A Policy-change Perspective on Creative Placemaking : The Role of the NEA in the American Arts and Culture-based Urban Revitalization from1965 to 1995 Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Wen Guo Graduate Program in Arts Policy and Administration The Ohio State University 2015 Thesis Committee: Dr. Margaret J. Wyszomirski, Advisor Dr. Shoshanah Goldberg-Miller, Committee Member
Copyright by Wen Guo 2015
Abstract This article identifies the policy change occurring to the policy subsystem of American culture and arts-based urban revitalization. To inform policy-oriented learning, the analysis of the policy change applies the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) to understand the internal and external policy actors and their interactions mobilizing the policy change. The Advocacy Coalition Framework provides a panoramic lens of understanding the policy process influenced by different stakeholder s coalitions based on their threetier policy belief system, which delineated the evolving policy beliefs on urban revitalization along with the external societal changes. The analysis took the role of National Endowment for the Arts and its policy decisions relevant to American urban issues as a vantage point to understand American arts and culture-based urban revitalization. The formation of American arts policy system marked by the NEA s institutionalization created an important policy actor in the policy system of urban revitalization, which evolved into a policy subsystem of arts and culturebased urban revitalization. This research also reveals the role of the NEA in the process of policy change. Key words: Advocacy Coalition Framework, National Endowment for the Arts, policy change, policy-oriented learning, urban revitalization ii
Acknowledgments I would like to express my wholehearted appreciation to my advisor Professor Dr. Margaret Jane Wyszomirski who has always been a sage mentor and considerate confidante for me. Your advice on both research as well as on my career have been invaluable. I would also like to thank my committee member, Dr. Goldberg-Miller for serving as my committee member even at a hardship. Your brilliant comments and suggestions helped me to perfect my thesis and live up to my potential for my future career. In addition, I would like to thank Liz Volpe, Allison Hoyle, T.C. Thompson, and Tao for being wonderful readers of my thesis and your genuine suggestions. I also want to deliver my gratitude for my parents and friends who have been supporting me financially and mentally throughout my journey of study in the U.S. iii
Vita Sep. 2005-June 2008 Baoji High, Shan Xi, China Sep. 2008-June 2012 B.A. International Journalism (Broadcasting), Communication University of University, Beijing, China Aug. 2012 to present Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Arts Administration, Education, and Policy, The Ohio State University Publications Mañjon, S. B., & Guo, W. (2014, Oct.). Towards an economy of sustainability in non-profit performing arts: a case study on developing a hybrid entrepreneurial model. Paper presented at the Proceedings of AEIs 14 The 2nd International Conference on Art Economy Initiatives (Republic of China), Taipei Art Economy Research Center, Taipei National University of the Arts, Taipei. Fields of Study Major Field: Arts Policy and Administration iv
Table of Contents Abstract... ii Acknowledgments... iii Vita... iv Publications... iv Fields of Study... iv List of Figures... vii Chapter 1: Creative Placemaking and American Arts and Culture-based Urban Revitalization... 1 Chapter 2: Research Conceptual Framework and Methodology... 6 Research Conceptual Framework... 6 Research Analytical Methodology: Interpretive Policy Analysis... 25 Chapter 3 The Evolution of Arts and Culture-based Urban Revitalization Policy of the NEA... 29 Trend Setting in Critical Early Years of NEA (1966-the early 1970s)... 31 The External Path of Policy Change in Stable Parameter... 31 Internal Path of Policy Change: Institutional Rules and Leadership... 39 Cultural Facility Building and Community Arts for Urban Quality of Life... 56 (From the early 1970s to the early 1980s)... 56 External Dynamics Leading to Policy Change... 57 v
Internal Path of Policy Change: Institutional Rules, Resource Allocation and Appointments... 65 From Community Building through Arts to the Application of Design Methodology (From the Mid-1980s to the Mid-1990s)... 81 External Events of Policy Change... 81 Internal Path of Policy Change: Leadership, Belief System, Triple-bottom Line and Advocacy Coalitions... 87 Conclusion and Discussion... 100 References... 111 vi
List of Figures Figure 1 Axes of Partnership: Sector, Mission, Level of Government (Markusen & Gadwa, 2010, p.12)... 8 Figure 2 2005 Diagram of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Source: Sabatier, 2007)... 10 Figure 3 Cultural Development Strategies (Grodach&Loukaitou-Sideris 2007, p.353)... 21 Figure 4 Conceptual Framework of Research Analysis... 28 Figure 5 A Comparison of Culture and Arts-Based Urban Revitalization Strategy in Different Periods of the NEA... 108 vii
Chapter 1: Creative Placemaking and American Arts and Culture-based Urban Revitalization Creative Placemaking is a newly raised concept of the urban cultural policy by the US government s white paper Creative Placemaking in 2010, and it has been intensively promoted by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), state and local public agencies, and nonprofit arts agencies in the last four. Creative Placemaking in this white paper is loosely defined as partners from public, private, nonprofit, and community sectors strategically shap[ing] the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and culture (Markusen and Gadawa, 2010, p.3). The programs corresponding to the Creative Placemaking strategy -Our Town and ArtPlace-were initiated by the Design Program of NEA right after the release of the white paper. The white paper is a summary of the previous efforts of the NEA, leading to a blueprint of strategies rejuvenating urban economies and community by integrating the resources and achievements including program constitution, funding policy, and intergovernmental relationships, etc. that the NEA have developed since its establishment in 1966. The white paper emphasized the concerted efforts of stakeholders of urban environment to buttress the transformative pattern of urban (re-) development geared by arts and creativity in the post-industrial age. Therefore, the proposal of Creative Placemaking becomes a new crucial policy that the NEA intends to employ to reorient 1
