The eventification of place: Urban development and experience consumption in Berlin and New York City

Abstract

Recent urban and economic development policies put much emphasis on the promotion of experiences. Within the experience economy, the production and consumption of products and places is transformed into “theater.” The organization of international festivals highlights that trend. However, festivalization has also infiltrated urban and economic development on a much smaller scale and turned into an overall eventification. In addition, producers and marketers of cultural products simultaneously apply this concept to advance their market positions. Hence, eventification provides shared interests for local stakeholders and producers and marketers of cultural products and opportunities to further include the latter in urban growth coalitions. This paper demonstrates how eventification fosters new relationships between local urban developers and individual artists in Berlin-Wedding and the South Bronx, New York City. It explores the benefits and disadvantages of experience planning through eventification including social exclusion and arts-led revitalization. Ultimately, eventification not only embraces an accelerating logic of ever more experience schemes and thus raises questions about its sustainability, but also features a process in which urban space, itself, is transformed into staged experiences of event consumption.

Keywords

Cultural industries eventification experience consumption experience planning festivalization urban development

The city onstage

During the past three decades, politicians, planners as well as marketing experts have focused increasingly on the development of experiences to foster the consumption of products, services or place identities. As a marketing concept, experience management calls for a customer- instead of product-focused approach. It strategically manages a customer’s entire experiences with a product so that it is perceived as entertaining, engaging, boundary-breaking and value creating (Schmitt, 2003; Schmitt et al., 2004). In this so-called “show business” (Schmitt et al., 2004), everything from the production to the consumption of a product is turned into “theater” (Pine and Gilmore, 1999). According to Pine and Gilmore, companies need to provide a fourth economic offering to increase the value of their products: distinct experiences, that is, a “heightened ambience or sense of theater” (1999: 1) that will turn their products into leisure items. The consumer on the other hand, no longer buys a basic good or service but “pays to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events that a company stages – as in a theatrical play – to engage him in a personal way” (Pine and Gilmore, 1999: 2). Hence, experiences lend products extra value and provide a strategic and additional marketing tool.

Moreover, not only is the consumer entertained but the worker also performs accordingly. “Work is theater” (Pine and Gilmore, 1999: 101). The experience economy, as defined by Pine and Gilmore (1999), provides an escape from the practice of competing on the basis of price and a decoupling of mere services from experiences. In other words, experience economies constitute “the market value of experiences or commercialization of experiences – whether in the form of pure experience products and services or of mixed products in which experience elements are coupled with functionality or other product content” (Bille and Lorenzen, 2008: 32 quoted in Bille, 2011). Pine and Gilmore enthusiastically endorse the development of distinct experiences as engines of economic growth and warn, “if societies are to seek continued economic prosperity, they must stage experiences to add sufficient value to their economies to employ the masses” (1999: xii).

As cities and regions engage into a global competition for investment, jobs, well-paid and educated residents, tourists, and high-profile amenities (Brenner and Keil, 2006), experience planning is seen as providing an alternative to the spiraling price-bidding of investment incentives. Experience-based urban planning calls for the development of “still more challenging leisure activities, new advertising and marketing strategies and […] the capitalization and development of places” (Lorentzen and Hansen, 2009: 817). It presents a strategy to move away from investment in hard location factors such as roads and office buildings towards soft location factors such as recreational activities and place-based images. In other words, experience-based goods and services are produced “for the sake of pleasure” (Lorentzen, 2009: 10). Thus, experience planning echoes the amenity-centered focus of creative-class planning schemes (see cf. Florida, 2002, 2005). According to Bille’s (2011) recent analysis of the Scandinavian approach to the experience economy, its strategic use as a planning tool can be seen as (a) the perception that experiences, creativity and culture create economic value, (b) a political project to create economic growth and returns through experiences and (c) a conversion of publicly funded cultural projects and the appropriation of the close relationship between cultural industries and the experience economy for economic goals. Yet, as this paper will show, such an approach is not limited to Scandinavian planning practices.

One way to implement experience planning is the production and promotion of festivals. As authors such as Bianchini and Parkinson (1994), Evans (2003, 2006), García (2004), Gibson and Stevenson (2004), Grodach and Loukaitou-Sideris (2007), Häusserman and Siebel (1993b), Richards and Palmer (2010), Van Aalst and Van Melik (2012) and many others have shown, the introduction of festivals into city planning has become a prominent planning tool to advance local urban and economic development, consumer experiences and city images. However, what Häusserman and Siebel once saw as a “festivalization of urban politics” (1993b) is no longer limited to the organization of sporadic mega-spectacles such as world exhibitions, Olympic Games or international film festivals but has ushered into an urban and economic development scheme that affects the overall production and consumption of products and space. This is especially so when met with experience economy marketing strategies of companies.

Hence, festivalization has not ceased. Rather, it has infiltrated urban and economic development on a much smaller scale. This development is called here “eventification.” Events are defined in this paper as the deliberate organization of a heightened emotional and aesthetic experience at a designated time and space. Thus, they include festivals but also the much larger numbers of smaller (in terms of space, time and organization) efforts such as gallery openings or performances that are organized daily in Western metropolises. According to Bäckström and Johansson, “the magic of the event, which makes it such a central feature of the experience economy, lies in its emotional and aesthetic potency” (2006: 160). Eventification stands for the process with which the consumption of products and space is turned into an event. That said, eventification does not have to have a commercial goal per se. In an experience society (Schulze, 2005) any cause will need to take the struggle for attention or the “economics of attention” (Lanham, 2006) into consideration to foster interest and support. In relation to this special issue of exploring an “experience turn in development and planning,” however, this paper will focus on the way eventification is implemented as an economic and urban development planning strategy with the expectation of economic returns (see cf. the definition of the experience economy by Pine and Gilmore, 1999).

