Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

The aesthetics of urban neighborhoods display shifting political power dynamics that are uniquely related to the physical and social world of which they are a part. Urban space is socially produced by government and non-government forces, each with different strategies, powers, and motivations. Cities in the neoliberal era are marketed to newcomers by entrepreneurial local and global urban developers, entrenched anchor institutions, city governments, and residents alike. Each factional group is symbiotically connected via the finite confines of physical urban space. This spatial reality fosters political contestation between those forces that favor “progress” (yes in my backyard or YIMBYism) and those forces that favor the “status-quo” (not in my backyard or NIMBYism). Residents, neighborhood stake-holders, and municipalities are well-aware of the symbolic power of a neighborhoods’ aesthetics, and their powers of branding communities and engaging citizens. In the current context of federal and state fiscal abandonment, “shrinking cities” like Chicago, have turned to art-based initiatives that are framed as beneficial to communities. The stated benefits of public art programs range from higher levels of community civic engagement and economic growth to lower levels of crime and graffiti abatement; yet, the policy outcomes of efforts to engage, beautify, and economically promote neighborhoods thru art initiatives are ambiguous at best. This paper analyses and compares the socioeconomic effects of “creative neighborhood” public art initiatives in two disparate Chicago neighborhoods, Pilsen and Rogers Park. The study looks at crime, community engagement, and economic data over a five-year period, following the implementation of public art projects. Who are the “winners” and “losers” when neighborhoods actively implement and promote public art programs? In culturally gifted neighborhoods with historically embedded norms of public art, benefits may be obfuscated by the displacement of the very same cultural producers which have colored the streets for generations.