I think there are actually two art scenes. The pre-gentrified art scene and the post-gentrified art scene. The post-gentrified scene almost always completely supplants the pre-gentrified scene. Leaving only scattered remnants of what came before and sometimes leaving no trace at all.<p>An example of this can be seen in NYC, particularly in the gentrification of Brooklyn.<p>There’s this wannabe poetry Banksy artist that graffiti’s their handle with a corny, cheesy “deep” sentence all around NYC. These corny one-liners of his shows in galleries too. It feels so commercialized. Whenever I see them, I know this area has completed gentrification.
I was really excited to read this, but I think the methodology is lacking. True art scenes are not defined by galleries, or fine art institutions, but people who occupy a space who do art. Which is totally different. it’s the low income individual who is a starving artist. It’s graffiti on the walls (wynwood Miami).
I once lived in a shoddily converted warehouse with a bunch of artists, there were no galleries near us, there was a granite mill though.
My intuition is that art scenes don't cause gentrification so much as they are one of many signals that a neighborhood is "safe" enough for people to begin displacing the incumbent community. It's possible - maybe even likely - that the neighborhood was suitable for investment before that point, but no one noticed until they were forced to visit it while attending a gallery showing or something.
Artists have taste, a need for space at a low price, a tolerance for breaking the law (in particular zoning, building inspections, workplace health), some measure of community (to form groups, help each other, take on larger rehab projects).<p>That makes them perfect scouts for neighborhoods and buildings that are ripe for redeveloping. They don't lead to it, but they hold the door wide open.<p>Elsewhere the original article looks for "museums or performing arts venues", and it's ridiculous to equate that with "artists". These places need patrons and customers, not makers.
> In most places, artists and arts establishments have little to do with gentrification. It is gentrification that draws the arts, and not the other way around.<p>This reminds me of one of the most profound statistics about the US I have ever seen:<p>> Those from households with an annual income of $1 million are 10 times more likely to become artists than those from families with a $100,000 income. [0]<p>The implications of that fact are wild and deep.<p>0 - <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/wealth-strong-predictor-whether-individual-pursues-creative-profession-180972072/" rel="nofollow">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/wealth-strong-pred...</a>
Intuitively, artists aren’t super wealthy so tend to congregate in less expensive areas. The question is then about their effect on gentrification.<p>I guess a counterexample would be a situation where artists entered an area and it didn’t gentrify, or maybe even the reverse happened.
This is an interesting topic that I've noticed in different cities I've lived/visited but didn't know others had researched it.<p>My hypothesis was that artists will go to cheap neighborhoods that are satellites to Gentrified ones (their consumers). With time, they will attract affluent "artsy" people and will slowly gentrified that neighborhood, forcing new artists to move to the next cheap neighborhood close by...<p>This research claims that it is not like this, but it seems that they are using some concept of "commercial art establishments" that might not be representative of the initial inflow of artists (which I imagine would operate more informally). Sadly the research is paywalled for me to confirm.