its policy values through rebalancing the key point on the triple-bottom line of financial sustainability, artistic vitality, and recognized public value for the nonprofit arts (Wyszomirski, 2013, p.5) in the constantly changing political and social-economic context. The white paper noted the previous practices of communities utilizing arts, culture, and creativity to exert positive social impacts including creating jobs, improving education, catalyzing local economy, and urban renewal, etc. (Markusen & Gadwa, 2010). These different types of urban cultural policies and practices have been categorized into cultural tourism, cultural industry, creative class, cultural occupations, and cultural planning, etc. (Grodach, 2013). The ultimate goal or priorities of these policies and strategies are not necessarily the prosperity of the arts community or the advancement of specific disciplines of arts or humanities subject to their professional standard. They focus on the holistic development of city through the instrumental use of arts and culture by transforming their intrinsic values into social capitals. The fabric of local arts and culture, thereafter, functions as a premise and foundation of the formulation and implementation of urban revitalization policies. One of the hypotheses in this study is that the NEA is intended to differentiate the creative placemaking strategy from the previous policy concepts. Though the differences in terms of policy impact of relevant programs are still unknown due to the relatively long term needed for observing the sustainability of changes in places. The previous strategies that the NEA advocated did not have a specific or consistent brand or name 2
embraced so widely as creative placemaking. Although the fabric of local arts and culture is not always the center of those strategies, they serve as their foundation and context. Therefore, this article, out of necessity, uses culture and arts-based urban revitalization to refer to the strategies prior to the invention of creative placemaking. The advocacy of creative placemaking emphasizes nurturing arts entrepreneurship (Markusen, 2013), realizing and maintaining social equity and cultural diversity (Webb, 2013), and advancing public-private partnership as a main approach to deal with the challenges facing creative placemaking collectively (Markusen and Gadwa, 2010). The NEA fulfills its mission of advancing artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities (NEA, 2014). The NEA supported these strategies through its various programs directly or indirectly throughout the past 50 years, although the policy platform that the white paper suggested has not been fully established at the federal level, and the concept of placemaking is not wide spread in the US yet. The NEA annual reports and related academic journals have discussed cases of culture and arts based urban revitalization in different historical periods and their publicprivate partnership and intergovernmental collaboration subject to the local context of culture, economy, and politics. Some of them categorized these local actions into different types of strategies according to policy goals and methods. These strategies were mostly designed and implemented by state and local government agencies, but they were highly influenced by the policy direction led by the NEA. 3
Creative Placemaking is not the first time that the NEA has promoted arts and culture as a tool for urban revitalization. The white paper summarizes two decades of creative American placemaking, drawing on original economic research and case studies of pathbreaking initiatives in large and small cities, metropolitan to rural, as well as published accounts, but these activities were not labeled in as creative placemaking back then at the time. Many scholars have approached to the practices of urban revitalization through arts and culture from the perspective of urban environments in order to explain the phenomenon in the US based on neo-liberal economics theories, social theories and contemporary theory of culture study. In contrast, Grodach (2007) conducted a research based on a survey to American governments at the city level. He categorized and analyzed the activities of urban revitalization through arts and culture in the US into three types of strategies. However, there still lacks research on these strategies from the perspective of policy formulation and implementation at the level of federal government is lacking. More research is needed on how and why the various forms of culture and arts-based urban revitalization are presented and explained by the term of creative placemaking and its programs by the NEA in recent years, and how the rhetoric of creative placemaking and its practices are different from the previous practices. This study will address this gap by exhibiting the policy change of American culture-based urban revitalization through exploring the utilization of Sabatier s policy process model of Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) in the field of arts policy. The 4
ACF was developed with the intention of comprehending policy change based on the composition of policy networks and the change of policy environment in a relatively stable policy subsystem existing in a historical period of at least ten years. Therefore, it is important to review the activities of the NEA from a historical perspective of urban revitalization through arts and culture to 1) analyze how the engagement and coordination of the NEA have functioned in the evolution of culture and arts-based urban revitalization policies as the hub of the American arts policy network; 2) how this policy network, consisting of a variety of government agencies, private organizations, and influential individuals impacts the changing landscape of these policies and sets the tone for building a national policy platform of creative placemaking, and 3) how the rhetoric of creative placemaking as a new policy concept and rhetoric differentiates itself from the previous ones from the perspective of the way it frames policies agenda, provides public support, channels resources, facilitates practices, and encourages innovation. The close-up of the network, environment, and their entanglement will be valuable resources to 1) provide substantive knowledge of the formation and change of American culture policy in the context of urban revitalization; 2) to identify the current policy communities and dynamics of creative placemaking ; 3) to understand their interactions and conflicts in the policy process; 4) to corroborate the application of the ACF on the normative analysis of the American culture policy in order to look into the advantages and limitations of the ACF as a analytic tool for policy process analysis. 5
