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Comment by marcus_holmes | Hacker News Reader

Berlin is going through this at the moment. From being "poor but sexy" to having everything safe, clean and nice and the rents doubled.

Artists (of any kind) don't make any money, and don't want to waste time making money when they could be making art. So they need cheap places to live. Cheap places are cheap for a reason: there's no heating, or the roof leaks, or the kitchen isn't really a kitchen, or it's miles from anywhere you'd want to go. That doesn't matter if what you really want to do is spend every waking moment creatively and around likeminded people.

Apparently Leipzig is where the artists from Berlin are moving now, because it's cheap. But who wants to live in Leipzig? It's a nothing place.

Until 20 years from now, when it'll be a cultural centre because of all the artists there... and they'll have to move on because the rents will be rising.

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Athens is apparently the new cheap artsy place, at least in Europe. Leipzig had its "The Next Berlin?" moment a few years ago.

As a side note, Leipzig is also an extremely livable city with a ton of history. Definitely not a nothing place.

fair point. I've never been there, I just keep hearing this whenever the subject comes up ;)

Semi-related, I found this /r/soccer [1] post about the football history of Leipzig one of the best on that website.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/fwkfot/but_why_leip...

> But who wants to live in Leipzig? It's a nothing place. > Until 20 years from now, when it'll be a cultural centre

I've been to Leipzig for a festival. It had history, culture, and art for certain value of "art". It didn't seem like a nothing place.

On the whole this is right, but over simplified - at least in my experience. I know first hand a bunch of people who lived in dumbo in manhattan 5-10 years before it became gentrified and there was a collective sense that it was just a matter of time before it became gentrified and everyone would make some money.

Artists aren't somehow totally oblivious or too high-minded to take this into consideration. It's a weird narrative that paints artists as totally separate from the system, which just isn't true

I think artists change from doe eyed 20 year olds to mature and cynical 30 year olds just like all of us.

If rent would be the only obstacle I believe they would move East to Hungary or Romania or any other Eastern Bloc country to pay 100-200 euros rent.

that may well happen as the East becomes more Euro-fied

I honestly don't understand this. If this is really such an easy way to make a city grow economically why aren't the artists making money off of this to fund their next move?

> don't want to waste time making money when they could be making art.

You would be making money precisely because you are spending your time making art.

Most artists make very little money, they do art for art's sake, not because they want to make big money.

Money devalues art.

> If this is really such an easy way to make a city grow economically why aren't the artists making money off of this to fund their next move?

How would they do that?

Its not by itself a way to grow anything. Artists prefer cheap places, preferably in big cities. Those are the kind of places with most potential for growth because most places in big cities are expensive and the whole mean reversal thing.

The incentives are all wrong.

My mother was a professional artist. She was contacted by a property developers who had noticed this effect and wanted to bring artists to their development so it would become gentrified. Mum explained that to do that, they would need to provide cheap (very cheap!) studio space for the artists to use. The developer did the maths and decided to just make apartments for yuppies as it was more profitable.

To make money off this, the artists would need to own the buildings they occupy, and then sell them to the incoming gentrified yuppies. After having spent the money upgrading the building, of course, because the yuppies need all the mod cons. That would involve spending attention, money and time on making money instead of art. To do this, they would need to stop being artists and become property developers.

If this is really such an easy way to make a city grow economically why aren't the artists making money off of this to fund their next move?

The economic benefits to the city of having a thriving art community might be diffuse enough across many people that there's no one person or group willing to pay individual artists to provide the benefit. That is, it's mostly a positive externality / public good.

You could ask the municipal government for pay for it, the way they pay for roads and other services, but then you'd have the problem of establishing some sort of worthiness standard to ensure the system isn't just being taken advantage of. The determination of such a standard, besides being possibly unrealizable, would probably undermine the creative spirit it's designed to foster.

I actually think part of it is more to do with people with money trying to buy the experience of art and culture rather than the product itself. As a pro musician I experienced that. Wealthy people want to hang out with the band, and get access and "rough it a bit" sometimes. It does result in artists getting paid, but often it results in people buying expensive coffee while looking at art, buying a slighter nicer house near the artists...

It's hard to describe but my anecdotal first hand experience includes plenty of rich tourists hanging around the emerging cultural hubs. I sincerely think the money goes into feeling cool rather than fueling the art economy, it's the surrounding bars, restaurants and cafes (and property developers) that end up making the big money. As mentioned elsewhere - the artists end up gone, the soul of the place eventually goes, and they end up with those weird soulless expensive places that used to be poor and full of artists.

> If this is really such an easy way to make a city grow economically why aren't the artists making money off of this to fund their next move?

The returns go to property owners, not workers.

Please pause for a second before saying "why don't they just buy property" and come up with possible answers to that yourself.

The problem is likely even nastier. Usually trending art is not government sponsored, at best it's semi-legal. (Of course now some German court said recently that yes, DJing is art too, and of course electronic music is big business around the world, but venues are regularly closed, moved, harassed.)

So artists that have this kind of pull would probably have a hard time just buying a cheap warehouse and opening shop.)

Making art and selling art are two entirely different things.

I live in Berlin and I can explain the problem quite clearly. The issue purely is that there isn't sufficient capital here (still) to sustain the supply of art. Compared to a city like London or NYC where there is a really healthy market of art patrons.

There is a very clear divide between creatives (artist, musician, videographer, photographer, etc.) who are at the beginning of their career, and those that have achieved some success. The beginners are still trying to make their money in Berlin. The somewhat established creatives make their money outside Berlin, but use Berlin as their home base because of the cultural connections and creativity it generates.

I disagree. There was less capital and more art. Now there is more capital and less art. Adding more capital does not create more art. It creates a tiny subset of commercially successful artists. Not the same thing at all.

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