Yesterday, I linked to this Business Week story which identified some leading cities for artists and talked about the effects of artists on housing values and economic development. So I worked with Charlotta Mellander to look at the data and get a better sense of what’s going on. Highlights after the jump.
Our findings are preliminary. There’s lots to control for and lots more to do. But they certainly suggest that Business Week is on the money. Arts and culture – the so-called bohemian factor - matter a great deal to housing values and regional income. As much or more than some other key economic clusters – and a whole lot more than sports. Still high-tech and bioscience are what regions seem to want. And sports teams and stadiums continue to command special treatment and big subsidies. But the more we look into it, the more it becomes evident that arts and culture may well be the smarter bet.
- Arts, design and related occupations are very highly correlated
with regional wages, income and housing values. They are more closely
correlated with income than life scientists, engineers, and management
occupations. Only two occupations – computer scientists and business
and financial professionals – outperform them. - The core arts occupations of fine artists, musicians, dancers, and
so on are most important of all. The correlations between them and
regional wages, income and housing values are far far higher than for
designers and decorators, entertainment and media, and sports where the
correlations are low or insignificant. - The top 10 regions for core arts occupations are: New York, DC, LA, Honolulu and San Franciso.
- Santa Fe tops the list for fine artists.
- LA leads in actors with Orlando second.
- Honolulu, San Fran, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City top the list for dancers.
- Honolulu, New York, San Fran and Nashville lead for musicians.
- Cedar Rapids (the Iowa writers project?), DC and New York top the list for authors.
- For athletes and sports occupations, the leading places are Eugene
Oregon, Cincinnati Ohio, Hamilton Ohio, Philadelphia and Phoenix.
Here’s something I wrote on the subject several years ago.
February 28th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Is this a chicken/egg issue? Are the arts simply nurtured more in places that already have an educated, well-paid workforce and a sizable number of longtime residents who are active in cultural philanthropy and in the collecting of art?
I’m certainly not calling into question the value of nurturing the arts or the contribution a vibrant culture makes to a livable city, but I’m not sure luring the arts would necessarily work. Would every city, for example, have the support base to support a ballet company or opera or symphony?
Does your research address this issue in any way?
February 28th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Bill – You’re initial point is exactly right. It’s an organic, emergent, self-organizing kind of process. Not top-down. You can’t hope to plop down what I call an SOB -symphony, opera and ballet – and think it will work. Nor should every hamlet try to provide the full fleet of cultural offerings. The key actually is working artists and musicians. Places that have them have a broader ecology that is open to self-expression and individual mobilization of resources around ideas/ That’s just what entrepreneurs are looking for and need. So communities should try to nurture and support these self-organizing things, well, by “seeding them” – perhaps providing small scale grants or venture-like funding, helping provide cheap space, making sure regulations don’t hinder artists and music spaces and relaxing ones that do, and just making sure these scenes are “lubricated” not squelched.
February 28th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Thanks for the response and the insight.
March 1st, 2007 at 9:01 am
Bill – No sweat. I’ve seen this issue from two directions. One the one side, there’s the squelchers who try to sidestep facts and evidence and instead with a wisecrack: “How can you expect to build jobs around guys with ripped tee-shirts playing guitar on the street.” But on the other, there’s those who use this very nuanced kind of finding to say: “Well, gee OK, now we have all the facts we need to go out a build a brand new concert hall.” It’s about human energy and human capability – vibrant, energizing communities – really not big buildings. Glad this helped.