Glasgow's Merchant City

14 | VARIANT 34 | SPRING 2009 Glasgow’s Merchant City: An Artist Led Property Strategy Neil Gray “Urbanism is the mode of appropriation of the natural leading as they seek to enhance property values constituted for the kinds of market-reinforcing, and human environment by capitalism, which, true to through the cultural capital of artists and the property- and promotion-based, growth-oriented, its logical development towards absolute domination, creation of a ‘creative cluster’ in the area now re- and gentrification-friendly policies that have been can (and now must) refashion the totality of space into branded as the ‘Merchant City’. repackaged under the creativity rubric”14. Despite its own peculiar décor.” As Neil Smith, and many other critical urban increasing skepticism around the hyperbolic Guy Debord1 theorists, have noted, the ad-hoc, almost accidental claims of Florida, the creative city policy nature of gentrification that Ruth Glass had in framework is still being applied by countless In Ian Sinclair’s ‘Downriver’, early indications of mind when she first coined the term in 19644 has slow-learning global cities worldwide. Florida the gentrification of London’s Docklands arrived now been replaced by gentrification as a global himself acknowledges the ‘creative classes’ as with the wave of bohemians, squatters, and artists urban phenomenon; a (once) productive pillar of the vanguard of gentrification, displacement and who descended on the area to take advantage of investment capitalism, that weaves together global inequality – depending as they do on an “extensive the spacious, dilapidated buildings and cheap financial markets with a phalanx of real-estate venture capital system” on the one hand, and rents: “When artists walk through a wilderness developers, local merchants, property agents and on the other, an increasingly impoverished in epiphanous ‘bliss-out’, fiddling with polaroids, brand name retailers – all lubricated by generous and insecure service class as their “supporting grim estate agents dog their footsteps. And when state subsidy5. As Sinclair has observed, the infrastructure”15, yet Glasgow City Council seem the first gay squatters arrive, bearing futons…the potential of ‘the arts’ to rehabilitate ‘unproductive’ oblivious, or unconcerned. However, rather than agents smile, and reach for their cheque books. The urban space, and stimulate the property market have us submit to boosterist overstatement, Peck visionary reclaims the ground of his nightmares has long been established by gimlet-eyed usefully contextualises the competitive creative only to present it, framed in Perspex, to the developers. In this context it should come as no economy mantra as the afterbirth of a wave of self- Docklands Development Board”2. Last year, from surprise that Gi are preparing for re-location to defeating entrepreneurial urban strategies which the window of my flat in the Gallowgate (Glasgow’s ‘Trongate 103’ – a much-vaunted proposed ‘hub’ for preceded it. near east end), I looked on as a group of artists the diverse arts community in the Merchant City moved into a disused, shuttered shop to set up a area – alongside a host of other arts organisations temporary gallery for the duration of the Glasgow in the area. Trongate 103 (which names itself to The Production Of ‘Place’: An International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art let us know it is a place) is a symbolic marker Economy Of Appearances. (Gi). When I asked one of the artists how they had of city boosters’ attempts to foster a ‘cultural Peck’s materially-grounded critical analysis ‘found’ the space, she replied that a representative quarter’ in the Merchant City; a city centre emerges from theoretical foundations laid down from Glasgow City Council had led the artists on area which has seen significant gentrification by David Harvey, particularly his seminal analysis a tour of disused shops in the ‘edge of success’ and displacement since the ’60s, when clothing of the paradigmatic shift from a managerial mode area around Trongate and the Gallowgate offering manufacture, warehousing and the regional fruit of urban government – nominally associated free leases for the duration of the festival. The market were the main activities. Despite the failed with ‘thick’ government, redistribution, and Gi brochure alluded to this process – as well as promises of cultural quarters in London6, Dublin7 the provision of services and amenities to local borrowing carelessly from urban frontier language3 and Liverpool8, the area has now been designated citizens – to an entrepreneurial market-led – by suggesting gallery visitors embark on a as the prime site to ‘pump-prime’ Glasgow’s mode of governance, firmly pre-occupied with ‘cultural safari’ in both celebrated arts venues, creative