But then, when city politicians, planners and stakeholders apply the experience economy and show business principles to move the city onstage, what is the program, who is the audience, who are the actors, writers, directors, stage managers, set designers, lighting technicians and so forth, and who is performing the work of the cleanup crew? In other words and less metaphorically speaking, what direct strategies are being implemented, by whom, for whom, and what are their outcomes?

In this paper I argue that “festivalization” as a tool to advance experience planning and development has turned into an “eventification” of products and place. Policy makers, planners and city marketers no longer limit experience planning and development to international festivals but also apply event-based planning to neighborhood-based development projects. Moreover, experience planning and development through the organization of large numbers and varieties of events throughout cities and at all times is applied not only by policy makers, planners, and city marketers but also by the producers and marketers of cultural products. Thus, eventification generates new ways to integrate producers and marketers of cultural products into urban growth coalitions (Logan and Molotch, 1987). While this has long been true for large cultural institutions (see cf. Fainstein and Judd, 1999; Logan and Molotch, 1987), eventification also fosters a new relationship between individual artists and urban growth coalitions. Hence, after reviewing some of the literature on the experience economy and experience planning, this paper will introduce two case studies to illustrate how eventification has been implemented in two exemplary neighborhoods in Berlin and New York City by local policy makers and planners as well as by individual artists, and what kind of relationships it fosters between these actors. The paper will show the benefits and drawbacks of experience planning through eventification and call for a more critical approach toward experience planning. Eventification not only embraces an accelerating logic of ever more experience schemes and thus raises questions about its sustainability but also features a process in which urban space, itself, is represented as a spectacle and transformed into an aestheticized place of consumption.

Staging experiences

Staging cultural experiences in cities has led to vast investment in the hard infrastructure of cultural institutions. One is prone to add to Harvey’s question of “how many successful convention centres, sports stadia, disney-worlds, harbour places and spectacular shopping- malls can there be?” (Harvey, 1989: 12) how many successful museums, opera houses, or theaters can there be? The development of such structures has not ceased but is still an important political strategy that claims to attract investment. Kotkin observes a political attitude of: “can’t get companies to locate in lower Manhattan? Don’t worry, we were told by city officials last week, get us more art museums and we will be fine” (Kotkin, 2003). Yet, with the already diverse supply of such venues, their high costs, questionable results (cf. Eisinger, 2000; Fainstein and Stokes, 1998; Johansson and Kociatkiewicz, 2011), and ever-increasing city competition, local politicians and planners are looking to find additional strategies to improve public images and foster urban and economic development. Thus, organizing and promoting local cultural events has become an “irresistible cocktail” (Evans, 2003: 428) to urban growth coalitions (Logan and Molotch, 1987). Cultural events are believed to bring not only visitors and thus revenue but also image benefits for the locale (Cronin and Hetherington, 2008; Evans, 2009).

As the role of images, signs and experiences in the consumption of goods and services as well as places increases, so does the deliberate branding of products and spaces as images, signs and experiences. This process has been explored by many academic scholars (see cf. Aronczyk and Powers, 2010; Cronin and Hetherington, 2008; Lash and Urry, 1994; Sorkin, 1992; Urry, 1995; Zukin, 1995, 2004, 2010). For instance, Klein (Klein, 2000) finds that companies across the spectrum are severely cutting the cost of manufacturing while exorbitantly expanding the branding and marketing budget for the same products. Moreover, Pine and Gilmore (1999) argue that information experiences rather than information per se create economic value and substance for exchange.

The political rhetoric of this situation is often addressed with the idea of the “creative class” and the “creative city” (Florida, 2002, 2005; Landry, 2008). The transformation of urban governance from managerialism to entrepreneurialism (Harvey, 1989) has fostered a system of economic competition that pits not only national economies and cities but also, increasingly, neighborhoods against each other (Jakob, 2009, 2010a). They compete to attract investment, jobs, well-paid and highly educated residents, and tourists. To meet such challenges, locales not only pay high subsidies to maintain or attract companies but also invest in lifestyle amenities to magnetize their “talent” elite (Florida, 2002). According to Florida, “visual and audio cues such as outdoor dining, active outdoor recreation, a thriving music scene, active nightlife, and bustling street scene [are] important attractants” (Florida, 2005: 99) for the “talented.” Fueled by economic and social restructuring processes and the perceived need for global and regional attention, experience planning serves as a tool for local governments to create these attractions.

Thus, what Florida (2002) and others (e.g. Clark, 2005; Currid, 2007) prescribe for cities as an economic and urban development model is first and foremost experience planning and development and, within this, eventification. The more visible cultural production and consumption are, the more lively they will portray places, and thus the more place amenities they create. The deliberate use of this perceived correlation by policy makers and planners has been strongly criticized by urban scholars such as Marcuse (2003), Peck (2005), Storper and Manville (2006), Scott (2007) and many others, as it constitutes no more than an expression of urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberal urban politics. It is a competitive and market-oriented planning strategy (“war for talent”; Florida, 2002) that embraces arts and cultural events not as a quality of life and experience for all (see cf. Jakob, 2010a), but as incentives for gentrification and indicators of a favorable competitive climate within interurban competition. Despite the call for social diversity, the “creativity script” not only favors a specific “class” over others, but also “subtly relegitimizes regressive social redistributions within the city” (Peck, 2007: 2) whereby the opportunities of participation for the non- or less “talented” are reduced to trickle-down effects such as “wait[ing] tables for the creative bohemians” (ibid.: 2).

