Civic Election Countdown #2: creativity needs housing.

This is part two of Plank’s civic election series.

What’s a “Creative City”? Civic leaders in Vancouver and around the world have taken up the cry. Creativity, they say, now drives the urban economy. Not factory work, not farming, not logging. So you’ve got to have a city that’s friendly to creative types. You’ve got to have a robust “Creative Class.” Who exactly are the new agents of prosperity? Are you one of them?

A few years ago Richard Florida, an urban development theorist, put forward the idea that a city requires a concentration of high-tech workers, artists, musicians and lesbians and gays (among other professional and sexual-orientation categories) in order to achieve urban renewal and economic growth. These people are the innovators, the idea people, the content providers; they spawn new micro and macro industries and they make cities attractive places to live.

Florida’s theory, while spawning a best selling book, quickly ran afoul of other theorists. Ann Markusen, a heavyweight American scholar and consultant, argues that Florida’s “creative class” is an overburdened category: it includes, for example, claims adjusters, food-service managers, and tax collectors (routine occupations), but leaves out home-care workers, repair technicians, and petty criminals (‘occupations’ that require a high degree of inventiveness).

And contrary to Florida’s claim that ‘creatives’ cluster in urban centers characterized by social tolerance and a density of high-tech industries, Markusen shows that sub-groups within this so-called class do not live in the same areas: lawyers, engineers, and artists inhabit different regions of the urban/suburban landscape. Artists stick to urban centers, while engineers gravitate to the suburbs. Corporate lawyers and trial lawyers also separate, geographically and politically (the former leaning to the right and the latter to the left). Artists tend to be the most progressive politically. Regarding artists, Markusen writes: “Nearly invisible in Florida’s and other accounts are the spaces and organizations that form the infrastructure for artists to develop their creativity and careers.”

Markusen is specifically concerned with the role artists play in the urban ecology. She argues that a combination of artist centers, low-income live/work spaces, and smaller venues, tied together to a certain extent geographically (i.e., serving the communities they are situated in) and politically (due to the fact that artists often share left-leaning political views), is necessary for “a region and neighbourhood to homegrow, attract, and retain artists.”

So back to our civic election. Do either of the mayoral candidates have a plan to stop artists from being priced out of the Vancouver housing and rental market? The NPA claims to have improved the affordable housing situation through changing by-laws to allow for legal secondary units and backyard/lane-way housing, and by allowing for greater density, mid-rise apartments along sky train corridors. There’s also a vague promise about using the city’s Property Endowment Fund to ‘leverage’ subsidized housing (the Fund represents $2.7 billion in real estate Vancouver owns within the city limits).

This is the same fund that is currently being used to bail out Millennium Developments, the company that is financing the new Olympic Village — the same village that was supposed to designate about 33% of the new units subsidized housing (reduced by the NPA dominated council to 20%), and another 33% as middle income housing (gone — it’s now 80% ‘market’ housing, 20% subsidized housing).

Given Peter Ladner’s and the NPA’s history of marching in step with the real estate developers’ agenda, it’s hard to not to feel deeply skeptical about their promises to make the city more affordable. The NPA’s higher density housing schemes haven’t actually created affordability. Those schemes have been tried elsewhere to no effect. Without some kind of rent control and a much higher rate of low-income housing subsidy, we will get nowhere on this issue.

Vision, which in this election has forged alliances with Cope and the Green Party in order to unify the ‘progressive’ vote, appears to be offering a genuine alternative for housing in general as well as housing for artists. Some of the policies regarding density seem to overlap with the NPAs platform, but a difference which may be symbolic of Vision’s overall philosophy is it’s desire to deal with the Coal Harbour condo fiasco.

There are approximately 18,000 units in the West End sitting empty, many held as investments by speculators. Walking through the empty streets of Coal Harbour recently, an urban planner from Toronto wondered aloud, “Where are all the people?” Where, we might add, is the vacancy rate at? Almost zero. Robertson wants to start upping the taxes of property owners who refuse to rent these units. Can you hear the NPA backers screaming “socialism”? Well something has to give. The growth and vitality of Coal Harbour is being choked, and holding these units out of the rental ‘market’ keeps rents throughout the city artificially high.

Creating subsidized housing for low-income residents is high on Gregor Robertson’s list of priorities. For the most part, he seems to feel that artists, being low-income, will naturally find their way into that housing as it becomes available. He doesn’t want to privilege them over other low-income citizens — a wise and ethical move. But he also recognizes that some artists have special housing requirements. Vision has an “Artists First Policy” which is intended to “develop new and innovative spaces for artists to live and work.” It’s supposed to address “issues of workspace, housing, and affordability for artists living at or below the poverty line.” This is in line with Ann Markusen’s ideas on how a city retains its artists. Echoing her line of thinking, Robertson speaks of the necessity for workspaces and performance/exhibition venues that respond to the scale and intent of local artists’ work. He and Vision councilor Heather Deal have been consulting with a fairly broad spectrum of the arts community over the past year or more to come up with a comprehensive strategy to deal with these issues.

What about the incumbent NPA? Not so much. Mostly behind closed doors the city has been developing a plan for a ‘cultural precinct’ on the block where the Queen Elizabeth Theatre and Vancouver Playhouse now stand. The Queen E will get a facelift, but the centerpiece of the new development appears to be the Vancouver Art Gallery. A few other cultural ‘institutions’ are in the running for spots at the location, which will also include an office tower.

This plan smells of ‘tourist bubble’ to me. Tourist bubbles are places where visitors come to spend their money, and locals avoid. Times Square in NY is an example. It has become dominated by international media corporations like Disney and Turner Communications. It’s almost separate from the rest of Manhattan. Yes it creates some local work, but most of the money goes to the corporations’ shareholders.

Very little of Vancouver’s cultural precinct plan has been shared with the public. I don’t have much faith in the aesthetic of planners in this area. The Queen E block is a deadzone most of the time. When its two monolithic cultural facilities aren’t performing, nothing happens on its sidewalks. How will the new cultural precinct be different? Is this where we should be spending our money ($300 million of it)? For years, the theatre and dance community has been clamouring for medium sized performance venues (200-300 seats) and rehearsal space (which, like our rental vacancies, is extremely scarce and priced too high for most companies). There’s a consensus out there on this issue. Is the cultural precinct the NPA’s answer to this problem?

Really, are we talking about a creative city here or just another developer’s wet-dream? Ann Markusen says that Florida’s ‘Creative Cities’ ideology has been seized on by civic authorities to direct funds toward amenities for tourists. That’s what the cultural precinct looks like to me. When I hear the phrase “cultural tourism,” something that even Vision uses, I get the chills. Tourism is the biggest industry in the world. It can bring a lot of capital into a region. But all too often that capital is targeted at a very few beneficiaries. Astonishing amounts of money can pass through a locality without touching most of the inhabitants. In fact, a cultural precinct can suck up a city’s resources leaving the real ‘cultural’ work without tax base support — because that support went into creating a tourist bubble.

On Saturday the 15th we’ll be going to the polls again. It seems to me there are two contrasting visions of the city’s future to consider: governance by developers for developers, or governance by a forward-thinking group that understands the role of its cultural ‘workers’. As a low-income working artist, I’ve had enough of high rents, inadequate funding (don’t believe the city’s claims of being a high spender in the cultural sector, it factors its own wages into the cultural budget), and marginalization by the NPA. Artists contribute so much and deserve better. On Saturday I’ll be voting for the progressives.