Publications

Cultural districts strengthen our cities and communities and support the development of thriving places and people. Support for cultural districts is a high-return investment as their value is immense, multi-layered and far-reaching. However, while those benefits are embraced by many, not all believe it. Increasingly, cultural leaders are being challenged to demonstrate how supporting the arts and culture advances other agendas; from attracting investment to fostering liveable communities and enabling public safety. GCDN developed this advocacy guide to help! It makes a case for support of cultural districts as a necessity for building thriving places and people. Importantly, it provides a core set of ideas and baseline language that cultural leaders can use to communicate with stakeholders such as policy-makers, sponsors and patrons.

This report, commissioned by the Global Cultural Districts Network (GCDN) and written by Kiley Arroyo describes diverse tools that cultural districts can use to spur investment and create new revenue streams while protecting the local character and neighborhood identity. It is the first consolidated source of advice on finance mechanisms, public policies, and equity-centered practices — known as value-capture tools — that can be used to recover and reinvest increases in real estate value that benefit communities as well as property owners and developers.