However, the critics’ focus on urban politics masks some of the specificities of the current cultural production and consumption mechanisms. It is not just the “the Rise of the Creative Class [that] both glorifies and naturalizes the contracted-out, ‘free-agent’ economy, discursively validating the liberties it generates, and the lifestyles it facilitates, for the favored class of creatives” (Peck, 2005: 756) as a political strategy, but the “hypercompetitive age” (Peck, 2005: 768) is also played out within the cultural industries. To advance their competitive position, many producers and marketers of cultural products apply creative class outsourcing and contracting principles as well as engage in creative city marketing schemes.

Experience planning and development is not only a political scheme but also a tactic of businesses. Cultural industries exemplify this trend. Today, producers of cultural products large and small, that is, from independent artists to global corporations, employ a variety of experience management strategies to secure and advance value and consumption (Hracs et al., in press). Surely, cultural products are by definition experiences by virtue of their dominant aesthetic and symbolic characteristics (Banks et al., 2000; Bourdieu, 1984; Power and Scott, 2004). Yet, with more and more people entering this marketplace (McRobbie, 1998), ever-growing competition and what Hracs et al. call the “dilemma of democratization” (in press) – the common ability to produce and consume an unprecedented number of cultural products – the uniqueness and monopoly rents (Harvey, 2001) of cultural products are challenged. To overcome this dilemma, producers and marketers of cultural products, among other things, organize events from electronic dance parties in museums and opera houses, spectacular fashion and design shows featuring video and animation, to collective gallery openings paired with music, dance and theater performances to entice consumers and heighten the experiential character of their goods and services. This is especially so when met with an advancing entrepreneurialism of cultural producers partially due to declining artist–agent relationships (Jakob, 2009). McRobbie notes that cultural producers pay increasing attention to the business side of their practice breaking “with past anti-commercial notions of being creative” (McRobbie, 2002: 521). Moreover, they specifically use urban space as an attraction and framework for consumer experiences (Hracs et al., 2012).

Thus, producers and marketers of cultural products take on experience-based planning schemes and enter into new relationships with local policy makers, planners and developers to break into otherwise inaccessible perceived markets and to attract further customers and visitors. Of course, major cultural attractions such as museums, opera houses and theaters have long played a role in urban growth strategies (see cf. Logan and Molotch, 1987). However, this research finds that nowadays the involvement of producers of cultural products in urban growth coalitions also includes individual artists. The observed eventification strategies are not only a “down-scaling” of festivalization to the neighborhood and individual artist level but also an “up-scaling” of the artists’ own entrepreneurial activities into urban and economic redevelopment. While the event-based culture of the art scene in SoHo during the 1960s and 1970s was intended to generate new forms of creative expression (see, for instance, Jakob, 2010b) but was ultimately appropriated by “culture-curious” middle-class visitors and real estate interests (Simpson, 1981), the current observations suggest a shift in artists’ behavior. In the studied events, the artists actively participate in and/or initiate the transformation of their locale. Both case studies show that local stakeholders enforce eventification and the visibility of cultural production and consumption as a tool for revitalization and amenity urbanization through the development of networks of collaboration in culture marketing and promotion. The artists, on the other hand, participate in and/or form such networks with the goal of attracting consumers and clients. Thus, their activities are not necessarily “taken over” by politics and economically stronger groups but specifically designed to attract these interests. In the case studies, artists’ events are not converted into a revitalization strategy but initiated as such.

Artist-led eventification emerges as a strategy to cope with an ever-increasing competition amongst artists in Berlin and New York City and their struggle for sustainable incomes. The observed developments in Berlin and New York City suggest that urban sites defined by cultural experiences arise from a combination of urban entrepreneurialism and an entrepreneurialism of artists that engages with its urban site (Author, 2009). It is thus a combination of “down-scaling” festivalization and “up-scaling” artist marketing strategies. The organization of collective cultural events not only turns the artists into “actors” and their studios and work practices into “theater” but also transforms their neighborhoods into staged experiences of event consumption.

Experience planningin Berlin and New York City

Berlin and New York City are both well known for their local arts and culture and the attractions they provide. Both cities are hosts to a variety of internationally renowned cultural festivals such as the Tribeca Film Festival or the Berlinale, the Armory Show or the Berlin Biennale. Their administrations provide comparatively sizable financial support to cultural activities, although cultural budgets are constantly cut and under threat. Moreover, Berlin and New York City governments have a direct and long-standing relationship with many major cultural institutions such as the Cultural Institutions Group in New York City (a group of 33 cultural institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art) or the State Opera and the Museum’s Island in Berlin by means of their landownership. They also both endorse experience planning as a principal strategy for urban growth. For instance, in his 2003 State of the City Speech, New York City Mayor Bloomberg stated “The ongoing WinterFest showcases cultural attractions in parks throughout the city. We’ll work to create other major cultural events next year and in the years ahead. That’s for reasons that are both economic and aesthetic,” and later continued “we’re also going to imaginatively, aggressively and relentlessly market our cultural attractions and all our competitive advantages [of …] our city worldwide” (Bloomberg, 2003; see also Greenberg, 2010). Hence, governmental experience planning and marketing in New York City is not only a “turn” towards experience planning and development – as this special issue suggests – and an already existing urban and economic development strategy, but also one that will be further advanced and pursued in the future.

