The gods will not save you

I'm going to go against all my 'positivity' from Monday's post. I hope you heeded my advice.

At any rate, I found an interesting story from another person trying to fix up my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. This is another example of an artist working to save his or her hometown. I love the arts, I really do, despite my deconstructionist tendencies which say that art is 'decadent' and self-serving. I think the arts, in particular the public arts, are valuable resources of any healthy democracy. So in one sense I commend the gentleman in this article who is working to change Pittsburgh through the arts. Yet at the same time, I caution those who think that ART will change a city in decline. It is as weak of an argument as the one claiming that stadiums and convention centers will 'revitalize' a city. The arts are cool and even necessary, but will not save us. People in dead-end neighborhoods with high unemployment and the other associated problems need one thing, jobs! You can have all the art in the world, but it is worthless without gainfully employed individuals to enjoy it.

Please tell me a city that is defined by art? Perhaps in the distant past a city or 3 could eek out an existence as manufacturers of a particular craft or form of artwork. Maybe an city in the Renaissance existed solely to produce violins or something. But this was a niche and used for export. The problem with America is that we don't make anything, and you can fill as many offices as you want with 'high-tech' workers and coffee shop programmers and boutique clothing store operators and what not, but you will never replace manufacturing jobs. People say our economy 'advanced'. Did it? Or did those jobs just move elsewhere and people were left behind? It isn't like our world isn't manufacturing things anymore, we still buy cars and clothes and tvs, but that stuff is made in China or Mexico or wherever else the cheapest wages and environmental standards are at the moment.

So back to art. If a city isn't making anything (which few American cities are) then it is successful by at least managing the money used to make stuff. This is one reason artists are in NYC or LA or SF. Those cities are big into the arts because they are huge population centers because they once MADE STUFF (yes, even LA!--it beat out Detroit's manufacturing prowess in the 50s!) and those cities now have enough money to manage investments elsewhere, and the money made can then be used to buy art.

My long winded point is this, good luck to you who try and save the city through art or nightclubs, or a dining scene. Unfortunately, that is all window dressing. If you don't have good jobs to employ people who will waste their leisure time and money on those things, then the city falls. And fall it will. I love vibrant cities with entertainment and clean streets, but I also like places with an employed population. I would rather we all have jobs in some boring city than 10% of us living it up in the artist district while the rest of the city sinks in poverty. Enjoy America as it crumbles and becomes irrelevant and I guess use art to save someone because the other options (drugs, gangs, boredom) are far worse. But remember, you can't save your city, though you might be able to save each other.

BTW, if I haven't destroyed all your hope, here is the article that started this
http://americancity.org/article.php?id_article=318