Civic Election Countdown: does Vancouver want artists?

This is the first part in a short series on artists, the city, and the civic election.

Vancouver’s season at the polls didn’t end with the Federal Conservatives’ minority victory. A civic election is almost upon us. Both mayoral candidates, Gregor Robertson (Vision) and Peter Ladner (NPA), have put affordable housing near the top of their agendas. The Vision platform actually targets artists as special candidates for some of that housing. At a town hall meeting in August, Robertson made it clear that he understands the central role artists play in creating a vibrant urban landscape. He knows that if Vancouver is ever to become the “Creative City” he hopes for, he needs to keep artists from migrating elsewhere. But how will he loosen the stranglehold real estate developers have on the city? How will he stop the upward climb of rents, property taxes and mortgages? Affordable housing is the key. But if Vancouver’s recent past, or similar gentrification trends in other North American cities are anything to go by, Robertson has a hell of a challenge ahead of him.

I started out life on the west side of Vancouver in the 1960s. My neighbourhood, Kitsilano, contained within it the kind of youth-oriented, artsy counter-culture that was typical of the era. By the late 80s and early 90s, the center of gravity for the arts community had moved to the East Vancouver neighbourhoods of Commercial Drive, Strathcona, and Main Street. The west side had become too expensive for many artists. Gentrification pressures have now forced much of the arts community out of Strathcona. Skyrocketing housing costs are doing the same in Commercial Drive and Main Street. Housing costs across the region have made Vancouver a hostile environment to low-income residents in general. ‘Low-income’ includes the vast majority of artists. So what happens to a city when artists can’t afford to live in it any more? Where do they go? And more broadly, what do they really contribute to society? Do we really need them?

In the recent federal election ‘Arts and Culture’ played a decisive role: Stephen Harper lost his majority by making a small-minded attack on artists, falsely characterizing us as rich, gala-attending elites. His tenuous hold on Quebec slipped away as a society proud of its artistic prowess abandoned the Conservatives for the Bloc Quebecois. For the first time ever, the financial contribution artists make to the GDP was declared in the mainstream media: $84 billion a year, 7.4% of Canada’s overall output.

You know the budget surplus the Harper government inherited from the Liberals, and that the Tories have  been rapidly pissing away (like good fiscal conservatives)? —  artists helped create it. And we mostly did it in little bits: a small theatre production here, a small visual arts showing there, a small graphic design outfit set up down the street. Unlike big corporations who pay out most of their profit to shareholders in other parts of the world, money invested in the arts stays in the community. People get paid locally and spend locally. That kind of spending has what economists call a high ‘multiplier’. The dollar the artist gets paid is spent at the local fabric store, the fabric store owner spends her dollar at the craft store, the craft store owner spends her dollar at the grocery store, the grocery store owner spends his dollar at the bar, etc. One dollar gets multiplied twelve, thirteen, fifteen times.

But artists do something else, something less concrete (in economic terms). I’m not talking about telling Canadian stories or speaking to our values as a society. I’m talking about how artists make a city livable, how they help create community and how they contribute to the longevity of a society. The dollar figures mentioned above are the result of artist activity. Some economists call this kind of activity ‘social capital’. Social capital is a sort of pay-off that comes from having dependable relationships — between employers and bosses, between trading firms, between neighbours, between community members who go bowling together. The idea is that all of these activities lead to a better functioning democracy and a more productive economy.

One group of economists (for example, Angelo Antoci, Pier Luigi Sacco, Paolo Vanin) argues for something called a ‘relational good’. A relational good is really a social interaction. It could be you and your friends getting together to go see a musician at a local bar, or a free performance in the park. There might be an obvious material outcome, like the amount of money paid for the ticket or drinks paid for at the bar. But these outcomes are less important than the very rich social fabric you and your friends are weaving by hanging out together on a regular basis. A community that offers opportunities for social interactions – such as attending concerts, poetry readings, plays, art openings -  is precisely the sort of community people want to be part of. The sort of place people will want to put down roots in.

A typical pattern of gentrification has artists moving into a low-rent neighbourhood, one neglected or shunned by upper and middle class citizens. The artists make the neighbourhood ‘funky’, get active in local politics and social issues, and turn it into an interesting social hub. In the early and middle stages of this process, people with like-minded values (for example, students, journalists, social activists and teachers) follow artists to the locale. But eventually, developers assess the neighbourhood’s real estate potential and begin marketing its ‘lifestyle’ qualities to a wealthier set. Land values climb. The neighbourhood is no longer affordable to artists. Artists go elsewhere in search of cheaper digs.

Artists may return to the neighbourhood to perform or sell wares but the relationship has changed. The artist is no longer a community member performing for fellow community members — she’s an entertainment-service provider. That’s a big difference The artist’s work, which of course has usually contained an aspect of commercial transaction (though not always: take examples like the Parade of Lost Souls or Illuminaries), has now been fully commodified. And the neighbourhood’s public spaces typically become urban sites of consumption – great for shopping and not much else. The shopping itself becomes generic as the neighbourhood becomes interchangeable with other neighbourhoods. As the urban centre becomes dominated by an investment portfolio class that can buy its way into any packaged pleasure, usually a fairly standardized package, the ‘relational’ capital created by artists diminishes.  Instead of getting together in social groups to take part in public cultural activities, individuals in an impoverished cultural scene will opt to stay home and read a book or watch a video. This, according to the social capital theorists, breaks down human bonds and makes the society unsustainable.

Gregor Robertson hopes he can put the brakes on this process. He has a concept of Vancouver as a ‘Creative City’. This idea is complicated, because it’s connected to the theories of Richard Florida, an academic who broke into the mainstream with his notion of a ‘Creative Class’.” Florida believes it’s the creative class that now drives the economy of cities. But what does he mean by that term; does it actually exist? And does it mean artists will be able to afford rent in Vancouver?

Find out more in the next installment.