While Frank Gehry’s famous Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is reknowned as an architectural and structural masterpiece, it should also go down in the history books for its profound effect on the local economy. Before the museum was built, Bilbao’s unemployment rate topped 25 per cent, and hotels were booked at under 15 per cent capacity. Since opening in 1997, the museum has created many jobs for locals and turned this sleepy Spanish town into a tourist haven.
The cost of the building-around $75 million CDN-has been recovered many times over, since the influx of tourists flocking to see the museum have injected over $560 million into the local economy (by some estimates).
If one building by the Canadian-born Gehry, who also designed the renovations to the AGO, could help a town like Bilbao flourish, one can’t help but wonder how Toronto will be affected by the major renovations to our cultural institutions currently underway.
Whether because of the resultant noise, dust, and traffic congestion, the zigzagging transitory sidewalks, or the new skyline being created, you would be hard-pressed to find a downtown Torontonian not affected by the city’s cultural facelift. But how did all these renovations manage to get the green light at the same time, and how will this influx of new facilities affect the city’s cultural scene?
Like Paris in the mid-eighteenth century, Toronto’s renovations to its dozen or so cultural institutions were planned to occur simultaneously by government funding bodies. The financing for the Parisian renovations came largely from the state, just as Toronto’s were made possible through large federal and provincial government grants.
In his overhaul of Paris, famed city planner Baron Haussmann turned the medieval city into a modern one. Haussmann’s renovations have gone in and out of favour with critics, but overall they have helped strengthen the notion of Parisian identity, and planners here hope for the same result regarding Toronto’s cultural identity.
With the new cultural resources made available to Torontonians, new possibilities for artistic output exist. Take New York City, where the Beat poets, modern Jewish-American literature, theatre on and off Broadway, and the dazzling marquees that accompany the shows are just a few examples of that city’s extensive and varied cultural output. New York has always been at the cutting edge of popular culture in the areas of visual arts, music, and theatre, but it was the skyscrapers that shot up at the turn of the last century that made the world sit up and take notice. It was perhaps this edgy new architectural style that made the city attractive to avant-garde artists.
Cultural renovations are to cities what seasons are to fashion: institutions must either progress with the times, or stop selling the brand. It is reasonable to expect a city to invest significantly in its cultural institutions. However, the caveat remains that politicians must balance the quest for much-sought-after tourist dollars with the responsibility to ensure a high quality of life for all citizens. Spending millions of dollars on tourism-focused renovation is important, but equally important is ensuring that reasonable infrastructure exists to support the local population.
It will take a mayor with vision to execute a cultural renaissance and meet the needs of all citizens. As famed activist and urban planner Jane Jacobs wrote in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, “You can’t rely on bringing people downtown; you have to put them there.” This maxim stands true today.
It will take the participation of active and engaged citizens for Toronto to become a world cultural centre. Affordable housing in the downtown core is needed so that all citizens, not just the wealthy elite, can live near and contribute to this cultural renaissance.
