Session: Artists, Festivals, Culture and Tourism

April 1, 2:30 PM

Ty Symroski
City of Key West

Mike Runnels
Ruidoso, New Mexico

Can zoning regulations accommodate the creative spirit of artists and cultural innovation? How to zone for artists, inspire artistic creativity, and deal with the displacement of the very artists that made a community vibrant when they can no longer compete economically.

The following is a summary of the ideas presented by the panelists and the extensive discussion of the audience. Unfortunately, due to the pace of discussion, some very important ideas may not have been picked up. I apologize. The audience included approximately 100 people and was very diverse. Some of the places represented included: Chicago; Texas; Manatou Springs; Grand Rapids, Lake of the Ozarks, Boston; Honolulu; Indianapolis, and Portland, Oregon. Obviously no one agrees with all these ideas and not all of these will work in a particular location. Let us only hope this summary helps.

Needs of Artist Communities

• Inspiration
  • - Nature
  • - Built environment such as architecture
  • - Local people
  • - Local history
• Cheap housing with or without studio space
• Cheap studio space
• Places to practice/rehearse
• Places to meet to exchange ideas and engage in dialogue
  • - Small cafes
  • - Magazines and newspapers
• Places to perform, present, display art
  • - Small, personable, intimate, informal venues
  • - Large venues
• Opportunities to sell art
  • - Galleries
  • - Small stages
• A community that accommodates and accepts diversity and eccentricity
• Intense diversity of land uses that accommodate all the needs of a community. How can an artist community exist if there is a dispersal of everyday needs?
• Continual turnover of residents as occurs with art institutes and colleges.
• Low skill day jobs.

Zoning Techniques

We should ask ourselves how much art comes out of suburbs and gated communities. Are cul-de-sacs a dead end to culture as well as linkages to neighboring streets? Is the only claim of the suburbs that of being home to garage bands? We need to think beyond the typical zoning classifications of retail, bars and lounges, educational facilities, and cultural and civic facilities. Ideas of how to revise regulations to include:

• Amend home occupation such as allowing retail of art made on site or art instructors to have students. Allow a reasonable size sign.
• Parking:
  • - Reduce onsite parking to enhance a walking district. This will intensify the walking and shopping experience. Parking lots behave like graphite rods in a nuclear reactor, the more they are inserted the intensity is reduced.
  • - Adjust parking requirements to acknowledge and encourage the mixture of uses that can share parking or reduce the need to have cars.
    - Require bicycles spaces. Consider allowing a substitution of bicycle spaces for automobile parking spaces.
• Provide mixed use zoning with bookstores, cafes with stages, upstairs apartments, retail of art supplies, galleries, music stores, second hand clothes, medical clinics, bars, food stores with maximum size of 3,000 sq. ft. Perhaps an overlay district could be developed.
• Bring buildings close to the front property line, put parking in the rear and encourage high diversity of uses along the street.
• Allow unused industrial spaces or big box stores to be converted into artist communes and spaces. However, once these structures resume value as industrial sites or stores, the artists may be evicted.
• Set up a land trust to acquire dwelling units and prevent redevelopment to high priced units.
• Establish an art incubator.
• Establish art schools.
• Establish and fund an Arts Council to facilitate grants, events and public art.
• Allow and promote sidewalk sales, street closures, festivals, and “Saturday Markets”.
• Redefine “unit” and readdress the number of people that may live together in a unit. Ironically, in a world that needs people to come together we are passing zoning ordinances that limit how many of us may live together and separates those of us that live in apartments from those of us that live in single family homes. Many artists live in large and small communal settings. Zoning can be adjusted to accept these life styles.
• Treat murals as art and not signs.
• Allow flyers to be attached everywhere or at least, provide many kiosks.
• Find ways to keep a wide range of rents. This may include keeping old buildings.

Final Thoughts and Making Great Places Happen
Pragmatically, artist communities will reinforce a community image, bring tourists in an off-season and provide benefits that the community can enjoy such as concerts and festivals. All this can help the revenues of the local government. However we should not attempt to create an artist zoo where tourists come to observe a neoclassical modernist engaged in a courtship ritual with a jazz vocalist. We need to facilitate art in order to stimulate the discovery and creation of progress. As society develops and great discoveries are made and the intellect of humanity expands, perhaps it is the artists that first begin to perceive a new concept. Perhaps they are the first to articulate this concept that then allows others to refine the discovery until we, as a society have grown. We need the hope that comes with art.
Perhaps the entire concept of “artist community” may be false because, what does that say of other communities? What does that say of us?

Zoning may be at fault. Can we really assume that we can resolve our differences and solve our problems by just separating uses? Does the separation of uses disassociate people from what they do and each other? How complete is a person if they shop in one area, live in another, work someplace else and drive in a personal car to make the connections? From the outside, we only see a portion of this dissected person and they only see a portion of us. We all become only pieces that no longer add up to the whole.

We need to encourage creativity in all, not just artists. If we say art is what occurs over there, then where are we? Everyone should ask; Why is what I do not art? We need everyone to say; My work is art, my life is art, I care, I improve, I invent.

This is what makes great places happen. This is what Planning is about.

Related Reading

• The Death and Life of Great American Cities
• The Rise of the Creative Class

Author and Copyright Information

Ty Symroski, Key West City Planner
City of Key West
P. O. Box 1409
Key West, FL 33041-1409