Public Arts Are an Urban Necessity
By Christopher Schwarting
“Philadelphia Muses,” in Philadelphia, PA. Photo credit: Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez
For many, the link between artistic development and the urban sphere seems semi-distant and indistinct. Of course, the city is home to vestibules of the arts — from late-night trips to the movie theater to Sunday afternoons at the museum. While we may first think of these institutions, there exists a broader field encompassed within “public arts” that, while not immediately evident, are indeed far-reaching.
As an innate good, public art can reinforce a city’s population around itself, creating social connections and identity in urban landscapes. It also encourages us to slow down in rapid urban landscapes. It offers a conduit for urban reflection among city residents and draws us closer to considering one another more intimately, face-to-face.
Yet, recent developments suggest an oversight and denial of public art’s critical benefits on cities and their communities. Public venues for the arts, like the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, have reduced public programming as certain ideological strands have been imposed on its board. Elsewhere, the National Endowment for the Arts has cut grants intended for underserved urban communities to benefit from public-facing urban art programs.
These developments reflect a national conception that art is merely a high, nation-serving cultural artifact. But public-facing art holds the same, if not more, potential value for local communities. We must see public arts beyond their inherent value as a visual aesthetic. We must support them for their transformative effects on urban communities.
I grew up just outside of Philadelphia. In Philly, seemingly every street is decorated with extensive murals, characterizing the city’s streets with a unique flair. These murals have demonstrated a “promising and sustained relative decrease in stigma toward individuals with mental illness, and a relative decrease in stress,” according to Mural Arts Philadelphia. Founded in 1984, Mural Arts Philadelphia has worked to transform city communities through vibrant, crowd-sourced artistic projects. To date, the organization has worked with roughly 6,000 artists to create 4,000 to 5,000 murals in the city. Many of these artists, whom Mural Arts Philadelphia employs part-time, are formerly criminalized.
Philadelphia’s public arts scene shows how art extends beyond famed pieces displayed in an exclusive gallery. It includes community-facing artworks, including murals, sculptures, memorials, architecture, and communally sourced projects and performances. These public arts programs, which seek to create, develop, and install art to benefit city-based ecosystems, are imperative for a thriving urban landscape and community engagement.
Public art programs offer myriad benefits to city communities. Their foundational ability to transform visual space impacts community well-being and mental health. According to a survey in London, 84 percent of respondents found that their participation in a public art project improved their mental well-being. In hospitals specifically, community-aimed art programs have been shown to boost patient well-being and, in some cases, improve patient outcomes.
Community arts programs can also counter endemic challenges to social inclusion and offer sustainable economic opportunities. In 2018, Americans for the Arts found that over half of young Americans would strongly consider whether a community is rich in the arts before deciding to move there. This economic impact is seen in cityscape schematics. For example, the town center of Reston, Virginia, has less than a 0.5% office vacancy rate in a region where office vacancy typically sits around 16-18%. Real estate broker Joe Ritchey attributes this vacancy in part to the development of public art amenities in the city center.
Back in Philadelphia, economic growth also comes from artistic tourism. Mural Arts Philadelphia hosts tours of the nation’s “mural capital,” which attracts over 10,000 people annually to the city.
By providing an opportunity for a city’s artists, art admirers, and tourists to convene in city spaces, urban arts programs offer space to develop a community's cultural identity and support social connectivity. For example, Matthew Mazzota’s creation of the “Open House” installation in York, Alabama, also filled a community need. Lacking a public gathering space, his building created a space for community bonding and reception. In Philadelphia, artists Shira Walinsky and Laura Deutsch’s mobile bus gallery “47 Stories” detailed community testimonies that revealed their favorite locations in the city.
This ambition for improving social conceptions of community extends far beyond the shape of contemporary city identity. Public art projects can also further justice initiatives and reorient urban inclusivity. Housing Matters, an Urban Institution Initiative, suggests that legacies of racism and discrimination may position public art as a more accessible and inclusive space for artists of marginalized identities. Community-focused initiatives, such as MuralsDC’s Language Access for All Project, seek to celebrate the breadth of languages spoken by the region’s middle school students. Hundreds of young people could join in creating art.
Including young people can completely reorient the perception of a community. In 2018, the Marcus Garvey Youth Clubhouse studied how arts initiatives could provide safer communities. Their findings suggest that creating a socially engaged public space for arts-making improved perceptions of neighborhood safety. Even public art installations on roadways — such as decorated sidewalks — have illustrated an increased attention to road safety, including a 17% decrease in total crash rates.
The lively communities supported by public art programs remain integral to envisioning and sustaining an urban landscape focused on its communities’ well-being, development, and representation. We must continue to support investments in the public arts and hold our leaders accountable to them to sustain and shape our vibrant communities of tomorrow.