It's hard to be creative in this city...

From Summer in the City by the Lovin' Spoonful:

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come-on come-on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright
And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city

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I am really busy and not able to blog much until the weekend. But what do you think about the creative economy and the potential to innovate within DC?

A couple days I went to a "Creative Economy Summit," which is supposed to kick off a new initiative within the city. For the most part my time was wasted (although there was continental breakfast).

Think Saxenian and her work comparing the innovation ecologies between Silicon Valley and Route 128 in Boston. The latter, derived from the military-industrial complex and seeded by Draper Laboratories, is oriented to larger firms, big contracts, and is less innovative in comparison to the consumer and business-to-business market orientation in the Silicon Valley. And in the long term, SV is much more successful and vibrant economically.

One of the unfortunate happenstances of being located at the bullseye center of big government in the United States is that the big government and managed economy approach shapes government and policy at the local level, although both the NoVA telecommunications and computing innovation cluster and the biotech innovation cluster in MontCo, now are a couple generations removed from being constrained by risk management oriented thinking.

Government is all about systematizing and bureaucratizing and reducing risk. It is not about change, transformation, and innovation.

(cf. I know, someone will bring up DARPA and NIH and NSF, but still, look at "industrial policy," in the U.S. And I am still shocked by how the Gingrich Congress eliminated the independent minded and excellent Office of Technology Assessment, which provided independent analysis to Congress. And still, Congress will not let the reports produced by the Congressional Research Service be made available to the public in an open and transparent way. But yes, the whole concept of programmed innovation diffusion was seeded by the U.S. government in the 1850s and 1860s by the creation of the Agriculture Extension Service and land grant universities focused on improving agricultural productivity.)

Creative economy initiatives are "merely" applied Jane Jacobs. Maybe people think that her point that to thrive cities need "a large stock of old buildings" was about historic preservation. Nope. It's about the availability of cheap space for business and people. Because really cheap space makes it easier to take risks. (Also see Cities and the Wealth of Nations and Economy of Cities.)

The reality is that most arts-based revitalization efforts are driven by the need to stimulate demand in undervalued areas with a great deal of available leaseable space. Some of the presenters were talking about buying property that was leasing for $1/square foot. In DC, even 20 years ago you couldn't get significant space anywhere for under $10/s.f.

Many years ago I compared places like Pittsburgh and Baltimore and their arts-based initiatives to DC, saying that those other places have "a desperate willingness to experiment" that isn't present here.

DC doesn't have cheap space. And it doesn't have a lot of space either. Or big buildings. Except some along the railroad tracks. Which are being held off the market for higher revenue uses sometime down the road.

So a strategy in part has to be built around creating spaces where people and organizations can be incubated.

And it means retaining city owned property to do this.

Not selling it off.

E.g., a few years ago in the H Street area (in 2003), I suggested keeping properties like the old fire station on Maryland Avenue NE, the old school building on the grounds of Miner School, and the old police precinct station on 9th Street NE to use as arts incubators, to complement the idea of developing an arts-oriented entertainment district with anchors like the H Street Playhouse and the Atlas Performing Arts Center. In fact, I suggested that buildings on Florida Avenue, including the property just purchased by Conner Contemporary Arts (see "A Shifting Landscape For Conner Gallery") could be used similarly. Let's see what happens to Jimmy's Tire.

Instead, for the most part the government-owned buildings are going to be sold off... and underutilized school buildings will continue to be underutilized.

And interestingly enough, while presenters were brought in from Brooklyn and Boston and Minneapolis, there are if not "world class" at least best practice examples within 1 and 40 miles of DC:

1. Maryland was the second state in the U.S. to create a process for designating arts districts and providing financial and technical support. They have 12 districts around the state. (Plus they also have a separate program of heritage areas.

2. One of these districts is immediately across the DC border in Prince George's County, Maryland, in the communities along Route 1 up to Hyattsville. And what they've accomplished with by comparison to DC almost no resources should embarrass us. See: Gateway Arts District plan and the Gateway Community Development Corporation. Note that the Washington Glass School ended up there, after being displaced by the construction of the Washington Nationals baseball stadium...

3. Two other districts are across the DC line too: in Silver Spring (they have Pyramid Arts Center, the AFI at the Silver Theatre, and the Roundhouse Theatre); and Bethesda. Plus there is one in Wheaton.

4. Baltimore has two such districts: Station North and Highlandtown. The latter has some similarities to DC's H Street. But the Creative Alliance in Highlandtown is more about supporting ground up creative innovation than are the places on H Street (even though I love dearly the people who have created the places on H Street).

5. And compare the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts to DC's Commission on the Arts and the Humanities. Speaking of the difference between having a more ground up vs. a top down orientation. I won't even tell you about something that one of the latter's commissioners told me about a project idea of his, which is so top down in orientation it is amazing...

6. And Arlington County is probably 1000 times better than DC about harnessing public assets to accomplish multiple objectives, especially in the arts. Arlington provides space to various arts projects, and even does co-location projects, such as having the Signature Theater complex as part of the Shirlington branch of the County Library system. (See this article from 2005 from the Post, "Making Shirlington a Magnet.") Shirlington!

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I almost laughed out loud when the presenter from Boston said how important it is for cities to support festivals.

In Baltimore, the City itself created and financially supports extravaganzas like Artscape, the Baltimore Farmers Market, and the Baltimore Book Festival.

In DC, at least 60% of the cost of producing a local festival goes to paying for services to DC Government agencies--for permits, police services, DPW towing and trash collection services, fees for "constructing" (putting up) tents, etc.

Increasingly it makes it difficult to even do a festival. People think that the Adams Morgan Day Festival makes a lot of money, but the cost of permits and services are scaled to attendance. They net very little from their very great event, which is this Sunday by the way...