Summary

The question of where artists live is an interesting one for several reasons. Regional Economists… (Markusen and Shrock); The Urban Planning Literature…(Florida 2002, ) Occupational Sociologists… (Cornfield 2015). Purpose here… 1) to update work performed by Markusen and Shrock to the 2nd decade of the 21st century. 2) To make a publically accessible, reproducible data analysis of artists’ location patterns. 3) To set the stage for advanced analyses of relationship between creative producers and urban production using both quantitative and qualitiative data.

Data

I use the American Community Survey (ACS), 2015, five-year data - publically available via the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series from the Minnesota University’s Population Center (ipums.org). The ACS is the U.S. Census Bureau’s effort to track key aspects of the U.S. population using an annual, representative sample of one percent of the U.S. population. To increase the reliability of their estimates, the ACS releases five-year (5%) data sets, which are cumulative 1% samples for five successive years, where observations are weighted for individual and household level analyses. Thus, the 2015 5% sample is the sum of 1% samples each year from 2011 to 2015.

The ACS tracks Americans’ occupations, along with other key demographic and economic variables, and it may be the best publically available means of tracing Americans’ occupational patterns on a yearly basis. In the following analyses, I am interested in observing the relative population of artists in U.S. metropolitan areas in 2015. In forthcoming papers, I will track changes in metro artist population over time.

Artist Location Quotients

A location quotient is a numeric summary of the relative share of a particular population in a defined place. In this case the population is artists and the place is a given Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), both of which are conveniently observed and coded in the ACS. Specifically, an artist location quotient is measured as the total local (or metro) artist population (LAP) divided by the local labor force (LLF), all over the national artist population (NAP) divided by the national labor force (NLF).

(LAP/LLF)/(NAP/NLF)

The deonominator in our equation is the proportion of artists among all labor force participants in the U.S. - and it is the constant against which all local artist populations are compared. There are an estimated 252,075 artists in the U.S. in 2015, which make up just 0.14 percent of the U.S. labor force. If a metro area’s proportion of artists among workers is the same ratio as the U.S. as a whole, the location quotient will equal 1, and the location quotient can be interpreted as a relative percentage against the national average. For example, a metro area with a Artist LQ of 1.5 may be said to have 50% more artists than the national average, and a metro with an Artist LQ of 0.6 may be said to have 3/5th the number of artists that would be expected given the population of artists in the U.S. as a whole.

Where do Artists live?

What is an Artist?

The census bureau defines a number of artistic occupations (which are tabled in the Appendix). The occupation code that concerns us here is 2600 - “Aritsts and Related Workers”. The census also defines Musicians, Writers, Actors and Directors, Dancers and Choreographers, etc. under various other codes, all of which are a classified generally as “Artists, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media” occupations.

It may be argued that some of these fields are more artistic than others, and may be included among artists. Indeed, “Artist” is a difficult category to draw parameters around. Art critics and art historians have certainly disagreed about what counts as “art.” The Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1993) has famously asserted that the definition of art amounts to a high stakes status game - who is or is not an “artist” is a concern well beyond how the census categorizes workers. For our purposes here we do not need to be familiar with those debates, although they become obvious when we consider that the category Dancers and Choreographers, for example, includes those working in the New York Ballet alongside strippers in Las Vegas. Nevertheless, it may be useful to include the arts-related occupations in an index category for comparison. I include: Writers and Authors; Musicians; Directors, Producers, and Actors; Dancers and Choreographers, and Artists and Related Workers in a General Arts index variable.

