To the uninitiated, art in Mexico City can be reduced to two artists: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. This city is also home to experimental fashion designers and streetwear brands, championing a new wave of genderless design such as Industrial Clothing, 1/8 Takamura and PAY’S. The World Design Organization named Mexico City the World Design Capital of 2018, a nod to its unique public architecture, visual culture and innovative design. While Donald Trump obsesses about walls and trade tariffs, the creative outlook from those within this city has never been so dynamic, nor has the capital welcomed more outsiders looking for a place to express themselves. Here are five cities where the thriving local creative scene demands international attention. While a trust fund feels like a prerequisite for making it as an artist in the likes of London, New York and Paris today, this new generation of art cities exists well beyond the canon of Western art history. By this point, the artists move on to another borough, or another city.īut the international art map is changing, and a new generation of cultural hubs is emerging, well away from global financial centres, property developers and blue-chip art dealers. Neighbourhoods are turned over to banks, developers and the wealthy. He argued that the big international art cities had become victims of their own success, with huge inequality reaching its peaks, perversely, in the most liberal and creative areas. In his 2017 book, The New Urban Crisis, Florida considered the downside of the urban renewal he once advocated. They make a place fun and interesting, and the creative middle classes are then drawn to these open-minded communities – and the culture and amenities that come with them. The academic Richard Florida popularised the theory in the early 2000s that creativity enables urban development: bohemians and artists move to inner-city, working-class or abandoned industrial areas in search of cheaper accommodation and studio space. In recent decades the process of gentrification has become well established. Historically, cities are an essential ingredient for creating great art, from Classical Athens and Renaissance Florence to post-war New York and swinging London.Īnd where the artists go, others follow. In truth, the big creative breakthroughs are also a social process, often occurring when a diverse population comes together. She has also received the Lynd Award for career achievement in urban sociology.There is an assumption that creativity is all about individual genius. Wright Mills Award Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places received the Jane Jacobs Award for Urban Communication. Professor Zukin is known for the pioneering study Loft Living (1982) as well as The Innovation Complex (2020), the first critical examination of New York’s tech industry. Professor Emerita of Sociology, Earth and Environmental Science at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In this lecture, Professor Zukin answers these important urban sociology questions. The rezoning betrayed the artists’ role in creating a place that was not only famous around the world, and as a major tourist attraction, a model for creative city development, and a global brand. In the view of longtime residents, however, mainly older artists who are ageing in place, the rezoning betrayed the promise of community engagement, historic district designation, and, most importantly, zoning that had protected artists’ legal right to live and work in the area’s lofts. In 2021, after five years of contentious public meetings, the New York city council voted to “upzone” SoHo, the well-known artist district in Lower Manhattan, along with adjacent areas of NoHo and Chinatown, to permit the demolition of old factories and warehouses and their replacement by new, taller, residential buildings-for the larger number of future market-rate or luxury apartments are accompanied by a smaller number of “affordable” apartments at lower rents.įrom the city government’s point of view, and that of activists from outside the community, this will help to solve the city’s severe housing crisis. This free keynote lecture is part of the Urban Geography workshop on the Creativity and the Built Environment Nexus. Please join us for the next MSD Public Lecture with Professor Sharon Zukin, City University, New York.
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