MESOC Serapeum | Where culture meets AI

Id		201
Author		Stern, M., J.; Seifert, S., C.
Title		Cultural Clusters: The Implications of Cultural Assets Agglomeration for Neighborhood Revitalization
Reference		Stern, M.J., Seifert, S.C. (2010). Cultural Clusters: The Implications of Cultural Assets Agglomeration for Neighborhood Revitalization. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 29(3), 262‑279.
Link to article		https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0739456X09358555
Abstract		Cultural districts have attracted increased attention as an urban economic development strategy. Yet for the most part, cities have focused on the agglomeration of cultural assets to increase tourism or lure wary suburbanites downtown. This article examines an alternative use of the arts for community development: cultivating neighborhood cultural clusters with modest concentrations of cultural providers (both nonprofit and commercial), resident artists, and cultural participants. The article presents innovative methods for integrating data on these indicators into a geographic information system to produce a Cultural Asset Index that can be used to identify census block groups with the highest density of these assets. The article then demonstrates the association between the concentration of cultural assets in Philadelphia in 1997 with improved housing market conditions between 2001 and 2006. The article concludes by exploring the implications of a neighborhood-based creative economy for urban policy, planning, and research.

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Cultural clusters are associated with a variety of positive features of neighborhoods, including higher levels of local and regional civic engagement. .
At the same time that cultural engagement fosters community-building processes at the neighborhood level, it also generates cross-community connections that bridge traditional barriers of social class, ethnicity, and geography. .
For example, we know that individuals who are involved in cultural activities tend to be more positive about and active in other dimensions of community life. .
However, given their potential for generating social benefits beyond purely commercial success as well as their strategic importance to the health of a city and regions creative economy, nurturing neighborhood cultural clusters is a strategy that deserves the attention of government, philanthropy, and the private sector..
This article examines an alternative use of the arts for community development: cultivating neighborhood cultural clusters with modest concentrations of cultural providers (both nonprofit and commercial), resident artists, and cultural participants. .
Diverse communities are the fertile soil in which the arts and culture flourish. .
The connection between diversity and the arts needs to be more fully explored. .
At the same time, cultural clusters spur civic engagement; cultural participants tend to be involved in other community activities, and neighborhoods with many cultural organizations also have concentrations of other social organizations. .
Where the planned district approach usually focuses on bigticket cultural venues that draw audiences, the cultural cluster perspective requires a greater understanding of the changing character of cultural production and the complex and active interactions between producers and participants that characterize the contemporary arts scene. .
Moreover, the arts generate participant networks that span neighborhood boundaries, overcoming barriers of social class and ethnicity that circumscribe social interaction. .
Thus, though the arts are commerce, they revitalize cities not only through their bottomline but also through their social role. .
The local presence of artists, nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, and commercial cultural firms provides a foundation upon which to build. .
The focus on attracting nonresidents to a citys cultural attractions has produced an economic impact industry to demonstrate to wary public officials and residents that investments in the culture industry have been or will be worthwhile. .
Neighborhood cultural clusters frequently do generate direct economic benefitsattracting new businesses and consumers and raising property values. .
Certainly the concentration of arts resources spawns social networks that bring social and economic vitality to a neighborhood. .
The entire community clearly benefits when a neighborhood cultural cluster sees its poverty rate decline and its population increase, but the artists and enterprises that stimulated the revival glean only the most indirect benefit. .
Strategic grants for place-making activitiessuch as distinctive streetscapes and lighting, community and park facilities, and local fairs or festivalswould also provide returns greater than their costs. .
Developing tools to track the level of economic transactions and the breadth and intensity of artistic social networks would greatly enhance the methodology. .
Cultural districts have attracted increased attention as an urban economic development strategy. .
In recent decades, a number of cities have turned to big-ticket downtown cultural districts as the strategy to expand their creative economy. .
We argue that culture can revive urban economies, not by placing a shiny veneer over crumbling decay, but by using the arts to engage community residents and revitalize their neighborhoods. .
Planning interventions can build upon and leverage existing resources to make a cultural cluster more successful at generating economic and social benefits. .
Some neighborhoods simply do not have the social ingredients necessary to sustain a vibrant creative sector without long-term support. .
Ideally, construction of a longitudinal database with both individual and neighborhood indicators would enable assessment of the benefits and costs of culture-based revitalization to people as well as places. .
One purpose of the economic impact assessment has been to support public subsidies for urban megaprojects built around performing arts or cultural centers. .
These newly discovered neighborhoods, according to the popular media, have benefited from a growing presence of artists and the expansion of commercial cultural activity (stimulated, in part, by the American Street Empowerment Zone). .
Given the evidence of the individual and collective benefits of cultural engagement, the absence of these resources in some parts of a city or town should concern its planners. .
They also seek more active ways of engaging culture. .
Other times, the high levels of cultural engagement may be a product of competition, as each group within a neighborhood seeks to create its own cultural identity. .
Cultivating cultural clusters can be but one approach to community planning and regional economic development policy. .
His architecture of community, a framework for place-making, has several important features. .
Because neighborhoods like Norris Square are already sustaining a vital cultural scene, they present planners with opportunities for time-limited, strategic interventions to expand their effectiveness and spur profitable investment. .
Sometimes creative expression is a product of cooperation as communities seek to develop multicultural institutions that bridge community differences. .
Given the significant positive externalities associated with cultural clusters, investment strategies that are profit-seeking, not necessarily profit-maximizing, could pay huge dividends to both the investors and the general community. .
Residents of all urban neighborhoods deserve cultural opportunities and access. .
Providing security, clean and safe streets, usable public spaces, convenient transit, and consistent and honest enforcement of zoning and development regulations would make the world much easier for those trying to seed and cultivate cultural clusters. .

ARTICLE - CANDIDATE TRANSITION VARIABLES

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