Stakeholder Partnerships and the Cultural City: Creative Economic Development Policy in Toronto and New York Shoshanah Barbara Diane Goldberg-Miller, Ph.D

Stakeholder Partnerships and the Cultural City: Creative economic development policy in Toronto and New York Shoshanah Barbara Diane Goldberg-Miller, Ph.D. Part-Time Assistant Professor The New School Abstract Cities throughout the world are exploring the ways that arts and culture can serve as an economic engine, build name recognition and become a source of civic pride. Through a mix of policy, branding and economic development, these municipalities have the opportunity to create economic growth and a more vibrant quality of life by incorporating public art, theatres, festivals, cultural districts, the repurposing of buildings and land, and other amenities into their planning and policy implementation. In each city, the new focus on arts and culture within the economic development agenda developed in response to a shock experienced during the early part of the decade. For Toronto, this was the endogenous shock of the center city’s amalgamation with surrounding areas, and for New York it was the exogenous shock of 9/11. The priority for Toronto was the reimagining of its potential as a culture center in order to enter the knowledge economy; while for New York the focus was on recovery from a disaster. In both cities, arts and culture were employed as a part of the economic development toolkit to revitalize decaying areas, attract residents and tourists, and distinguish themselves from other cities. Analyzing how arts and culture have penetrated the clutter of policy options on Toronto and New York’s economic development agendas has produced three key principles for policymakers, planners, and creative economy partners: 1) Strategic integration: integrate arts and culture into a broadly focused economic development framework that incorporates both economic and social benefit; 2) Partnership development: build and cultivate relationships and stakeholder partnerships across policy domains and throughout sectors, and 3) Research and planning: use research and strategic planning to analyze how arts and culture interventions could support the municipal economic development agenda and subsequently be integrated into a variety of key policy interventions. This research was funded by a generous grant from The Rockefeller Foundation Introduction: City building using arts and culture Since more than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, there is an increasing focus by scholars and policymakers on the issues inherent in the urban experience (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2007). Municipalities throughout the world are exploring the ways that arts and culture can serve as an economic engine, build name recognition and become a source of civic pride. They are investing in arts and culture as a way to differentiate themselves from other destinations, attract cultural tourism, brand themselves in the global marketplace and generate revenues. Cities have begun using arts and culture as a way to revitalize decaying areas, attract residents and tourists, distinguish themselves from other urban centers, and serve as a source of civic pride and place-based enthusiasm. Through a mix of policy, branding and economic development, these municipalities have the opportunity to create a more vibrant quality of life by incorporating public art, theatres, festivals, cultural districts and other amenities into their planning and policy implementation. This paper explores the relationship between cultural policy and arts and culture options on the economic development agendas in Toronto and New York over the decade of the 2000s, and examines the ways that both cities chose to adopt creative city strategies. I explore the extent to which city governments in these two cities have looked at the way that they view arts and culture, and as a result have placed arts and culture options on the agenda when making decisions about economic development programs, urban planning projects and municipal funding allocation. Through a comparative case study, I investigate how municipal cultural policy became part of the economic development lexicon in each city. Informed by 42 semi-structured interviews and archival 2 and historical research, this analysis offers options for policymakers, cultural stakeholders and policy entrepreneurs, both in the cities under study and elsewhere. During the 2000s, both Toronto and New York were successful in articulating new economic arguments for arts and culture. As a result of this integrated agenda setting, cultural districts were built in both cities, creative workers were attracted and retained, and financial investments in the cultural built environment were made both by the government and the private sector. The findings from this investigation provide policymakers and urban stakeholders with recommendations on utilizing arts and culture as viable options in today’s municipal economic development toolkits. There is a complex set of relationships between stakeholders, and gaining a place for arts and culture on the economic development agenda often remains difficult. Differences in goals and priorities among stakeholders in the public, private and nonprofit sectors can make collaboration between them a challenge. Housing, transportation, the environment, the economy, and jobs creation and retention are among the other topics competing for the attention of elected officials and the public. While economic development priorities include the strengthening and sometimes rebuilding of city centers as magnets for leisure, work and tourism, the focus often is on more immediate forms of revenue creation. Policymakers recognize the value of arts and culture as a component in their economic development toolkits, and in numerous ways are using a variety of options in their efforts in city building. This investigation explores how two large urban centers have incorporated arts and culture into their strategic planning, and finds the extent to 3 which municipal cultural policy is related to the presence of arts and culture as a part of the urban toolkit within the economic development departments of these two cities. The Creative Cities Conversation Many of the conversations in the urban arts and culture literature revolve around attracting visitors and new residents while serving those who currently live in a city. These residents fall into several categories under the rubric of the ‘creative community,’ a concept put forth by Richard Florida. Now confirmed as playing a valuable role in the process of neighborhood gentrification, artists and cultural producers have become highly sought-after residents. Their presence seems to provide an imprimatur of desirability, although as some urban neighborhoods develop, artists are priced out of these areas. The argument for cultural residents to remain an integral part of neighborhoods may vanish with the pursuit of higher rents and wealthier stakeholders (Zukin, 1995). Cities believe that the arts can serve to revitalize core areas through the use of cultural institutions, which can broader audience bases, develop income generating activities and blur the boundaries between so-called “high” culture and popular offerings (Strom, 2002). The fostering of an integrated relationship between elected officials, cultural entrepreneurs, and the corporate community can result in the creation of successful cultural policy and economic development strategies. In addition to generating financial returns, cultural offerings can promote non-economic benefits such as sense of pride, building the brand of a city, and educational programs that can provide accessible arts and culture experiences to young people. Traditionally, municipal economic development efforts and strategies have centered upon a variety of methods of encouraging businesses relocation to, as well as 4 investment in a city (Grodach, 2011b). Among these are assistance with developers’ projects, tax abatements and write-downs on land. There are several ways that urban economic development plays a role regarding the creative community, including drawing visitors and locals to a place-specific location in order to experience the culture, attracting new residents, businesses and developers to a city, and fostering the production of cultural products or services that may be consumed locally and or elsewhere. Many industries that are screen-based have outputs that are exported nationally and internationally as a part of a city’s economic development strategy (Liu et al, 2010). Markusen (2006) notes that urban areas and their planning professionals have embraced the creative community, using cultural solutions to revitalize decrepit areas, repurpose landmark buildings and draw residents and visitors, and points to the ways that a variety of disciplines have the opportunity to form alliances to address the creative cities conversation. This includes stakeholders from the worlds of cultural policy, urban planning, and economic development who often bring very different goals, strategies and metrics to the table when implementing ideas about cultural city creation. The global marketplace for cultural goods is expanding as barriers to distribution are removed and marketing efforts become increasingly sophisticated (Scott, 2000). Urban areas can incorporate cultural planning into their marketing campaigns and utilize the creative city model to rebuild decrepit areas (Grodach & Loukaitou-Sideris, 2007). One caveat has been the often displaced and disillusioned residents who have watched their neighborhoods disappear

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