Dreamscape by Alex Segal
In Part 2, I wrote about why the policy of the city of San Francisco—allowing landlords and developers to prohibit working artists, or any members of the gig economy, from renting here—is absolute folly. Besides the ideological reasons, like the immense value of creative work, there are practical ones that the city ignores.
The first is that the reason why the world has loved this city is because it has always, since its founding, been a place where artists and writers launched one fabulous new thing after another. A new creative phenomenon emerged here in just about every decade of the 20th century, as I describe in our website, arthousesf.org. You can say tech is creative, but except maybe among techies, it hardly evokes the passionate, soulful enthusiasm people feel for creations like the Grateful Dead or Burning Man.
The second reason: this city currently has a lot of devastated commercial corridors, with more boarded up businesses than open ones. The great lesson of San Francisco history is that whenever artists moved into boarded up, struggling, or uninteresting neighborhoods, their communities attracted international fame and brought people there, who spend money. If the city really wants to do something to help small business, they’ll fill some of our empty units on commercial corridors with artists, who will attract tourism and local interest, and give businesses incentive to open there.
A third reason: study after study has shown that art is good for people. One English study (Steptoe, 2019) showed fairly conclusively that exposure to art increases life expectancy. Over a dozen conducted in 2022 found that art improves mental health, and an entire field of psychology uses art as a healing medium. The people who make things that heal seem better neighbors than those who make things that alienate.
Fourth: pundits have published books and articles in recent years saying that San Francisco is “over.” It’s blamed on homelessness, but we’ve had a homeless population since globalization sent manufacturing jobs overseas, years ago. Seventy percent of the people living in tents used to have jobs and housing here, according to city records. What is really different now is that most of the artists are gone, and the subtle, joyous intensity of creative energy went with them.
There are other reasons, like exclusionary policies being grounds for social justice lawsuits, should the remaining arts community have the wherewithal to pursue them. It’s neither just nor practical to keep artists out of the social fabric of our cities. In fact, it’s counter-productive, but we can’t expect government, controlled by developers, or philanthropy, limited by patrons’ priorities, to do anything about it. This is a job for visionaries in the private sector.
Proust Said That 