Does that mean Grub Street will be returning half of the 2-year
planning grant it received from the state in the Fall of 2013? (42,500 taxpayer
bucks for a project repeatedly billed as “revenue neutral.”) Somehow I think not,
but at this point such straightforward theft is one of the less sleazy aspects
of this case. As a writer – and a just as a rational, ethical human being – I’m
more offended by their serial abuse of an infinitely more precious currency: language.
For example, in the latest wave of uncritical, rah-rah articles about the
project, city councilor Ayanna Pressley is quoted applauding the district
because it will “incentivize foot traffic” in the area. Any writer worth her
salt will be deeply revolted by this kind of thing, as she would’ve by Eve
Bridburg’s classic from an earlier interview, “We’re thinking about branding
the work that everybody is doing.” Worst of all is that “Literary Cultural
District Coordinator” Larry Lindner is back to claiming that Boston is in the
midst of “a literary renaissance.” During the city council process a chastened,
or at least more cautious, Grub Street had downgraded their momentous cultural
rebirth to a still hugely overstated “resurgence.” It’s a sure sign they
feel the wind in their sails that they’ve now returned to the brazen ad-speak –
or what, in simpler times, was known as lying
– of “renaissance.”
The single note of caution sounded in the recent spate of
press reports was over the district’s walkability – a requirement of the MCC
guidelines. And if we look at the crude map that Grub Street released, it is
indeed a sizeable chunk of downtown real estate.
But that’s what it’s really been about all along, isn’t it –
real estate? The urban policy of cultural districts was first created for the very
purpose of “revitalizing” – code word for gentrifying – economically depressed neighborhoods
in cities ravaged by de-industrialization and other vagaries of a market
economy. Take a look at this 1998 “Americans for the Arts” report, Cultural Districts: The Arts as a Strategy
for Revitalizing Our Cities, sponsored by a group of urban mayors, business
associations, and arts administrators. By that time, the report states, there
were already 90 cities in the US that had founded or planned such districts.
Examine the language used to describe the function of cultural districts in these two excerpts:
Now for some basic math: what happens to a neighborhood when
the tax base is “expanded,” property values “enhanced,” local businesses “complemented,”
and more “well educated employees” and tourists roll in? It should be clear to
all persons of good will and plain dealing that behind the bullshit euphemisms
we’re talking about jacking up rents, racist redlining by other means, and
cultural homogenization – in other words, gentrification.
The experience of Pittsburgh, summarized in the Americans
for the Arts report, gives us a more or less typical example of the forces and
motivations behind the founding of a cultural district:
The first paragraph blithely asserts that the district will
“link the interests and activities of historic preservation groups, arts
organizations and downtown developers” as if these interests somehow more or
less harmonized in the first place, with the further assumption that arts
organizations do indeed represent the needs of artists and urban communities
(in fact, arts organizations often represent the interests of urban elites
before those of artists and ordinary citizens). But in the next paragraph it clearly
emerges that the primary motivation for the district came from the big urban
developers themselves. Cultivation of the arts is spoken of in terms of revenue
generation, number of events and tickets sold (the Pittsburgh example is
primarily a theater district), with everything subordinated to the ultimate
goal of economic success in market terms. As long as someone’s basking in the
benjamins, it just stands to reason that “quality of life” is going up for the
whole “community”!
What’s instructive in these examples is how little it has to
do with art and culture. Cultural districts are not the spontaneous or organic
outgrowths of city dwellers and culture producers’ collective efforts to remake
their surroundings at the grassroots level; they are the deliberate creations
of real estate developers and investors, urban politicians (who get their
campaign bucks from the developers, not from poor artists!), and bureaucrats
from various nonprofits. Arts and culture are an instrumentality, a means to an
end, rather than an end in itself. This is what it means when you hear
supporters of the Literary Cultural District using words like “leveraging,”
“branding,” and “incentivizing” – it’s not just crappy word choice. In their
minds, a thriving culture is one that generates dollars, even though they will
invariably frame this as an “everyone wins” scenario.
If that’s your definition of culture, then these districts
should be fine with you. In fact they’re now so prevalent that they’ve even
begun establishing something like a trade association of their own, the Global
Cultural Districts Network. Click through their website and then get back to me
about what kind of "cultural" vibe they’re giving off.
Call me crazy, but to me it looks a little . . . corporate.
Of course someone might reasonably remark, gazing at the LCD
map and tracing a finger from Beacon Hill over to Newbury Street, that the area happens to be a tad . . . gentrified already, yes? To which the most accurate rejoinder
would be, Yes and No. It’s true that much of the area appears fully developed commercially and “vital” enough not to indicate an urgent remedy of
“revitalization.” But there remain hundreds of units of affordable/subsidized
housing both within the district itself and quite near its borders, as well as
enclaves – particularly Chinatown – where working class families still hang on.
The Literary Cultural District has a profit-oriented rationale for taking both types of urban terrain into its
capacious borders, and I’ll be addressing each in greater depth in Parts 2 and
3 of this post.
In the meantime, since you’ll be hearing more and more about
how great the district will be for writers, check out the findings of this
quantitative study of cultural districts!
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