Can the arts and culture play a central role in revitalizing American cities? Over the past decade, a number of cities have answered this question affirmatively. For the most part, they have turned to big-ticket downtown cultural districts as the strategy to expand their “creative economy.” At the same time, skeptics like Joel Kotkin have ridiculed this approach as the creation of “the ephemeral city” that ignores thefundamentals of good city-building for the illusion of urban vitality.

Cultivating Natural Cultural Districts