Chapter 2: Research Conceptual Framework and Methodology Research Conceptual Framework The active power of advocacy for creative placemaking and the previous activities of the NEA demonstrate the strong willingness of the NEA to be innovative and entrepreneurial to solve social problems and, later, propel economic prosperity through arts and culture since the establishment of the NEA. Government agencies in state and local levels, for-profit and nonprofit sectors, and community organizations have also been engaged in planning and implementing these different types of policies with various focuses and targets by utilizing the different aspects of social impacts of arts and culture with the support of the NEA. This is the first time that the NEA has released a government white paper coining, defining, and analyzing local actions of culture and artsbased urban revitalization by using the rhetoric Creative Placemaking. In this white paper, the NEA expressed its intention of moving towards establishing a broader policy platform for/through arts and culture to function as a core change agent in various urban issues (Markusen & Gadawa, 2010). Therefore, the white paper advocates for forming a strategic alliance across public, commercial, non-profit, and community sectors composed of initiators, politicians, city staffers, businesses, philanthropists, and arts organizations subject to different rules and administrative systems (Markusen, 2010). This recommendation demonstrates that the role of modern government in exploiting cultural and social capitals and coordinating resources for culture affairs as significant tools of urban governance is 6
expected to be strengthened in the present United States. The employment of governance rather than government here emphasizes the facilitative" role of modern urban government as the the last entrepreneur of capitalistic world in maneuvering the coalitions of a whole complex of forces deriving from a variety of social agents (Harvey, 1989). Markusen & Gadwa (2010) identified the skeleton of the partnership and visualized it with a coordination system showing axes of partnership crossing sectors and levels of governments and width of the collaborative relations based on the numbers of missions that these contributors attempt to realize respectively. The vertical axis displayed the involved sectors and the horizontal axis showed that, similar to other policies falling into the domain of cultural policy, creative placemaking crosses over a broad range of policy fields including economic policy; education policy; city and regional planning; and housing policy, etc. (Wyszomirski, 2008). Figure 1 displays the relationships between sectors and government agencies but needs further study to model a consistent and adaptive template of public-private partnership and intergovernmental collaboration particularly for transforming the new policy term into feasible policies serving a wide variety of communities (see figure 1). 7
Figure 1 Axes of Partnership: Sector, Mission, Level of Government (Markusen & Gadwa, 2010, p.12) Prior to laying down a national policy platform and building strategic partnerships across sectors and fields of civil service, the policy makers need a dynamic and systematic view on the policy process and policy change of culture and arts-based urban revitalization. Figure 1 displays crucial components including policy coalitions and policy objectives that we need to learn from the previous policy practices to build or identify the policy platform. The ACF model provides a promising tool to understand these inquiries of policy change and policy process through a comprehensive analysis of 8
coalitions of interest groups and internal and external change agents of a policy subsystem. The ACF has rarely been used to analyze cultural policy, so this study only introduces the ACF as a pilot study on exploring its potential utilization in analyzing the complexity of American arts and culture-based urban revitalization. Figure 2 shows the structural diagram of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) (Sabatier, 2007). It is a construction of the policy process developed by Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith to deal with wicked problems of policy (Sabatier, 2006, p.189). It challenges the limitations of a linear policy process and the top-down or bottom-up assumptions of that process as a causal model to interpret the course of policy construction and to predict the stakeholders and participants beliefs and behaviors within both formal and informal policy networks (Sabatier, 2006). These advocacy coalitions are mainly constituted by legislators, agency officials, interest group leaders, judges, researchers, and intellectuals from multiple levels of government (Sabatier, 2006, p.196). Members of each coalition share similar fundamental values and policy beliefs. 9
Figure 2 2005 Diagram of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Source: Sabatier, 2007) The framework is based on pluralist assumptions of three dimensions of policy analysis: the psychological factors of individual decisions within a policy subsystem, the influence of broad policy and socioeconomic systems on policy specialists, and the approach of advocacy coalitions. The scope of advocacy coalitions is formed by a broad policy and socioeconomic system at the macro-level as well as the accumulation of psychological factors at the micro-level. It, thereby, copes with the multiplicity of behaviors of hundreds of individuals and organizations. This meso-level aggregation 10