Similar is true for Berlin, where according to Mayor Wowereit, creativity is “the best that Berlin has to offer, its unique creativity. Creativity is Berlin’s future” (Presse- und Informationsamt des Landes Berlin, 2007). Accompanied by an outcry of cultural experts, the Mayor moved the Department of Cultural Affairs to the Mayor’s Office in 2006, declared cultural affairs as a “Chefsache” (matter for the boss) and announced himself as the new “Cultural Senator” (Spiegel Online, 2006). His critics worried that “so far he [Mayor Wowereit] has not been noticeable for a great interest in high culture. Event culture and party will not substitute that” (Berlin member of parliament in Spiegel Online, 2006). However, event culture is the focus of experience planning. According to Florida, traditional cultural amenities such as “the symphony, opera, theater, ballet […] are taking a backseat to more casual, open, inclusive, and participative activities” (Florida, 2005: 84) in this search for urban attractions. Mayor Wowereit has exemplified such recommendations in his efforts to shed the responsibility for the Berlin State Opera while, for instance, supporting the event-based promotion campaigns of the CREATE BERLIN design network. His singling-out of what is a network of small and individual producers of cultural products hints at the emerging trend towards including small and individual producers of cultural products into urban growth coalition experience planning. This tendency is most evident, however, on the neighborhood level. Thus, the following case studies of Kolonie Wedding in the Berlin neighborhood Wedding (now Gesundbrunnen) and the Bronx Culture Trolley in the South Bronx, New York City, illustrate how local policy makers, planners, and developers collaborate with individual artists in the implementation of experience planning through eventification.

Both examples have been part of a larger study that investigated emerging local cultural industries networks in Berlin and New York City, including 200 qualitative interviews with members of the cultural industries as well as local policy makers, neighborhood organizations, real estate owners, and developers and a three-year participatory observation (2005–2007) in the organization of cultural events in four neighborhoods: Friedrichshain and Wedding in Berlin and Long Island City and the South Bronx in New York City. All four case studies were selected because of the recent developments of numerous place-based cultural industries networks that introduced a variety of experience-based marketing strategies and particularly regular, collective cultural events (for details about the overall study, its findings and methodology see Jakob, 2009). More specifically, 32 and 29 interviews were conducted in the South Bronx and Wedding respectively. In addition, there has been continuing contact and regular visits with a number of local stakeholders (policy makers, organizations, members of the cultural industries) leading to a series of follow-up interviews during 2011 that focused on the further developments and effects of eventification.

Kolonie Wedding and the Bronx Culture Trolley are singled out here not because they are unique initiatives but rather because they exemplify common ways of implementing experience planning. In fact, the larger study included five other local initiatives of similar character. However, both do stand out as a result of their sustained efforts and the close – if varied – relationship between policy makers, planners and developers, and local artists. In both cases, artists were integrated into local urban growth coalitions through eventification initiatives. From the artists’ point of view, these practices are supposed to serve their competitiveness and advance their market position although they also distract from the actual production of artistic work. The goal for local developers is the revitalization and reimagination of the areas. Moreover, both neighborhoods are structurally, economically, and socio-culturally peripheral and thus highlight that experience planning is not limited to inner cities or areas with large numbers of cultural institutions (see cf. Lorentzen, 2009).

Kolonie Wedding, Berlin

Kolonie Wedding was founded in 2001 by the Quartiersmanagement (QM) Soldiner Kiez, a local neighborhood management organization. It is a network of 32 cultural “project rooms” that each organize different cultural events every month as well as a widely advertised “Tour de Galerie” on the last Friday evening and Sunday morning of every month where visitors are guided from one event to the next. The events include various combinations of visual arts exhibitions, new media and film, dance and theater performances, music, and poetry reading as well as occasional karaoke and sports competitions. Overall, QMs are appointed by the Berlin government to serve areas with “special development needs” (“Gebiete mit besonderem Entwicklungsbedarf”). QM Soldiner Kiez is one of currently 17 of such organizations in Berlin. It was founded in 1999 and managed by the L.I.S.T. GmbH, a private urban development corporation.

The idea behind Kolonie Wedding was to “colonize Wedding with culture” (interview, director QM) by producing cultural events that redevelop and reimagine the neighborhood from a state of neglect to an area of “life” and “ambience,” hence the name Kolonie (colony). It developed along a multi-stage process: First, the QM approached the major local real estate holder DEGEWO, which agreed to provide its empty stores at operating cost to Kolonie Wedding. Then, the QM approached individual artists to relocate to the area with the incentive of cheap space. Once 16 people had agreed to take up that offer, QM started to formalize the network. It provided the name, designed the logo, printed advertising and press material, and inaugurated the first walking tours. Here, the organization’s employees went as far as calling every member in advance to make sure that they all attended the monthly organizational meetings and prepared and offered new events for each month’s tour. The regularity as well as distinctiveness of each event, according to the director of the QM, is essential to building a regular audience. Kolonie Wedding participants are not, themselves, allowed to exhibit for the same reason. Notably, they are also prohibited from selling any artwork. This restriction is due to the agreement between the QM and DEGEWO that no commercial enterprise should take advantage of the near-zero rents. It also motivated the focus on artists in the revitalization strategy instead of commercial galleries or other, larger cultural enterprises. As the director of the QM acknowledged, “the artists here practice intense self-exploitation. Because, to organize an exhibition every month, if you want to do that well, is very time consuming. That often means the artists don’t have enough time to develop their own work” (interview, director QM, 2009).

