Anybody that has been to a major city has noticed the significant number of art galleries, live theaters and live music venues that exist in these cities’ urban cores. These creative types typically live in areas where their surroundings are condusive to their creativity. Edgy urban neighborhoods filled with eclectic people, historic or funky architecture, and other things that are not bland attract artists, who in turn make these neighborhoods even more diverse and eclectic. Eventually, hip professionals both young and old start to move in as they are attracted by the same things that the artists are. But when they start to move in, something happens – demand (and thus prices) begin to go up.

The following article describes how investors should look at where artists are flocking to now in order to find the next big thing in real estate (which is getting harder to do these days). I find it ironic that the usual suspects (NYC, San Francisco and L.A.) top the list, since these places have already been the most expensive in the country. Though artists will always find a way to be in these cities no matter how expensive they become (every city still has its share of rough neighborhoods), I wouldn’t say these cities would be great places to invest in.

Still, some other cities on the list are much smaller. As in, same size as Dayton. And this brings me to my point: what is Dayton doing to attract the artist population? Many of my neighbors downtown are artists, but are they downtown because something is drawing them here, or are the suburbs here just so bland and vanilla that downtown is really the only place for them to be. And what about our historic districts? I imagine there is a large population of artists that live in many of these neighborhoods as well. But what if Dayton went beyond what they are doing now to attract artists and actually implemented ideas and programs that helped to attract artists here? One example would be subsidized artist housing where the bottom floor of an old building is an art gallery and the upper floors are inexpensive apartments for the artists that work there. This would be a much better use of the many vacant buildings we have than what they are now being used for – which is nothing. Are Daytons new zoning codes condusive to this type of development? Anybody have any other ideas?

BusinessWeek
by Maya Roney
Link: Bohemian Today, High-Rent Tomorrow.