If you’re heading out to “Stay in New York,” Art F City’s affordable workspace conference, there’s no better time than now to catch up on the issues: artists kicked out of studios, community-building legislation, and whether artists can afford real-estate in New York. Not going? We’ve compiled a lengthy guide on the state of affordable workspace in New York City, with articles from Art F City and other online publications, professional and academic studies, and books to get you started on knowing the current state of affordable studio space in New York City. Some of these resources you may be familiar with. Others have been made publicly available here for the first time.
Got any additions to the list? Leave them in the comments section below.
Art F City
- Industry City Forces Artists Out of Studios Then Launches Giant Art Show, Art F City’s first major report on developers raising rents and kicking out long-term tenants.
- Industry City Forces Artists to Move Out of Sunset Park Studios by the End of Month, a follow-up to the Industry City article, with a focus on how artist tenants were replaced by commercial clients.
- In East Williamsburg, Artist-Studio Leases Create Woes, and Some Winners, on how rents can vary greatly, even within a single building.
- The 1717 Troutman Building Kicks Out Its Galleries, landlord kicks out all artist-run galleries from the 1717 Troutman studio building.
- Redefining the Role of the Artist, a recap of “Studio in Crisis,” a panel organized by Skowhegan, Art F City, and held at Cabinet. William Powhida discusses the hard truth that artists are seen as the “enemy” by many working-class members of their communities.
- An In-Depth Discussion on How Artists Can Save Studios in NYC, Soundcloud and verbatim highlights from “Studio in Crisis.”
- A Bill to Save Your Studios, New Yorkers, on how the “Small Business Jobs Survival Act” would give small business owners (and artists) more negotiating power when renewing leases.
- Free Studio Space Does Exist and You Can Apply for It, one instance of free studio space, by the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program.
- A Look at the Creative Time Summit: Gentrification, Gentrification, and Gentrification, on what’s up with that term everyone’s using, “creative placemaking”?
- Surviving Rent: Why Artists Can’t Afford Critical Neutrality, “From the capitalist’s perspective, artists are great tenants until there is someone else willing and able to pay more.”
More Blogs! More Publications!
- Are Artists Gentrifying Sunset Park?, The L Magazine. On the precarious life of an artist, Paddy’s precursor article to Industry City pushing artists out of Sunset Park.
- Mapping New York Neighborhoods Hit Hardest By High Rents, Curbed NY. Just so you know, it’s everywhere that rent is rising.
- Can Mobile Architecture Alleviate the Affordable Studio Space Crisis? (ArtHome and Art Building), Hyperallergic. On ownership of mobile artist studios.
- Pension Fund Buys Popular Bushwick Studio Building, Hyperallergic. 90-unit studio building sold for $20.8 million under dubious circumstances.
- Hundreds Join a New Kind of Co-op to Buy Commercial Property in High-rent Areas (Caroline Woolard), Crain’s New York. Artist Caroline Woolard, with approximately 200 others, formed the NYC Real Estate Investment Cooperative, so that together they can purchase property.
- De Blasio to Unveil New Artist Housing, Workspace, WNYC. Will New York’s mayor be able to fulfill promises to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing, including the annual plan to build 150 units of live-work space for artists?
- The Real-Estate Artist (Theaster Gates), The New Yorker. Artist Theaster Gates buys real-estate to revitalize forgotten parts of Chicago’s South Side.
- Council to Set a Cultural Plan for New York City, The New York Times. New York plans to create a comprehensive series of goals for arts and culture in all boroughs of New York.
- Who Owns a Vacant Lot?, Shifter. W.A.G.E.’s Lise Soskolne on how developers ended up monetizing the artist’s studio, and a history of Industry City, and her personal experience with landlords.
- Brooklyn for Sale: The Price of Gentrification, a community town-hall meeting. The best panel discussion we’ve seen on gentrification in New York, ever. Race, policy, community—all the hard topics get covered here, and intelligently. Watch the whole discussion. It doesn’t get any better than this.
- Brooklyn’s Galapagos Art Space, Priced Out of New York, Plans Move to Detroit, M Live. Citing rising costs of real estate, the nonprofit Galapagos, made a high-profile move to Detroit.
- Where Big Art Meets Luxe Real Estate, Wall Street Journal. Even blue-chip galleries are forced to move because of property developers.
- Tenants Begin Battle for Brooklyn Loft Law, The Indypendent. Some highlights from the early history of the Brooklyn Live/Work Coalition (BLWC), which fought for protections of loft tenants.
Studies
- On the Relationship Between Social Well-Being and Economic Well-Being, University of Pennsylvania, Mark J. Stern and Susan C. Seifert. A four-city study on economic and racial diversity and cultural assets that attempts to measure the economic impact of art on economies. This isn’t leisure reading.
- Creative New York: June 2015, Center for an Urban Future. A detailed analysis of what has changed in the city’s creative landscape over the past decade and a document of the most pressing challenges facing the city’s artists, nonprofit arts organizations, and for-profit creative firms. More optimism here than you would think: affordability is a huge issue, but New York’s creative class is growing.
- Artist’s Housing: A Survey of Live/Work Space, Carmi Bee. From 1983, a 100-plus page study on how and where artists live, beginning nearly all at once with the comment “Where do these artists live on their minimum wage?”.
- API PS109 Report. A 2006 report leading to the formation of Artspace in East Harlem. Statistics abound, including that 89 percent of artists in East Harlem were interested in relocating their practice to a multi-use facility at PS109.
- APA Manhattan 2014 Sales Report. Wondering who’s actually buying real estate in Manhattan? Wonder no longer. (Thanks to the New York Economic Development Corporation for providing the above three PDFs.)
Books
- New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate (Urban and Industrial Environments)
, Tom Angotti
- Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places
, Sharon Zukin
- Selling the Lower East Side: Culture, Real Estate, and Resistance in New York City
, Christopher Mele
- Bloomberg’s New York: Class and Governance in the Luxury City (Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation)
, Julian Brash
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities
, Jane Jacobs
- The Brooklyn Wars, Neil deMause (forthcoming)
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