Last week John Tierney reported on the ambitious effort that the generally thriving city of Columbus, Ohio, is undertaking to remake its long-depressed Franklinton neighborhood. That’s one of Jessica Phelps’s powerful photographs of Franklinton above; you can see many more here. The local slang term for this district has been “The Bottoms,” and her collection is called “Rising up from The Bottoms.”
Now John has the second installment in his Franklinton/Columbus chapter of the American Futures saga. It is called “How to Attract Artists to a Down-and-Out Neighborhood,” and it’s about the thinking behind, and the practical steps toward, using creative artists, and arts-related businesses and activities, as a tool of civic renewal. Detroit’s version of this approach, including an offer of free houses for artists and writers, has been highly publicized. We’ve seen a range of related ideas in cities as small as Eastport, Maine and as big as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Greenville, South Carolina, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The Columbus approach is an interestingly broad and thorough one. Please check out John Tierney’s report for more, including the background on this scene from Land-Grant Brewing, below.
