The bold and the bland: Art, redevelopment and the creative commons in post-industrial New York

Joseph Heathcott

City, 2015, vol. 19, issue 1, 79-101

Abstract: This paper considers the uneven though mutually reinforcing relationship between arts, redevelopment and global capital that has transformed New York over the past 40 years. The 5 Pointz Aerosol Arts Center in Long Island City, Queens, provides the basis for the study. Renowned as the legendary 'graffiti building', 5 Pointz was recently demolished to make way for twin luxury towers. The paper places the history of 5 Pointz in the broader context of the deindustrialization of New York and the appropriation of former manufacturing districts by artists, cultural institutions and creative networks. It then follows the impact of boom and bust cycles, shifting industrial policies, property speculation and gentrification in Long Island City. Of particular interest is the emergence of a 'redevelopment script'-a transnational suite of homogenizing planning and design practices backed by global finance. The fragmentary nature of creative communities left them open to appropriation into the redevelopment script as a form of cultural capital. The author argues that there are alternatives, and that the degree to which artists, designers and their neighbors face dislocation depends on the political will of a range of public and private actors. At stake are competing claims among artists, developers and citizens to the city's vaunted heritage of creative culture.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2014.991171

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