America’s Best Places for Artists

We all pretty much know that wherever the artists go, the risk-averse with the money will soon follow, gentrifying the place and thereby forcing the artists to move out to find the next ‘hot spot.’ BusinessWeek is the latest to cover this well-known trend, in Bohemian Today, High-Rent Tomorrow.

Here’s their top ten list based on these criteria: Art establishments per 100,000 people, percentage of population age 25-34; Arts & Culture Index; Diversity Index and Cost of Living Index, starting with the lesser known cities:

– Carson City, NV
– Kingston, NY
– Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA
– Nassau-Suffolk County, N.Y.
– Santa Fe, NM
– Boulder, CO
– Nashville, TN
– San Francisco (eg The Mission)
– Los Angeles (eg Echo Park)
– New York City (eg anywhere outside of Manhattan)

However, unlike in the industrial economy era, just about every city today has such an artist haven – the key is establishing a program that allows artists (that want to stay) to stay via homeownership/rent-to-own programs as well as artist-specific developments.

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neilkt