The struggles of Baltimore has been in the national spotlight recently. Can the arts help create an urban renewal in Baltimore?
Johns Hopkins University, the University of Baltimore and MICA are all in Baltimore. A recent Washington Post article shares these thoughts.
“That combination — of artists and academics, thinkers and tinkerers — make this arts district a crucible for the concept University of Toronto professor Richard Florida advanced in his 2002 bestseller, ‘The Rise of the Creative Class.’ Florida argued that people who create for a living are part of an ascendant economic force that will determine which post-industrial cities thrive.”
Washington restaurateur and real estate mogul Tony Cheng has been trying to change the perceptopm of Baltimore neighborhoods with art. “His Baltimore neighborhood has found its own quirky ways of sending a message about what needs to happen here. On one of the buildings Cheng owns — and with his consent — mural artists have been at work. A vast yellow smiley face adorns the bleak windowless wall of the former check-cashing plant, along with the words ‘Looks much better now!’ But the smile is incomplete. Only the upper corners of the lips show.”