It's funny how there's such a clear and textbook example of how our modern economy ruins neighborhoods, by taking a quick look at Wynwood.
Wynwood was originally a working class Puerto Rican neighborhood that was transformed by marginalized artists and organizers, who reclaimed the warehouses and unused spaces to create studios, galleries, and street art. This was all a part of the Wynwood Walls project in 2009, which drew international attention. But that success went on to kill Wynwood.
As all the art and soul of the neighborhood began to go viral on social media, then came all the tourists, developers, major brands, and landlords. Property values skyrocketed, and the same artists and small business owners who brought cultural relevance to the neighborhood were priced out. Landlords jacked up rents, art galleries closed, art studios became nightclubs and cocktail bars, and community spaces became high-end retail shops. Now the neighborhood is filled with luxury apartments, tech company satellite offices, craft breweries, and boutique shops that have co-opted the original image of the Wynwood project, and commercialized it.
It's amazing how artists are so good at amassing cultural capital, which is lucrative and profitable, but they rarely get to own or control the wealth their art creates. The art gets used as bait to make money for developers and capital-backed businesses. Cities and corporations love to market themselves using the aesthetic, rebellion, and edge that artists bring, but once the branding job is done, the artists are seen as liabilities. Too poor, too radical, too unstable, too hard to control.
Wynwood attracted tourism, investors, startups, and was once seen as a success, but it replaced the community artists built with consumption. And now the developers that bulldozed the culture will still use the mural-style branding or fake "creative" aesthetics to sell condos. |
Loading...