focuses on the policy learning process between different advocacy coalitions and the resulting change of beliefs and policies within a mature policy subsystem. In addition, ACF takes internal shocks and negotiated agreements as alternatives to the change as well (Sabatier, 2006). The capacity of the ACF has been proven strong by the application of its framework and revisions in more than fifty cases across a broad territorial scope across a variety of policy fields including two cases of cultural policy in Quebec, Canada since 1989 (Sabatier, 2006). The application of the ACF framework and its subsequent revisions in more than fifty cases across a broad territorial scope and a variety of policy fields including two cases of cultural policy in Quebec, Canada since 1989 has proven its capacity in understanding the policy process in different domains. To use the ACF, it is necessary to understand the premises of its application: First, the projected time frame for understanding the process policy change and the role of learning is a decade or more (Sabatier, 1994). Although the idea of creative placemaking policy has been promoted nationally for only four years and the white paper also advocated for the creation of a new policy framework and networking around creative placemaking (Markusen, 2010, p.31), the policy subsystem of culture and artsbased development has been incrementally established by the engagement of government agencies, business, and non-profit organizations of different levels for more than a decade. The local cases vary in terms of goals, the organizations involved and the approaches of implementation, but the policies and organizations of related fields, 11
especially at the federal level, are relatively stable. The platform was not explicitly stated by the NEA until the release of the white paper; however, the different strategies and philosophies have been intensively discussed in academia and practiced by a broad range of cities, which actually strengthensing the voice of advocacy for creative placemaking and the emphasis on the great impact of federal policies on the success of culture and arts-based development. Second, based on the relatively long time span, the framework focuses on policy subsystems made up of the policy actors seeking to interact and influence governmental decisions in a certain policy area. But the subsystems extend beyond the traditional iron triangle constituted by administrative agencies, interest groups, and legislators. They also include actors at various levels of government agencies and private organizations, as well as journalists, researchers, and policy analysts (Sabatier, et al., 1994). Although, this article is looking into the policy change of the culture-based urban revitalization in the US, any analysis and conclusion reached are based on the local cases of policy planning and implementation with the policy support from the NEA. This introduces the third premise of the ACF: subsystems must include an intergovernmental dimension (Sabatier, et al., 1994). Because the federalist system of the United States sets the tone of bottom-up policy diffusion due to the fact that local and state programs are frequently used as a draft for national or subnational policy innovation (Zafonte, et al., 1998), the NEA had to establish a policy diffusion system to communicate local practice and national policy objectives. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the NEA as the top-downer established the 12
integrated intergovernmental system to allow the bottom-up mechanics to work through instituting arts councils and service organizations in regional, state, local, and community level. Third, the fundamental rule of defining a policy subsystem is, Focus on the substantive and geographic scope of the institutions that structure interaction (Sabatier, 2006, p). The fact that this article chooses the NEA as the core institution to analyze indicates that the policy subsystem in this article is located in the scope of national policy. The programs of the NEA selected in this article can all be considered representative of arts policies that the federal government intended to use for urban revitalization. As an arms-length federal government organization, the enactment of the NEA s policy highly relies on the mechanism of the policy-decision-making structure of the iron-triangle and the interaction with government agencies at state and local levels. The ACF identifies two primary paths to major belief and policy changes: internal change of a policy subsystem and its external perturbation. The policy-oriented learning is a continuing process for coalitions to adapt their thoughts and behavioral intentions in accordance with experience, new information, and revisions of policy objectives associated with the external and internal changes (Sabatier, 2007). This process can be tracked through the analysis of the institutional rules, resource allocations, and appointments of the institution. In the case of the NEA s policy, this process is well captured by the three-bottom line model of Wyszomirski (2012). 2) The external perturbations cause the structure and belief changes in a policy system through two 13
dimensions: external (system) events and relative stable attributes of problem areas, distribution of natural resources, fundamental socio-cultural values and social structure, and constitutional structure. The stable parameters rarely change within periods of a decade or so, thus policy actors have to deal with resource constraints within the stable scheme in a certain period. The other set of exogenous factors are more dynamic and subject to change. These events include changes in socio-economic conditions, changes in public opinion, changes in systemic governing coalitions, and policy decisions and impacts from other subsystems (Sabatier, 2007). The policy belief system decides different degrees of ramifications between coalitions within a policy subsystem: 1) deep core beliefs which are the fundamental values of coalitions, thus, are extremely difficult to change; 2) policy core beliefs and core policy preferences which are system-wide fundamental policy choices, and 3) secondary beliefs as narrow as agency budget allocation, the seriousness and causes of problems and other details and specifics about an issue, a program, or an agency (Sabatier, 2007). The belief system is based on the assumption of the individuals bounded by their finite cognitive ability to obtain and comprehend the information of the complicated world. The ACF individuals form beliefs through their perceptions of the limited information they are able to understand and ignore information that challenges their beliefs. Their acceptance of technical information also depends on whether it supports their beliefs but not the degree of the reliability of the information. People are intuitively 14
