Art As Urban Change Agent

A walk through New York's Soho, or LA's Venice Beach shows that arts-lead development can revitalize struggling inner city areas, but the experience is not uniform across all cases. Currid-Halkett finds that there are more nuanced dynamics that can define a transformative process, beyond the cheapness of rents. Citing New York, she explains that the sizes of the spaces in Chelsea and Soho were just as important in attracting dealers Larry Gagosian and Barbara Gladstone, who needed vast rooms to show the increasingly edifice-like work of sculptors such as Richard Serra.