Gentrify Fresno?
Artsy fartsy: an instrument of urban development
This past year, the Atlantic published an article touting Fresno as the up and coming artistic bohemia of California. The article was part of a larger Atlantic series, American Futures 3.0, showcasing the reinvention and resilience of unexpected locations in the United States.
In his piece, writer James Fallows talks up Fresno’s robust arts scene; maps “hip” and trendy neighborhoods in the area; and concludes with the unabashed exclamation: “… you can afford to live here!” This, according to Fallows and his sources, is what makes Fresno the perfect location for the wanderlust artist looking for their next low-cost, inspired modern-day beatnik destination.
Indeed, Fallows sheds light on a burgeoning Fresno arts scene otherwise overshadowed by its nationally ranked unemployment, poverty, crime and pollution. As a Fresno native, it’s easy to get swept up in the euphoria of finally reading a nationally published article that doesn’t cast Fresno as the cesspool of California.
But let’s get real for a minute: Fresno isn’t doing anything nationally noteworthy when it comes to the arts. Like any place, Fresno has its lot of exceptional artists, but the acclaim Fallows extends, in a national context at that, awakens some serious side-eye.
So, what’s the deal here? Why bolster the appeal of a place, in which most people would never consider living, with exaggerated claims to its creative potential?
My assessment: Fallows piece has nothing to do with art and everything to do with urban development. Fresno is being primed to gentrify.
The creative and cool bohemia has become a popular media lure on the part of local councils to attract higher earners to places people might otherwise avoid. Its use has become a sign of impending gentrification. Remember two years ago when Oakland, CA suddenly became the most exciting city in the country? Movoto cited its undeniable “cool factor” and seeming abundance of artistic ventures, including the city’s Internet Cat Video Festival, museums and movie theaters. The once downtrodden city, now “revived,” artsy fartsy has made editorialized appearances in national news reports on the now gentrified Brooklyn in New York City, East Los Angeles and Pilsen in Chicago.
And artsy fartsy is key. Perhaps the most glaring indicator of the farce of bohemia is that its framing is largely commercial and seeks to appeal to the type of person invested in an artistic self-image, rather than art itself. A major clue of this in Fallows’ article is that he doesn’t pay tribute to any actual arts scene that exists in Fresno. Any mention of Fresno’s locally lauded hip hop scene that has cultivated well-known underground artists like Fashawn and Omar Aura? Nope. Fresno’s mural art scene? Nothing. At least the Chris Sorensen metal works studio?! It’s literally right next to the “Fresno: The Best Little City in the U.S.” arch! Nada. Missed that, too.
Fallows focuses exclusively on profit-driven ventures: Sequoia Brewing Company, Rogue Festival and the Tower District. These are places with “cool,” young vibes looking to capitalize on the next hipster eager to “slum it up” in Fresno on their parents’ dime.
But the question still remains: why Fresno? Its podunk locale makes it a seemingly unlikely target for urban development. Gentrify Fresno?! What? Well, that’s the same reaction I had to bohemia. So, let’s unpack this with a little Fresno overview.
Fresno is a sprawling city — peri-urban in some places, rural in others — located in the center of the agricultural Central Valley. Any mention of Fresno outside of the Valley usually elicits wrinkled noses, ramblings about cows and pollution, or the “I’ve never heard of that place” — even from some Californians. Those who know of the Central Valley and Fresno, more specifically, are well aware of the region’s…
- Low literacy rates: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathryndill/2014/09/16/the-most-and-least-educated-cities-in-america/
- Rampant unemployment: http://www.businessinsider.com/tough-times-meet-americas-cities-with-the-highest-unemployment-rate-2010-5?op=1
- Violent street gangs: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/sports/ncaafootball/fresno-adopts-its-college-team-but-so-does-a-gang.html
- Lethal pollution levels: http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/12/10/americas-20-dirtiest-cities-2/
Fresno has even been bestowed the oh so honorable distinction of “ drunkest city” in the United States. Thank you, Men’s Health. We appreciate that.
So anyway ummm … gentrify Fresno?