suspicious of people with dissimilar beliefs and disposed to exaggerate the negative influence of their opponents contributing to their personal failure and loss, which leads them to turn to those who hold the similar beliefs with them and ally with each other to form coalition groups (Sabatier & Weible, 2007). The core beliefs are deeply embedded in individuals experiences of maturation. It is very difficult to know the information of the individual members of coalitions from this very personal perspective. Also the changes of the deep core beliefs are also extremely difficult to form. Therefore, this article assumes that the deep core beliefs of individuals do not have significant meaning for the analysis of policy change and can be well represented by the other two layers of beliefs. A policy core belief is widely recognized by an entire policy subsystem and disseminated across the subsystem Therefore the policy core preferences are usually a major source of cleavage (Sabatier & Weible, 2007, p.195). The eleven components of policy core beliefs include the priority of different policy-related values, whose welfare counts, the relative authority of governments and markets, the proper roles of the general public, elected officials, civil servants, experts, and the relative seriousness and causes of policy problems in the subsystem as whole. Policy participants invest or apply their deep core beliefs into policy core beliefs, though the two tiers of beliefs do not necessarily have a one-to-one matching relationship (Sabatier & Weible, 2007). The given components of policy core beliefs are used to identify the coalitions in a policy subsystem and not all of the components are needed to find those coalition 15
groups, the more components are considered, the more possibilities of locating the subdivisions of the coalitions and even in other coalitions. In the case of culture and artsbased urban revitalization in the U.S., the major components identifying different coalitions are 1) the priority of different policy-related values; 2) whose welfare counts; 3) the relative authority of governments and markets; 4) elected officials; 5) the relative seriousness and causes of policy problems in the subsystem as a whole. The divergence of coalitions can be generated from each of these components or even all of them, so the following paragraphs examine the possible resources of belief disagreements in components based on facts and evidence currently available to the researcher. In terms of components of welfare and relative authority of governments and markets, the debates of American arts and culture policy are rooted from the divergence of policy core beliefs in the three dimensions: 1) whether arts and culture can be taken as a public good (DiMaggio & Useem, 1978); 2) whether arts and culture should be used as policy instruments for public good (DiMaggio & Pettit, 1999; Gibson, 2008); 3) the causal relationship between arts and culture economic development (Markusen, 2010). Cultural and arts policy in the U.S, was once not stated as explicitly as its counterparts in the Europe partly because cultural affairs in the U.S, is not collectively administered by a cabinet-level agency, and arts were historically supported by economic and social elites (DiMaggio & Useem, 1978). However, the less intervention by the federal government actually left room for various forms of private support for arts and culture with a public purpose in certain communities (Mulcahy, 2000). The establishment 16
of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), department of cultural affairs and local arts councils and the growing public support based on the public opinion survey are the demonstrations of a broader consensus on the public support for arts and culture at the federal level, and the arts and culture are largely considered as public good nation wide. Along with the debate on whether arts and culture are public goods, the criticism about the instrumental use of arts and culture persistently exists in academia on the basis of simplified instrumental/intrinsic dichotomy (Gibson, 2008). Goods are considered neural but they can be used socially (DiMaggio, 1987, cited from Douglas & Isherwood, 1979, p.12). In the U.S., there is less contention between arts for arts sake and extrinsic value of arts. Instead, culture and related social equity are more accurate to describe the debate in the U.S, arts and culture policy. The inherent public purposes in arts and culture are rooted from the three political traditions of the U.S,: Puritanism, Enlightenment liberalism, and ideas of civic education. The three types of political ideologies are all associated with a certain degree of public purposes from different aspects (McWilliams, 1985). The NEA, from a policy perspective, has kept a relatively good balance on public accessibility and arts excellence in designing its internal policy process, though its early years had elitism as its core and the current funding equity being questioned by social minorities. The economic impact is considered as part of social impacts of arts, but the term usually stands alone when it is specifically used to measure the economic prosperity in 17
