. The book is focused on the United States; the last chapter (authored by Hasan Bakhshi, Neil Lee, and Juan Mateos-Garcia) explains arts, cultural, and creative economies in English cities.
The other chapters explore whether art galleries spur gentrification in New York (authored by Jenny Schuetz), how three municipalities implemented and sustained cultural economic development initiatives with the financial support of Massachusetts’s Adams Arts Program for the Creative Economy (the only qualitative chapter, authored by Richard G. Maloney and Gregory H. Wassall), whether arts organizations’ revenue collection was affected by location within or outside the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District in metropolitan Denver (authored by Lauren Schmitz), whether there is a correlation between science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professionals and participation in arts and crafts (authored by Robert Root-Bernstein et al.), the impact of arts districts and universities on new media arts employment and patent rates (authored by Douglas S. Noonan and Shiri M. Breznitz), the relationship between selective characteristics and arts enterprise formation in American counties (authored by Roland J. Kushner), and whether there is a permanent relationship between local arts and cultural production and local prosperity (authored by Peter Pedroni and Stephen Sheppard).
The book’s strength is in its empirical approach; although oriented within economic theory, all chapters rely on empirics to deliver their findings. The extensive discussion of data is likely an asset for the quantitatively inclined. However, the decidedly quantitative orientation of the volume presents many limitations, not least of which is the lack of detail for specific places and how their distinct characteristics shape the role of arts and culture.
From my perspective, as a planning historian who finds value, meaning, and patterns in the rich qualitative details in case studies, the volume lacks nuanced analysis. The selections that corral the entire country through a series of digits ignore the details of these specific places represented by those numbers in favor of reporting a correlation. But what does that correlation tells us?—merely that there is a correlation. The why and so what are illusive without some qualitative context. A couple of chapters try to smooth the rough quantitative information with qualitative context. In chapter 8, Kushner attempts to use an anecdote about the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1912 to contextualize his study of enterprise and arts participation in American counties, but it fails to connect with the conclusions he draws from his quantitative analysis.
Meanwhile, in one of the most refined chapters, Schuetz argues there is a need for her quantitative study of whether the arrival of art galleries in Manhattan neighborhoods signals the likelihood of area redevelopment and gentrification precisely because there are several rich qualitative studies on the subject. Indeed, her work is enriched by the use of the historical detail these qualitative studies provide as a background to Schuetz’s quantitative analysis. But in the end, told that art galleries are not a gentrifying force in Manhattan, I am left wondering so what about the rest of the country or even other boroughs of New York. The New York art scene, especially its art galleries, is a rarefied place in the United States (if not the world). The study is not generalizable, especially as New York increasingly shifts to a place of arts consumption (such as buying art in a gallery) rather than a place of arts production (driven by the increasing cost of living in part caused by redevelopment and gentrification). Schuetz acknowledges that we need studies of other places but bemoans the lack of a comparable quantitative data set to the one she assembled for any other locale. I understand the desire to compare apples to apples, but the reality is that places are not all apples and our methods of study need to better account for that. Economists and their methods have a tendency to omit anything that is not an apple in their analysis, which tells only a rather skewed version of the story. That partial story is less helpful for planners trying to solve complex real-world, on-the-ground problems that require multiple methodologies.
As it is, this volume, which lacks a strong narrative or cohesiveness other than some type of engagement with the arts, does not compare apples to apples. While many authors acknowledge the challenges of data at desired scales, they are steadfast in using whatever they can. This makes the choice of “Creative Communities” in the title problematic. Community to most of these authors is defined by the way the census collects data rather than the scale at which people live. While census tracts approximate neighborhoods—even though they are arbitrarily drawn and often do not reflect the boundaries of actual communities—that is not the scale these authors use. They work at primarily city, county, and metro levels, which are too large to meaningfully be labeled “communities.” Further, with the exception of a handful of chapters, the work is not place based and otherwise does not use community in a sense employed by planners, limiting the collection’s contributions to planning scholarship. Likewise, only some chapters engage with policies (even less with plans) that directly relate to planning’s purview.
There is great need in planning scholarship for nuanced quantitative studies that examine place through multiple community scales, especially in arts and cultural planning and policy. One very recent example, funded by the NEA, probes the characteristics and distinctions of places and arts-industry affinity at the metropolitan and neighborhood scales, concluding (among other findings) that arts policy, including economic development efforts, should be targeted through place-specific initiatives (Grodach et al. 2014). The introduction and foreword of the book prepare readers to expect this kind of detail and policy suggestions, but in the end, the volume falls short of expectations.