Why then, would these artists participate in such an initiative? For one, artists are attracted to Kolonie Wedding by its low rents but even more so by its ability to gather a much larger audience as a group than any individual artists would be able to. With large numbers of artists residing in Berlin and numerous cultural events happening daily, it is challenging for individual artists to find an audience. Organizing collective events thus provides an opportunity to create heightened experiences of cultural consumption for consumers and thus attention and attraction. Moreover, Wedding as a neighborhood has not been known for cultural activities – although that is slowly changing as the network evolves – and thus local cultural industries cannot feed off foot traffic but have to create attractions to lure consumers to their site. Although members have little in common beyond their location, their collective goal is to establish the neighborhood as a “major arts location in Berlin” (interview, Kolonie Wedding chairman).

DEGEWO regards Kolonie Wedding as a “win–win” situation: The incurred operation costs of the former empty stores are taken over by the artists, while their presence influences the perception of the neighborhood and creates amenities and thus the ability to attract wealthier residents, higher-end retail, and restaurants. Further, the artists’ presence provides the real estate holder with the positive image of supporting the Berlin art scene.

The problem with this form of experience planning is, however, that its ultimate goal is the gentrification of the neighborhood, as stated by numerous interviewees representing DEGEWO as well as the QM. This becomes even more evident when considering, as stated, that Kolonie Wedding artists are not allowed to sell any of their artwork. Moreover, the local population is largely excluded from the cultural events. According to the interviewed Kolonie Wedding artists, the large population of local immigrant residents, often Turkish, tend not to visit the events. As the artists see their participation in Kolonie Wedding as a step towards metropolitan recognition, direct involvement in local affairs is rare. Also, Kolonie Wedding artists usually do not live in the area but only come there to organize their events. Hence, they are isolated from the everyday life of the neighborhood. They have created a separate socio-spatial enclave for themselves that is detached from the actual neighborhood. Thus, instead of using experience planning as a tool to provide cultural experiences for all residents, Kolonie Wedding actually underpins exclusion. DEGEWO representatives are blunter in describing their relationship: “as long as Kolonie Wedding has a motor role in the revitalization of Wedding, we will collaborate with it” (interview, DEGEWO representative). Kolonie Wedding is an expression of urban entrepreneurialism that puts property and growth-driven development at its center. It stands as an example that reveals how experience planning through eventification is being used to further urban profits and occupational status.

The Bronx Culture Trolley, New York City

The South Bronx and its historical urban, social, economic and artistic developments are very different from Berlin-Wedding or any neighborhood in Berlin and New York City. White-flight, redlining policies, racism, urban blight, and devastation characterized much of the second half of its twentieth century (see cf. Grogan and Proscio, 2000; Jonnes, 2002; Mahler, 2005). At the same time, the South Bronx gave birth to innovative art forms: rap, DJ-ing, graffiti, and break dancing. Yet the benefits of these artistic practices bypassed the area as successful artists often relocated. The perceived “silence” of South Bronx artistic creativity, however, ended, once all other New York City neighborhoods closest to Manhattan became too expensive (see cf. Zukin and Braslow, 2011), causing new artists to settle in the abandoned warehouses of Mott Haven, the southern tip of the South Bronx directly across the Harlem River from Upper Manhattan.

In 2002 the Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA), in partnership with the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation (SoBRO), initiated the Bronx Culture Trolley as a way to provide cultural experiences and to foster arts-led urban and economic development, tourism and an overall reimagination of the South Bronx from urban blight and crime to creativity. As BCA’s program director explained: “The trolley started as a tourism initiative. Primarily it’s tourism. […] Tourism for the New York City dot com people, the visitor bureau, basically means heads and beds. Well, we don’t have any beds in the Bronx” (personal interview). Instead of building such an infrastructure, BCA and SoBRO came up with a plan to attract visitors to the South Bronx with the focus on regular cultural events.

The general concept of the Bronx Culture Trolley is similar to Kolonie Wedding. On every first Wednesday and selected Saturdays of the month, a historic trolley bus loops around the neighborhood several times to carry visitors around to enjoy local visual art, music, theatre, film, and poetry-reading events at a diverse range of Bronx cultural venues, restaurants, and private studios. The major difference, though, is that the BCA did not directly attract artists to the neighborhood nor does it provide reduced rents. Instead, it was the idea of a local artist residing in Mott Haven to include private studios in the Culture Trolley program.

She created this idea to have phantom galleries. She is an artist and she lived down there and she saw what was happening and thought it would be great if we went into different spaces with the trolley and showed people what was going on. And that snowballed into big coverage and brought interest because it’s a very interesting story. Mostly because Brooklyn, DUMBO, was getting priced out and Carol Gardens was getting priced out and Greenpoint/Williamsburg is such a story about housing. […] That’s why we want to take people down there.

(interview, BCA program director)

The statement shows that individual artists not only engage with development organizations in local experience planning but also pursue these activities as well as actively showcase arts-led urban revitalization. The motivation for the participating artists and arts organizations to organize monthly events and to participate in the network is again the power of a collective marketing tool. Large parts of their audience and press coverage are related to the Culture Trolley. In portraying their work by means of collective events, they can gain the attention of the Manhattan-centric New York City art world. Moreover, there is a sense that the more well known the South Bronx becomes as an artist neighborhood, the better their work will be perceived (see cf. Jakob, 2009).