contrast with the other social service and benefits provided through arts and culture activities. The economic impact studies has been well embraced by arts advocacy coalitions to appeal to the policy priorities of policy makers and quantify the contribution of public spending on arts and culture for a better funding distribution in the future. Although many studies have been conducted on places which have rich concentrations of arts and cultural clusters, such as New York and Los Angeles, they are challenged by lacking validity in generalization. In contrast, the few empirical studies conducted do not show statistic significance of a positive impact on local economy of public funding for arts and culture. While these conventional economic studies are suggested to improve the scrutiny of their methodologies in consideration of the uniqueness of arts and cultural product and service (Markusen, 2010). The subsystem of culture and arts-based urban revitalization is composed of a variety of governmental agencies take advantage of the intrinsic value that arts and culture provide. This is seen most frequently in situations of public welfare functions and used as a defense of the instrumental use the extrinsic value of arts and culture and further strengthens the public support. The nationwide local public support for the arts suggests a nascent consensus of arts a local public good. Therefore the coalitions are not divided by the policy core belief in public support for arts and culture or for the instrumental use of arts and culture within the subsystem of culture and arts-based urban revitalization at the national level. That being said, the opinion of the key elected officials 18
or external events can impact support if they were to question public support for the arts and instrumental use of arts and culture. According to Weible & Sabatier (2007), the best way to operationalize policy core beliefs is through preliminary interviews with policy participants (Weible & Sabatier, 2007, p.128). The study of Grodach and Loukaitou-Soderis (2007) identifies the differences in the priority of policy-related values as another important component of policy core belief. Grodach and Loukaitou-Sideris presented and sorted some critical interview information and findings in his 2007 article Cultural Development Strategies and Urban Revitalization: A Survey of US cities. Grodach & Loukaitou-Sideris (2007) outlines three types of cultural strategies of American large and mid-sized cities based on his survey to the Departments of Cultural Affairs in all cities with a 2000 US census population greater than 250,000. The major participants of the survey also includes the leaders of redevelopment agencies, education boards, departments of parks and recreation, historic preservation commissions, and special events offices which may contribute to local cultural activities (Grodach, 2007). Their responses are categorized into three basic types according to the objectives and approaches of the cultural projects while reflecting the values perceived by the relevant policy actors participating in the survey. The three types of the cultural development of America include: entrepreneurial strategies, creative class strategies, and progressive strategies. Entrepreneurial strategies pursue economic objectives through a market-driven approach; creative class strategies 19
derives from the theory of Florida and attract knowledge workforces by providing recreational amenities for quality of life; and progressive strategies are more likely to adopt bottom-up policies to meet the demand on arts and culture of neighborhoods and communities or to realize the goals of social or cultural equity (Grodach, 2007). The three typologies also reflects how state and local government conceive the causes of problems in urban revitalization and the roles of government and market in finding solutions to theses problems through arts and cultural activities, both economic and social. The survey does not cover all the stakeholders of culture and arts-based development but represents the opinions of the public agencies towards the goals, practices, geographic focus, and target audiences of each strategy as shown in the graph below (Figure 1.1). The three types of policy goals and the corresponding tools were generated by major capitalist cites that were facing a common policy problem since 1950: the decentralization of economic activity away from the downtown area to the fringe (Murayidi, 2001, p.1). This represents an external problem in a relatively stable parameter for a policy subsystem, as it is rooted in the uneven geographic resource distribution and development of capitalistic cities derived from the class-based interaction of actors with various objectives and agendas in interlocking spatial practices (Harvey, 1989). Starting in the late 1960s, governments took a step in an entrepreneurial direction when they began marketing their cities as investment destinations for both financial and human capitals. This allowed for cities to become motivated to find new 20
ways to become competitive for acquiring resources of capital and consumption on a global scale (Harvey, 1989). This general policy challenge, in capitalist world, was translated into two layers of policy problems in this particular policy subsystem: how to use arts and culture as urban assets to facilitate solving urban economic stagnation and urban fragmentation both in physical forms and social activities; and how central government could be more entrepreneurial in exploiting redistributive mechanism as a means for urban survival (Harvey, 1989, p.10). p.353) Figure 3 Cultural Development Strategies (Grodach&Loukaitou-Sideris 2007, This typology exhibits the three critical policy-related beliefs through the role of arts and culture in urban revitalization and the approaches to achieve the goals including 21
