ABSTRACT
Post-industrial cities seeking to turn around declining neighborhoods have utilized arts and culture-based development and creative placemaking in their revitalization strategies. As such, state-sanctioned arts and entertainment districts have proliferated in many cities as part of a reimagining of urban neighborhoods through real estate revalorization and redrawing of neighborhood boundaries. While arts districts are often under state – and thus public – oversight, the multiple sources of funding and real estate development within arts districts are generally private, and often sourced from community development corporations, wealthy foundations, and large universities. Declining neighborhoods that are reimagined and redrawn as arts districts may get an influx of arts-themed development, while driving out the very people they were designed to attract – the artists themselves. Much of the literature on the relationship between artists and gentrification has shown how artists are often vulnerable to displacement due to neighborhood redevelopment. Neighborhoods designated as official arts districts are not guaranteed to protect artists and art-related industries within the district; if the neighborhood is economically “successful”, there is evidence that artists and long-term residents will be displaced. Based on ethnographic data and forty interviews with neighborhood stakeholders in a state-sanctioned Arts & Entertainment District in Baltimore, MD (USA), this chapter considers the effects that arts districts and creative placemaking have in the reimagining of neighborhoods, especially the effects (unintended and intentional) on diverse groups of neighborhood stakeholders.