Yet, as with Kolonie Wedding, the Culture Trolley provides little cultural experiences for local residents. In fact, the BCA sent residents of the local public housing projects invitations to and announcements of the Bronx Culture Trolley for the first time in 2008, six years after its inauguration – an exclusion from local events that is not new in the South Bronx, as Fainstein and Stokes (1998) show with the example of Yankee Stadium. Still, the Center for an Urban Future found that the Bronx Culture Trolley was the most successful of all New York City trolley tours (Center for an Urban Future, 2007). However, BCA’s director made clear that he does not believe that the success of the trolley and its large visitorship are a result of the quality of the work shown at trolley nights – a statement that was iterated by interviewed Kolonie Wedding artists and the QM about their own events. Instead, the immense media coverage and strong interest is related to the public’s interest in the transformation of the South Bronx from “crime to chic” (interview, Senior Vice president SoBRO). This observation suggests that the event character of both Kolonie Wedding and the Bronx Culture Trolley supersedes the actual artwork as an experience. Following this perceived success, the BCA is currently working on new plans that will extend the eventification of the neighborhood to other days of the month.

The eventification of place

Surely, the involvement of artists in local urban and economic development can have positive effects and benefits towards education, civic participation, and the diversification of the local economy. Scholars such as Markusen and Schrock (2006) and Markusen and Gadwa (2010) and many others have repeatedly stated the many positive contributions artists can make to local development. Moreover, Marling et al. (2009) argue for the learning experiences that eventification can provide. Also looking at Berlin and New York City (Kreuzberg and Harlem), Huning and Novy (2006) find that urban tourism “beyond the beaten path” can have positive effects when it strengthens the capacities of community self-organization, represents local interests, and fosters “cultural resources through the greater recognition and appreciation of marginalized communities’” (Huning and Novy, 2006: 15). However, they also find that these positive benefits do not come automatically. Instead, most often any benefits are superseded by rising rents and costs of living that will displace not only local residents and businesses but ultimately also the artists (see cf. Simpson, 1981; Zukin, 1989). Only when urban and economic development occurs within an institutional and regulatory context that eases social and political inequalities, and that not only involves local residents and businesses but puts their interests at the center of any efforts, can it provide opportunities for integration and just growth. Hence, “a high orientation of local actors towards equitable development and a strong formal and informal influence of residents seem to be crucial in order to maintain a neighborhood’s identity without giving way to a purely capitalist rationale” (Huning and Novy, 2006: 16). As long as the “actors” and “directors,” that is, the local artists and developers, of this “theater” of eventification continue to ignore the local population, they will be further marginalized and excluded from all the benefits this strategy may entail.

Organizing events is not a new practice for artists, nor is collaboration or the inclusion of audiences and the creation of experiences. It was SoHo artists that first combined and introduced a collaborative way of working that involved their audience and experiences as well as their location as a new aesthetic form (Gumpert, 2006). Yet, as Zukin (1989) finds in her research on SoHo, once these artists invited the public to their workspaces and the public itself reciprocally found interest in them, what was intended to raise the awareness of the artistic work and its consumption soon developed into the consumption of the workspace as a commodity. By means of those relationships, they “established themselves as a part of the urban design” (Simpson, 1981: 3). However, they soon discovered that “the middle class exacted a tribute in return for its sponsorship” (Simpson, 1981: 3). Its increasing interest for the way artists lived and worked led to the commodification and gentrification of their live/work spaces and the development of the loft market as high-end real estate market (Zukin, 1989).

Both mechanisms have extended their scale in the case-study neighborhoods, and SoHo-style aesthetics as well as eventification have moved beyond the interior into the larger surroundings and environments of the studios. Event-led production and distribution of cultural goods and services transforms locales into places of event consumption that provide attention to the local artists as well as to the place itself (for detailed accounts on place and product branding see, for example, Aronczyk and Powers, 2010; Pike, 2011). Unlike SoHo’s development, though, in Wedding and in the South Bronx, artists and local development organizations alike used SoHo-style eventification as a deliberate strategy to promote their area and not an aesthetic style. Hence, their relationship with their location has less of a “place in product” nature (Molotch, 2002, 2003) but, as I have explored in detail (Jakob, 2009), an effort to rebrand places with artistic services and events, that is, “product in place” so to speak. The collective cultural events are not geared towards the development of new aesthetic forms but are marketing strategies for the artists and their work as well as the neighborhood. Nor do local development organizations wait for artists to constitute networks of collaboration but help form them. Both schemes aim for increased attention and recognition whereby the customer is not consuming a product but an eventified place.

As Häusserman and Siebel find, festivalization as one sub-concept of experience planning and development – or, as they call it, the festivalization of urban politics (1993a) – constitutes a new(er) type of political and planning practice. The organization of mega-festivals is used as a tool for city governments to create attractions and place images and identifications. It also serves to develop public consensus and common goals. At a time when city governments hold fewer and fewer regulatory instruments and resources to influence housing, employment, education, and the welfare of their citizens, experience planning in the form of festivals not only hides these weaknesses, but also becomes a sort of “propaganda of good deed” (Häusserman and Siebel, 1993a: 14). It is a restaging of urban politics aimed at connecting heterogeneous interests and local stakeholders toward a common goal while also demonstrating a political capacity to act.

However, developing spectacular urban experiences is neither as much of a “feel-good” (Peck, 2007) policy nor as inclusive as it may sound. Instead, eventification can have significant costs: it can lead to lost trust, group formation, and the reallocation of resources away from more inclusive and equal tasks such as public health, education, and housing as well as creating conflicts of “a whole set of mutually reinforcing racial, class, big business–small business, and even city-suburban divisions” (Eisinger, 2000: 329). Lorentzen and Hansen (2009) find that experience consumption is related to higher incomes, higher education levels, and smaller family sizes. The examples of Kolonie Wedding and the Bronx Culture Trolley verify that argument. Neither the immigrant population in Wedding nor the African-American and Latino residents in the South Bronx, all of them comparatively poor, less educated, and with larger families than the cities’ averages, participate in the cultural events. In fact, they are not necessarily encouraged to. Instead, experience planning through eventification in Wedding and the South Bronx is geared towards attracting a wealthier, usually white, middle-class audience as consumers of the events and the overall neighborhoods (as tourists, new residents, and investors).