industries9 and bolster the city’s ‘Glasgow: facilitating economic growth for capital16. The and, “in ‘found’ or temporary locations throughout Scotland With Style’ marketing strategy. The broad context for this shift is the transition the city”. From a situation where artists and policy of subsidising arts space must be seen in the from ‘Fordist-Keynesian’ modes of accumulation squatters had once led gentrification, albeit context of an overall strategy by the City Council to new rounds of what Harvey characterised unconsciously, an instrumental policy framework to revalorise property values and land rents in as ‘flexible accumulation’ – a ‘spatial fix’, is now firmly in place whereby city officials do the the Merchant City area through the City Council’s engineered in response to the early ’70s crisis unambiguous ‘Artist Led Property Strategy’10. of over-accumulation, characteristised by de- ‘The Merchant City Five Year Action Plan 2007- industrialisation, de-unionsiation, accelerated 12’, the strategic document for the development international capital flows (globalisation), of the Merchant City area, inevitably pays privatisation, and the exploitation of an homage to Richard Florida and his ubiquitous, increasingly ‘flexible’ and geographically but increasingly shopworn ‘creative city’ thesis11. diverse labour market. In this formation, space Florida, a self-confessed product of the ’60s, who is annihilated by time, and economies of scope always liked to consider himself “a bit edgy or vanquish economies of scale. As neo-liberal modes cool”12, is responsible for much of the hyperbole of flexible accumulation have gained hegemonic surrounding the potential of the ‘creative status over the collective bargaining powers of industries’ to ‘regenerate’ the post-industrial nation-states, so the matter of inward investment city. Florida’s thesis, outlined in detail later in has increasingly taken the form of negotiations this article, is that regional economic growth is between international finance capital and local powered by creative people. These creative people city powers. Lacking the power derived from prefer places that are diverse, tolerant and open large-scale, planned state investment in regional to new ideas. Place in this matrix is thus the economies, inter-city competition for global ‘central organising unit’ of the economy, the key investment capital has intensified in parallel. lever in attracting talented and creative people As a consequence of this, city governments are to a city region. The task of the city region is then increasingly obliged to take an entrepreneurial to increase its place-attractiveness (understood turn, and act as active state partners in an attempt through such measures as ‘gay’ and ‘bohemian’ to lubricate capitalist investment in the city. indexes) so that it can compete for the services In a fiercely competitive inter-urban of the ‘creative classes’, who will then generate environment, rather than service the needs of economic value through their creativity, thus its citizens on a universal basis, the key issue ensuring the city will achieve ‘winner’ status in for the entrepreneurial city is the provision of something called the ‘creative economy’. “a good business climate”17. In order to obtain As urban geographer Jamie Peck has noted, the this business-friendly regime, cities are forced Florida thesis, despite its ‘sophomore sociology’ into a highly competitive “race to the bottom”; a has provoked a reaction that has bordered on “zero-sum” game routing scarce public resources the ecstatic in urban policymaking communities (land and assets), and driving down labour around the world13. It is hardly revelatory that conditions, so that increasingly benevolent Glasgow’s city development agencies reference measures can be offered to entice investment what Peck calls Florida’s “creativity fix”; Florida’s capital. Unsurprisingly, these booster activities thesis, as Peck notes, has been artfully crafted for only accentuate and diversify the geographical the contemporary political-economic landscape: mobility and flexibility of capital, forcing urban “In this neo-liberalised urban terrain, a receptive governments to produce ever more competitive and wide audience has effectively been pre- policy cocktails, and subsuming policy ever VARIANT 34 | SPRING 2009 | 15 more within the groove of uneven capitalist developing the city’s cultural and leisure offer”21. 103, perhaps the centrepiece of the strategy, development: “Indeed, to the degree that inter- Thus, one of the key themes in the Forum’s ‘A will ‘consolidate’ several arts organisations urban competition becomes more potent, it will Step Change For Glasgow: Action Plan To 2013’ is currently housed in City Council property nearby, almost

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