Well, yeah…precisely. These conditions point to a dearth of capital in the Valley. Fresno businesses and local councils are eager to entice monied individuals to their city to spur development and higher consumer interest in the Central Valley. Their carrots are Fresno’s affordable housing and low-cost of living — tempting incentives in an over-priced California. For those vagabond young folks born and bred for city-living (or even suburban wonderland), the forthcoming promise of the California High Speed Rail is even more motivation to make the move. The High Speed Rail, Phase 1 slated for completion by 2030, will fundamentally shift how residents of the Bay Area and Los Angeles engage with places like Fresno, making it possible to travel from either major city to Fresno in a matter of only a couple of hours. When it takes about that much time to commute from home to work in the excruciatingly expensive San Francisco, places like Fresno start to become mightily appealing. Live in Fresno, work in the city and pocket a few hundred bucks (and honestly, probably way more) to fund regular outings to the Tower District, Sequoia Brewing and the occasional happy hour in Oakland or San Francisco. And heck, you’ll have so much extra money, maybe you’ll even open a business yourself.
The above has major implications for local residents of Fresno. If all plays out as I suggest, over time, more and more people will move to Fresno. The first wave of risk-takers attracted to the city by articles like Fallows’ will set the stage for business, making real what was actually a pretty mythological bohemia. If they’re successful, friends and friends of friends will move to the area hoping to become part of the scene, too. This influx of higher earning individuals will enhance the local tax base, which will more than likely usher in improved public services and urban development aka Fresno’s roughest neighborhoods will get real bougie. This is great for home owners and local councils seeking to make profit, but terrible for local Fresnans. Gentrification pushes up the cost of goods, services — and housing — pricing out people who have lived in these neighborhoods for generations. You can bet this will disproportionately affect low-income people and people of color. And really, we don’t even need to be betting, because these demographics make up most of Fresno. It will play out this way. And these folks will literally have no place to go, because Fresno was already the bottom of the barrel.
And no one’s really talking about this in any sort of SAY IT LOUD kind of way. Sure, there are academics up in the UC Berkeley ivory tower mapping out Fresno’s vulnerability to gentrification. They seem to have the inside scoop that the City of Fresno is indeed “looking to promote infill development (as per the Infill Development Act in their upcoming General Plan Update) in order to accommodate projected population growth.”
But when national articles are coming out left and right marketing Fresno as the nirvana of artistic freedom, the workings of gentrification become harder and harder to call out. Bohemia is so infuriatingly non-political in the national consciousness. “Fallows is doing Fresno a favor! Artsy, bohemian, cool — those are all compliments. Stop it with the conspiracies, lady.”
Mhm. And I feel you. When gentrification is veiled in compliments — when it seems to just be about artistic appeal — even Fresno residents aren’t going to jump to thinking anyone just launched the media campaign for their mass displacement. This kind of strategy relinquishes local councils, journalists and businesses of any responsibility when gentrification throws down. It’s a benevolent dictator kind of move.
And it’s a kick in the head to art — community-based art, specifically — the stuff that didn’t seem to make it into Fallows’ bohemian dream. He imagines art as commodity, a consumer shtick for the performance of hipster liberal individualism. Sure, this can be art, too, but when it’s the only type of Fresno art broadcasted out to a national audience, newcomers to the area are left with a pretty distorted sense of the “real” Fresno art community. It’s invisibilized. It leaves local artists at risk of getting pushed out. It deprives them of the opportunity for national attention that so few Valley artists ever receive. It stomps out political art, resistance art. I think immediately of San Francisco’s Marcus Books, the nation’s oldest black-owned bookstore, which due to increasing rents in the city was evicted from their building last year…
So, what will happen in Fresno? Will people eventually forget about the Sorensen Art Studio & Gallery? The warehouse fence he freed up for local graffiti artists to use? Or Fresno’s Xican@ murals rooted in California hXstories of farmworker organizing? Writers like Gary Soto or William Saroyan? Or Santiago Leyva? — hip-hop artist Fashawn to the rest of the world. Will his lyrics linger long enough for us to remember Fresno? Or will they peter out, displaced by the shrieks of the High Speed Rail, the hurrahs of young, white liberals at a Tower happy hour and disappear, just like the people …