Hence, what kind of “theater” is being staged in Wedding and the South Bronx? In both events, the local population is largely excluded, moved to the back row at best. The artists, on the other hand, participate in the “play” as stage workers: as “actors” in search for fame and recognition and as “set or lighting designers” as they arrange their studio spaces to enhance the consumer experiences. The local development organizations direct and manage the spectacle for an audience of “culture-curious” (Simpson, 1981) middle-class visitors.

In this scenario, artists and developers are connected through their shared interests of attention, visitorship, and “positive reviews,” with artists joining the ranks of urban growth coalitions to develop unique and attractive place experiences. However, as Bille writes, “one must be circumspect in evaluating cultural policy in terms of ‘economic impact’. Economic benefits are side-effects of cultural policy – not the intended goal” (Bille, 2011: 104). Eventification allows urban growth coalitions to justify and further advance their relationship with cultural producers for economic gains. However, a consumption of culture and urban space that is based on attention by means of eventification relies on an accelerating logic of ever more experience schemes. A political and business strategy of experience planning and development through cultural eventification will have to continuously move its focus away from the quality of the actual artwork towards a further heightened experience of the events. Thus, the “experience turn in development and planning” expressed through mass eventification will not only lead to eventual disadvantages for the participating artists as they spend more and more time and resources developing events instead of artistic work but also increase the uniformity of its content as well as that of urban environments by its omnipresence and repetition.

References

Aronczyk

Powers

(eds) (2010) Blowing up the Brand: Critical Perspectives on Promotional Culture. New York: Peter Lang.

Bäckström

Johansson

(2006) Creating and consuming experiences in retail store environments: comparing retailer and consumer perspectives. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13: 417–430.

Banks

Lovatt

O’Connor

. (2000) Risk and trust in the cultural industries. Geoforum 31: 453–464.

Bianchini

Parkinson

(eds) (1994) Cultural Policy and Urban Regeneration: The West European Experience. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Bille

(2011) The Scandinavian approach to the experience economy – does it make sense? International Journal of Cultural Policy 18: 93–110.

Bloomberg

(2003) Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 2003 State of the City Address [Online]. New York: Gothem Gazette. Available: http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/searchlight/20030123/203/233 (accessed 2 February 2011).

Bourdieu

(1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Brenner

Keil

(2006) The Global Cities Reader. London, New York: Routledge.

Center for an Urban Future (2007) A Bumpy Ride. New York: Center for an Urban Future.

10.

Clark

(2005) The City as an Entertainment Machine. Amsterdam: Elsevier JAI.

11.

Cronin

Hetherington

(2008) Consuming the Entrepreneurial City: Image, Memory, Spectacle. New York: Routledge.

12.

Currid

(2007) The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art, and Music Drive. New York, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

13.

Eisinger

(2000) The politics of bread and circuses. Urban Affairs Review 35: 316–333.

14.

Evans

(2003) Hard-branding the cultural city – from Prado to Prada. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27: 417–440.

15.

Evans

(2006) Branding the city of culture – the death of city planning? In: Monclús

Guàrdia

(eds) Culture, Urbanism and Planning. Aldershot, Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 197–214.

16.

Evans

(2009) Creative cities, creative spaces and urban policy. Urban Studies 46: 1003–1040.

17.

Fainstein

Judd

(1999) The Tourist City. New Haven: Yale University Press.

18.

Fainstein

Stokes

(1998) Spaces for play: the impacts of entertainment development on New York City. Economic Development Quarterly 12: 150–165.

19.

Florida

(2002) The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.

20.

Florida

(2005) Cities and the Creative Class. New York: Routledge.

21.

García

(2004) Urban regeneration, arts programming and major events: Glasgow 1990, Sydney 2000 and Barcelona 2004. International Journal of Cultural Policy 10: 103–118.

22.

Gibson

Stevenson

(2004) Urban space and the uses of culture. International Journal of Cultural Policy 10: 1–4.

23.

Greenberg

(2010) Branding, crisis, and Utopia: representing New York in the age of Bloomberg. In: Aronczyk

Powers

(eds) Blowing up the Brand: Critical Perspectives on Promotional Culture. New York: Peter Lang.

24.

Grodach

Loukaitou-Sideris

(2007) Cultural development strategies and urban revitalization. International Journal of Cultural Policy 13: 349–370.

25.

Grogan

Proscio

(2000) Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

26.

Gumpert

(2006) It was one of those “Is it Art?” moments. In: Taylor

(ed.) The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 9-15.

27.

Harvey

(1989) From managerialism to entrepreneurialism:the transformation in urban governance in late capitalism. Geografiska Annaler 71: 3–17.

28.

Harvey

(2001) Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography. New York: Routledge.

29.

Häusserman

Siebel

(1993a) Die Politik der Festivalisierung und die Festivalisierung der Politik. Große Ereignisse in der Stadtpolitik. In: Häussermann

Siebel

(eds) Festivalisierung der Stadtpolitik: Stadtentwicklung durch große Projekte. Leviathan. Sonderheft 13. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

30.

Häusserman

Siebel

(1993b) Festivalisierung der Stadtpolitik: Stadtentwicklung durch grosse Projekte. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

31.

Hracs

Jakob

Hauge

(2012) Generating distinctiveness and value in the new marketplace for music and fashion. Working paper series: Martin prosperity research, 31 January, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.

