Assembling the Creative City: Creative Anchors and Art District Sustainability

• In Event: 095 - Section on Community and Urban Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Urban Culture, Arts, and Heritage

Abstract

This paper draws together an assemblage perspective (urban geography) with recent work in cultural sociology to understand “creativity” as a discourse around which competing interest groups draw claims to a neighborhood, and through which neighborhood space is produced. Using ethnographic and interview data with each of artists, residents, city officials, and developers in Nashville’s Wedgewood-Houston district, I suggest that while gentrification and the specter of displacement of artists and (long-time) residents looms, each are “anchored” through claims to creativity as a source of belonging in the city and the neighborhood. As such, “creativity” is generative, both socially, and spatially, but those that stand outside discussions of the “creative class” and the “creative city” become marginalized citizens in the ongoing development of 21st century cities.

Author

• Samuel Shaw, Vanderbilt University