economic development or growth, quality of life or livability, and social equity or cultural impacts. The three goals correspond to the Markusen s assertion based on her review of the pioneering literature in both the U.S, and Europe about the role of culture and the creative city (Markusen, 2010, agenda paper). The three core policy beliefs help to define the three major coalitions in the system: economic prosperity and sustainability ( Entrepreneurial and Creative Class ), social and cultural equity ( Progressive ), and cultural vitality and accessibility ( Creative Class and Progressive ). The separation does not imply a dichotomy between economic impacts, social impacts, and cultural impacts. Instead, it differentiates the emphasis of each type by its major audience and targeted welfare beneficiaries who are directly related to the three values and exhibit the possible conflicts between them both in rationales and practice. Therefore, within the subsystem, U.S. culture and arts-based urban revitalization was primarily influenced by coalitions holding the three different values. These values will be classified into placeoriented and people-oriented strategies later in this article. The three values set the tone for the approaches and specific policy tools adopted by the governments that are third tier values termed as secondary beliefs. The secondary beliefs are detailed into the funding models, regulation provisions, operational codes, and other specificities of programs and projects in a relatively narrow scope. Their changes are subject to the change of policy core beliefs and are the most inclined to change in a technical level of a policy process (Sabatier & Weible, 2007). 22
In the case of culture and arts-based urban revitalization, secondary beliefs are the types of cultural projects and programs displayed in the graph: flagship cultural projects (arcades and convention centers, bazaars and malls, festivals and seasonal celebrations), arts and entertainment districts (water fronts, public park, arts in public places, and creative reuse of the vacant and discarded buildings), community arts centers and arts education. Although the NEA has not always support programs of the three categories throughout the years, these programs reflect the three sets of policy values that can be found in the different periods of the NEA s programming. The NEA s programs are categorized through disciplines and administrative goals, projects of one value are not necessarily found in other programs. The diverse programming can be considered locators of policy participants for certain coalitions and their secondary beliefs of using specific policy tools and techniques to realize their core policy beliefs. Because of the budget constraints and the need for a broader political agenda, different interest groups forged advocacy coalitions, and the priorities valued by the winner were given more visibility and also became actual policy rules or actions. Values and dimensions of policies came together in different combinations, creating resource dependencies between coalitions. This resulted in the goals and mechanism of the NEA s programming to emphasize a particular value while also attempting to strike a balance with other coalition values to avoid political controversy. These major projects also reflect different forms of public-private partnerships and relevant legislation enabling programming, as well as academic discourses and think tank research on advancing the 23
solutions to the issues in the policy subsystem. These beliefs evolve through experiences and knowledge obtained from practices and the resource exchange of policy actors. The analysis on policy belief systems and coalitions explore the prestige of the three-tier beliefs in guiding the governmental decisions and policy outputs within the subsystem. When coalitions were formed and their values were established, it created a need for a deeper understanding of the changing political environment of macro level-the impact of external events to relevant policy actors, the meso-level institutional politicsinternal policy-learning process, and the micro-level deep core beliefs and personal interactions of critical individuals based on administrative rules within the subsystem. The last step of this research, derived from the solid knowledge base of the three-level research, should be the designation and naming of the coalitions. This article is not able to look into the details of the deep core beliefs and personal political activities of all the important figures at an individual level, because time and resource constraints are related to specific historical figures. The current research will primarily investigate the policy changes of the NEA from 1966 to 1996 in three critical periods. The significant turning point from 1996 and the following drifting years till 2010 will be studied in future research. The main goals of this article are set by taking advantage of external and internal dimensions of ACF with a focus on the impact of the institutional rules of the NEA on the evolution of the policy subsystem of arts and culture-based urban revitalization informing policy-oriented learning in a system-wide context. Through an analytical process, this paper will discuss the: 1) the formation of 24
arts and culture-based subsystems and the relationship between relevant policy systems; 2) the mechanism of the external and internal policy actors resulting in policy changes in the policy subsystem; 3) the primary coalitions based on their values system and the alteration of values throughout the time; 4) how the basic values and causal assumption on arts and urban revitalization compromise the core belief s of the coalitions; 5) the changing relationship between interacting policy systems and the role of NEA within the policy subsystem. Research Analytical Methodology: Interpretive Policy Analysis The ACF and Triple-Bottom Line are taken as the theoretical frameworks to interpret the published materials and transform them into abstract information contributing to general knowledge. This is a process of recoding, but it is very important to choose the proper approach to displaying the process of decoding raw materials at the first place. Therefore, this article will take Yanow s (Yanow, 2000) interpretive method as the conceptual framework of analysis to generate meanings out of resources. Interpretive policy analysis explores the contrasts between policy meanings as intended by policymakers- authored texts and the possibly variant and even incommensurable meanings- constructed texts-made of them by other policy-relevant groups (Yanow, 2000, p.9). This particular conceptual process specifies the analytic objects and fits the pluralism nature of ACF, and the goal of decoding policy rhetoric and actions into the values and intentions embedded in. The process of conducting interpretive analysis is 1) 25
