Artist-led Gentrification in SoHo

Abstract

This paper examines the artist-led gentrification of SoHo in New York City between the 1960s and 1980s. As creative city theories focus on the effect of the creative class on urban environments, municipal government policymakers have been creating cultural policies that birth urban regeneration projects utilizing the talents of creative people, such as artists. In spite of this situation, there is not necessarily much scholarship on the relationship between artists and urban spaces. Thus, this article deals with SoHo’s artistled gentrification as a typical case study, and then explores issues such as why agglomeration of artists leads to urban spatial transformation.