Appendix

##                Metro      Pop Artist Writer Musician Film/Actors    All
## 1           New York 19925246 1.7757 1.8429   1.4308      2.7216 1.7881
## 2        Los Angeles 13155116 2.4355 2.3116   2.0377      5.8572 2.4730
## 3            Chicago  9494455 0.9072 1.0877   1.0147      0.8576 1.0725
## 4       DallasFtWrth  6715955 0.7791 0.6937   0.9314      0.6521 0.8900
## 5            Houston  6282175 0.5084 0.5778   0.8566      0.4189 0.8211
## 6       Philadelphia  6070451 0.7865 1.1520   0.8929      0.7874 0.9196
## 7       WashingtonDC  5844843 0.7942 2.2846   0.8865      1.3947 1.1840
## 8  MiamiFtLauderdale  5826385 0.8712 0.7278   1.0477      1.2707 1.0715
## 9            Atlanta  5482204 1.0290 0.8941   1.1468      1.4307 1.1456
## 10            Boston  4769654 1.0108 1.4774   0.9649      0.8839 1.1478
## 11     San Francisco  4529117 2.3925 2.2162   1.1920      1.7233 1.9130
## 12           Phoenix  4407238 0.6542 0.7632   0.7084      0.5524 0.8498
## 13       RiversideCA  4393264 0.6595 0.4082   0.8358      0.7286 0.7324
## 14           Detroit  4225888 0.8855 0.6499   1.0110      0.7044 0.9815
## 15           Seattle  3614172 1.4448 1.4103   1.0018      0.8774 1.3044
## 16       Minneapolis  3458353 1.1988 1.2504   1.2100      0.7478 1.2361
## 17         San Diego  3222246 1.3164 1.1068   1.2392      1.0624 1.2681
## 18   TampaStPetersFL  2888620 0.7662 0.8671   1.0823      0.6906 0.8236
## 19         StLouisMO  2815381 0.7514 0.9074   0.8550      0.5770 0.8923
## 20            Denver  2776227 1.3085 1.2474   0.6570      0.9033 1.2014
## 21         Baltimore  2721487 0.7128 1.3354   1.0657      0.7352 1.0158
## 22       CharlotteNC  2351287 0.6605 0.7174   1.0465      0.6821 0.8326
## 23      Portland, OR  2336835 1.5549 1.8408   0.9882      0.9497 1.4182
## 24         Pittsburg  2311323 0.7515 0.9383   0.8357      0.6675 0.8277
## 25      SanAntonioTX  2267020 0.7454 0.6887   0.9978      0.6084 0.8273
## 26           Orlando  2244435 1.0995 0.8323   1.4025      1.1691 1.1462
## 27        Sacremento  2221445 0.9631 1.2886   0.7852      0.7656 0.9096
## 28        Cincinnati  2090159 0.8390 0.8125   0.7425      0.5256 0.8818
## 29    KansasCityMOKS  2070929 1.0772 0.8840   0.9831      0.4090 0.9602
## 30         Cleveland  2064153 0.8339 0.8132   0.9121      0.6002 0.8525
## 31          LasVegas  2035432 0.9455 0.7149   1.3809      1.1120 1.0928
## 32      Indianapolis  1939798 0.6744 0.6465   1.0704      0.6619 0.8393
## 33            Austin  1935816 1.7979 1.8812   1.5557      1.0626 1.4807
## 34        ColumbusOH  1871463 0.7475 1.2193   0.7356      0.4675 0.8561
## 35         Nashville  1869984 0.8587 1.1160   4.0495      1.1241 1.4275
## 36         SanJoseCA  1867381 1.1321 0.9345   0.6655      0.7063 1.1968
## 37     VirginiaBeach  1654590 0.6422 0.6690   1.0103      0.5493 0.7976
## 38      ProvidenceRI  1621685 1.0300 0.9713   0.7703      0.6072 0.9900
## 39       MilwaukeeWI  1570354 0.8544 0.7669   0.9840      0.6209 0.9845
## 40      OklahomaCity  1389864 0.4416 0.6455   0.8902      0.5830 0.7231
## 41    JacksonvilleFL  1372366 0.9120 0.6066   0.9850      0.5060 0.7904
## 42         RaleighNC  1263787 0.8428 0.9706   0.6367      0.4676 0.9281
## 43         MemphisTN  1253333 0.5447 0.7900   1.3122      0.5403 0.7118
## 44       New Orleans  1249131 1.5710 0.5269   1.7304      1.2433 1.1213
## 45        Louisville  1238174 0.7532 0.6345   1.2797      0.6350 0.7780
## 46          Richmond  1218308 1.2174 0.8057   1.0102      0.7498 0.8899
## 47        HartfordCT  1214150 0.8904 0.8641   0.8820      1.7235 0.9363
## 48      SaltLakeCity  1170603 0.8407 0.7961   0.3126      0.8466 0.8597
## 49         BuffaloNY  1135752 0.7655 0.8848   0.8114      0.5950 0.7800
## 50        Birmingham  1115020 0.7765 0.4874   0.8841      0.4891 0.7274
## 51       RochesterNY  1106585 0.9002 0.6820   0.7660      0.3678 0.7562