32.

Hracs

Jakob

Hauge

(in press) Standing Out in the Crowd: The rise of exclusivity-based strategies to compete in the contemporary marketplace for music and fashion. Environment & Planning A.

33.

Huning

Novy

(2006) Tourism as an engine of neighborhood regeneration? Some remarks towards a better understanding of urban tourism beyond the ‘Beaten Path’. CMS working paper series. November 2006, Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technical UNiversity Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

34.

Jakob

(2009) Beyond creative production networks. The development of intra-metropolitan creative industries clusters in Berlin and New York City, Berlin: Rhombos.

35.

Jakob

(2010a) Constructing the creative neighborhood: Hopes and limitations of creative city policies in Berlin. City, Culture and Society 1: 193–198.

36.

Jakob

(2010b) Von SoHo zu SoBro: symbolische Konstruktionen kreativer Orte. Planungsrundschau 19: 110–134.

37.

Johansson

Kociatkiewicz

(2011) City festivals: creativity and control in staged urban experiences. European Urban and Regional Studies 18: 392–405.

38.

Jonnes

(2002) South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City. New York: Fordham University Press.

39.

Klein

(2000) No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. New York: Picador.

40.

Kotkin

(2003) The museum trap. New York Sun, 23 September.

41.

Landry

(2008) The creative city: a toolkit for urban innovators. New Stroud, London: Comedia, Earthscan.

42.

Lanham

(2006) The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

43.

Lash

Urry

(1994) Economies of Signs and Space. London, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

44.

Logan

Molotch

(1987) Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

45.

Lorentzen

(2009) Space and place in the experience economy. A proactive approach. RSA annual conference, understanding and shaping regions: spatial, social and economic futures. RSA Annual Conference, 6th-8th April 2009, Leuven, Belgium.

46.

Lorentzen

Hansen

(2009) The role and transformation of the city in the experience economy: identifying and exploring research challenges. European Planning Studies 17: 817–827.

47.

McRobbie

(1998) British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry? London: Routledge.

48.

McRobbie

(2002) Clubs to companies: notes on the decline of political culture in speeded up creative worlds. Cultural Studies 16: 516–531.

49.

Mahler

(2005) Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

50.

Marcuse

(2003) Review of the rise of the creative class by Richard Florida. Urban Land 61: 40–41.

51.

Markusen

Gadwa

(2010) Arts and culture in urban or regional planning: a review and research agenda. Journal of Planning Education and Research 29: 379–391.

52.

Markusen

Schrock

(2006) The artistic dividend: urban artistic specialization and economic development implications. Urban Studies 43: 1661–1686.

53.

Marling

Jensen

Kiib

(2009) The experience city: planning of hybrid cultural projects. European Planning Studies 17: 863–885.

54.

Molotch

(2002) Place in product. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26: 665–688.

55.

Molotch

(2003) Where Stuff Comes from: How Toasters,Toilets, Cars, Computers, and many Others Things Come to Be as They Are. New York: Routledge.

56.

Peck

(2005) Struggling with the creative class. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29: 740–770.

57.

Peck

(2007) The creativity fix. Eurozine. First published in Fronesis 24 (2007). 1–12.

58.

Pike

(ed.) (2011) Brands and Branding Geographies. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

59.

Pine

Gilmore

(1999) The Experience Economy. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

60.

Power

Scott

(2004) Cultural Industries and the Production of Culture. London, New York: Routledge.

61.

Presse- und Informationsamt des Landes Berlin (2007) ‘Wowereit präsentierte den “Berlin Day” in New York’, Pressemitteilung. Berlin: Presse- und Informationsamt des Landes Berlin. Available at: http://www.berlin.de/rbmskzl/rathausaktuell/archiv/2007/05/17/78109/index.html (accessed 9 May 2012).

62.

Richards

Palmer

(2010) Eventful Cities: Cultural Management and Urban Revitalisation. London:Butterworth-Heinemann.

63.

Schmitt

(2003) Customer Experience Management: A Revolutionary Approach to Connecting with Your Customers. New York: Wiley.

64.

Schmitt

Rogers

Vrotsos

(2004) There’s no Business that’s not Show Business: Marketing in an Experience Culture. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Financial Times, Prentice-Hall.

65.

Schulze

(2005) Die Erlebnisgesellschaft: Kultursoziologieder Gegenwart. Frankfurt/Main; New York: Campus Verlag.

66.

Scott

(2007) Capitalism and urbanization in a new key? The cognitive-cultural dimension. Social Forces 85: 1465–1482.

67.

Simpson

(1981) SoHo, the Artist in the City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

68.

Sorkin

(ed.) (1992) Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. New York: Hill and Wang.

69.

Spiegel Online (2006) ‘Massive Kritik an Wowereits Kultur-Coup’, Spiegel Online. Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,446826,00.html (accessed 9 May 2012).

70.

Storper

Manville

(2006) Behaviour, preferences and cities: urban theory and urban resurgence. Urban Studies 43: 1247–1274.

71.

Urry

(1995) Consuming Places. London, New York: Routledge.

72.

Van Aalst

Van Melik

(2012) City festivals and urban development: does place matter? European Urban and Regional Studies 19: 195–206.

73.

Zukin

(1989) Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

74.

Zukin

(1995) The Cultures of Cities. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

75.

Zukin

(2004) Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture. New York: Routledge.

76.

Zukin

(2010) Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

77.

Zukin

Braslow

(2011) The life cycle of New York’s creative districts: reflections on the unanticipated consequences of unplanned cultural zones. City, Culture and Society 2: 131–140.4