MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

David Harvey’s seminal 1992 essay “A View from Federal Hill,” recounts the redevelopment of downtown Baltimore through the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. He details how this restructuring of space gave only the appearance that the capital generated by these efforts of “urban renewal” benefited the citizen of Baltimore. In reality, much of the wealth went to domestic and foreign corporate interests, with residents of the city still reeling from the effects of economic divestment, and the city riots and white flight of the late-60s and early-70s. One of the corporations charged with developing a piece of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, The Rouse Corporation, coined the term “festival marketplace,” and built sites of consumer entertainment – mall disguised as tourist destinations – in several cities across the US. The Rouse Corporation was also the initial developer for Chicago’s Navy Pier, until its agreement with the city was rejected by Mayor Harold Washington, who did not like the results in Baltimore.

While Washington and his successors used other methods, including a much-praised (and much-criticized) Cultural Plan to develop Navy Pier, the organization and use of the space is very similar to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. My paper traces the links between these two developments, especially concerning the use of the two places as cultural spaces, and uses these two sites as a jumping off point from which to consider the purposeful development of built environments in ways that encourage displays of civic culture while also promoting an agenda of economic growth for powerful stakeholders. From here, I examine the newly-named phenomenon of “art-washing,” or the harnessing of cultural projects and public art projects as a part of gentrification. Baltimore and Chicago, when examined in comparison with one another, provide a unique insight into the way we produce cultural space – and highlight the voices and bodies of those include and excluded from such processes.