Identify the artifacts (language, objects, acts) that are the carriers of meaning; 2) Identify the interpretive communities, relevant to a policy, that are the perceivers of this meaning; 3) Identify the discourses through which these meanings are communicated; 4) Identify any point of conflict that suggests that different groups attach divergent meanings to some aspect of a policy (Yanow, 2000). Although this study is towards deeper research on cultural policy and the ACF model in the future, this thesis is a pilot study constrained by time requirement, that being the case, this study will mainly take the published literature as analytic object. The carriers of meaning are the programs, legislation, and other policy actions recorded and criticized in the materials as well as the language and rhetoric of the recordings and comments. This process specifies the dimensions of regular rhetoric analysis for public policy analysis through interpreting not only the what specific policies mean but also how they mean-through what processes policy meanings are communicated and who their intended audiences are, as well as what context-specific meanings these and other readers make of policy artifacts (Yanow, 2000; Luker, 1984). These published resources include relevant government reports, institutional reports, academic journals, newspapers and magazines, documentaries, blogs and videos clips on the Internet. The annual reports, newsletter, and magazines of NEA provide complete records of its programs and the official explanation of its policy intentions. Governmental and Institutional reports reflect how institutions and other government agencies interpret and implement the federal policy. Newspaper, online magazines and 26
blogs of NEA and ArtPlace, and the Youtube channel of CreativePlacemaking show facets of creative placemaking and speak for different communities based on updated information from current practices. The academic articles are all drawn from the journals related to urban studies, social theories, arts management, cultural policy, and public policy studies. They provide precise data and fundamental theories to give rigorous comments on current practice, and help rationalize and verify meanings generated from the interpretation of the resources. The decoding process at the current stage of the research focuses on recognizing the change of values and the instruments of federal policies in the policy subsystem of American arts and culture-based urban revitalization. Numerous angles can be used to interpret the NEA s rhetoric and actions, but this study particularly applies the triple-bottom line as an institutional rule to interpret the policymaking process of the NEA within the review of the policy history of the policy subsystem in the next chapter. The last chapter of this article will synthesize the findings from the interpretation to answer the five questions raised in the previous section. 27
Figure 4 Conceptual Framework of Research Analysis 28
Chapter 3 The Evolution of Arts and Culture-based Urban Revitalization Policy of the NEA A fundamental hypothesis of conducting the study is the nested value in NEA s intervention of arts and cultural assets as tools for urban revitalization. Based on the preliminary studies on the programs and reports of the NEA, we assume that the specific emphasis on particular policy goals divides the intervention of the NEA into five periods: the excellence of physical environment design for livability and public accessibility (the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s); continued practice of urban livability through infrastructural building for the vitality of arts and cultural activities (the mid-1970s to the early 1980s), social and cultural equity of socially deprived communities and minority cultures (the late 1970s to the early 1980s); the social impact of arts and cultural activities as either economic engine or catalyst, and community building through arts and culture (the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s), and the creative placemaking approach (the early 2000 to today) integrating strategies learned from previous experience from mid 2000 up to nowadays. The time frame was not intended to give a clear cut of policy changes or rule out the existence of other policy goals. This time partition is for the convenience of tracking and delineating the major policy changes by putting each of the relative stable periods into a defined construct. The time frame will be modified in accordance to the proceeding data analysis. An advantage of the ACF theory is that it is very useful to track the incremental and progressive policy change over a long period through the analysis of the interaction 29
between advocacy coalitions and reciprocal actions between external and internal policy actors in a policy subsystem. Therefore, neither is the division of the historical periods attempted to define a clear boundary for policy values and actions based on the values, nor does the division negate the overlapping or parallel existence of other values. The linear exhibition is just intended to highlight subtle shift and give a clear look of major differences. The following sections explain the changing characters by using the ACF to connect the socio-economic context to the practice of NEA integrating multi-faceted policy goals of issue networks and policy subsystems to impact the role of arts policy in history of urban revitalization. The nested value in public intervention of arts and cultural assets are tools for urban revitalization and have experienced five periods based on specific emphasis on particular policy goals. These goals became a priority for a certain period and exist as an important basis and helping to create new goals. The excellence of physical environment design for livability and public accessibility (1966-1972), next the social and cultural equity of socially deprived communities and minority cultures, continued practice of urban livability through infrastructural building for the vitality of arts and cultural activities (1971-1980s), the social impact of arts and cultural activities as either economic engine or catalyst for the community building through arts and culture (1980s-1990s), and the creative placemaking approach integrating strategies learned from previous experience from the mid 2000 to the present. The time frame was not intended to give a clear-cut explanation of policy changes or rule out the existence of other goals. This time 30