Art Clusters: The Pulse of the City

Over the last year the Spatial Information Design Lab has been working with Elizabeth Currid at the University of Southern California to understand the spatial dynamics of the arts and culture industry in New York City and Los Angeles. The results of the study show that these industries (art, design, performing arts, music, film, and fashion) tend to cluster more so than other Advanced Service Industries (finance, professional services, etc..). More importantly, we found that arts and culture industries have similar spatial patterns in cities that have divergent urban forms, suggesting that cultural industries tend to seek out and cluster around particular types of high-value infrastructure (theaters, museums, recording studios, film set, etc). These types of infrastructure become a focus for cultural industry development and therefore key to the success of these industries. These finding could transform arts-based economic development strategies which currently tend to focus on providing for the consumption of art products rather than provisions for their production.