Proving once again to be the most complete source of accurate information concerning the building of a downtown Greensboro performing arts center:
"At its worst, cultural planning at the state and local level becomes captive of particular real estate interests, cultural industries, and cultural elites, and thus fruitful ground for consultants who promise great plans that often turn out to be windowdressing."
"...A city’s cultural districts proposal, for instance, should articulate the expected economic, neighborhood, and cultural goals in terms of job creation, property valuation and occupancy rates, small business revenues, visual character of the neighborhood, and enhancement in cultural experiences and values of multiple constituencies as well as possible negative effects on other groups and neighborhoods.
The equity norm demands that the city be explicit about who will benefit from its proposals and how any groups harmed..."
"...Minneapolis has invested in and owns four historic theaters downtown, now cheek-by-jowl with its troubled Block E entertainment complex of multiplex cinemas, the Hard Rock Café, and other chains. The city markets this remade downtown corridor as a regional and tourist destination. Along the Mississippi River, the new Mill City Museum, an historic preservation project, is adjacent to the new GuthrieTheater; both are destination venues surrounded by new high-end condos and municipal spec-built parking garages that the city is losing money on and now trying to privatize.
This concentrate of recent new investments in downtown districts reflects the weakness of broad participation in cultural planning, the priority that the elites of the city place on fine arts, and the interests of large-scale urban developers."
..."As with convention centers, ballparks, and spec-built prisons, communities may over-invest in cultural facilities, with long-term negative consequences for the public purse. Often, the expected patronage simply does not materialize, so that nonprofit arts organizations are faced with painful decisions to cut losses, and city governments must pay off bonds for facilities that don't generate the expected revenues. Resources that might have been spent on participatory, decentralized, and neighborhood-anchored arts and cultural spaces are locked up for long periods of time."
From Arts and Culture in Urban/Regional Planning by Ann Markusen, Professor and Director, Project on Regional and Industrial Economics, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota
With a hat tip to George Hartzman.
