Time To Define Music Urbanism

A little over a year ago I published an article on CityMetric looking at the music urbanism and what it means. My argument is that if music makes our lives better, than it should be a tool that we deploy more to create better cities, towns and places. In the article I referenced a number of bottom-up community projects using music in some way to improve their communities, from The Record Co.’s community studio project in Boston to Denver’s lauded Youth on Record. Both of these projects are aimed at providing young people with discounted or free space to record or rehearse music, among other things, with the aim of creating more talent, more saleable music and over time, jobs from making, selling or marketing music.

Over the past year we’ve become involved in a number of these civic initiatives to improve access to music in urban areas, from Brisbane to Vancouver, Muscle Shoals to Havana. And reading the article back, I feel my definition of music urbanism I wrote a year ago is wrong. And in the aforementioned article I volunteered to be a card carrying music urbanist. Better improve it then.

So here is the first of a series of longer, in-depth articles to explore what music urbanism could mean and how, across our towns, cities and places, we can use it to improve our lives. Music is our only universal language. With our voice, we are all born with an instrument. And music policy, whether we call it music cities, improving our night time economy strategy or something else, is more prevalent in mayoral briefings, economic development strategies and tourism portfolios. Now is the time to unpack what music urbanism could be.

With Music Urbanism Comes Urbanism: Defining Urbanism Here

If we are to offer a definition of music urbanism, I think it is prudent to first define the term urbanism in this context. There’s a number of definitions to choose from across urban geography, sociology and other disciplines. The simplest definition is the study of how we interact with the built environment and the impact of the way towns and cities are planned on the people that inhabit them. This is what Wikipedia offers. Another definition, this time from Merriam Webster, defines urbanism as the study of the physical needs of those who live or dwell in cities. One of the earliest sociological definition comes from Louis Wirth, in his seminal 1938 article Urbanism as a Way of Life. Here, he offers 4 characteristics of urbanism; a greater density of people living in closer communities leading to increased conflicts of norms and social values, rapid change, social differentiation and impersonality of relationships. Then there are more modern theorists, including Richard Florida, Charles Landry, Jane Jacobs and others, all of whom I admire. Each of their work deals with gentrification of some kind, which to me has made term urbanism synonymous with urban change or revitalisation, which of course picks winners and losers.

If a city is creative and attracts those who make stuff people want to buy, experience or use than a city is seen as successful in how its built environment interacts with its residents. But we know this isn’t true. Here’s an interesting article from The Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright where Florida is challenged, and in it Wainwright offers up Edward Glaeser, another urbanist’s different definition where the term ‘creative’ is replaced with ‘skilled people’ as a subtext to successful urban regeneration. Gentrification and urbanism have, in some places, become two sides of the same coin. As a result, a city pursuing a creative and cultural strategy, some of which I have worked on, leads to an increase in the cost of living rather than a strategy to improve the quality of lives for those who live in cities. And one person pushed out of a local area due to affordability issues is one too many.

So where does music fit here? Music is often a tool to foster, create or spurn revitalisation. A successful concert hall, music venue or music association often captures value, meaning its success creates more value of what is around it. The O2 in London is a perfect example. The peninsula now hosts myriad shops, offices and residential units, most of which are there because of the success of the venue. The O2, when launched, was seen as an embarrassment. Now it is the world’s most ticketed music venue, with AEG making $200m USD in profits from it last year. But at the same time, this regeneration increases land value, making it less fair for those unable to afford the land these buildings sit on. ‘Increase value’ becomes a synonym for ‘unaffordable for most people’ If we were all urbanists, than it would be the built environment that served the people, not the other way around. And with a 1 bed flat being advertised for £605k in the Greenwich Peninsula, clearly such regeneration is not for everyone and The O2’s success has not supported everyone. But it has led to hundreds of millions of pounds being injected into the local economy, thousands of jobs and myriad skills being incubated in the venue and its accompanying retail and leisure offer. And it’s capturing further value, with every booking.

If a successful music venue increases land values around it, this is both positive and negative for its neighbours. Same goes for a cluster of musicians, artists and creatives. If an area is regenerated through creative output, I don’t think this is, in its core, negative. This, to me, is what makes cities worth living in and cities, like all else, are living organisms that change every day. So if music urbanism is to sit within this context, where a successful music project — impacting the built environment and those who use it — leads to both good and bad impacts, than I believe music urbanism should be a scholarly pursuit to study this impact and plan for such challenges, while celebrating successes.

But I want to take music urbanism further for two reasons. The first is, in this context, music urbanism is no different from any other creative or cultural urbanism. We deploy music in the built environment, it impacts said environment. Same goes for theatre, fine art, a new museum or a sculpture park. Second is if we focus exclusively on the built environment in our definition of music urbanism, we miss the physiological and human impact that music has on all of us, through the triggers it produces in our brains when we listen to and experience it. We could be in a field and have a visceral music experience, as millions do at festivals each year. We don’t need to be in the built environment. We can be in an unbuilt environment.

So with this in mind, I want to present a definition of music urbanism from here on in. Music Urbanism is how we directly or indirectly use music as a tool, or within a toolkit, to address the ever-changing needs of those who live in cities, towns and places. And if split it across the responsibilities of local government — the policy stewards urbanism’s impact— we see that music can be a tool to make lives better. From developing our economies (economic development), creating jobs and skills (skills strategy) to education, to how we care for our young, infirm & elderly (environment, health and social care), to how we communicate, celebrate and express ourselves (cultural strategy), to how we build, rebuild and refashion (regeneration) how we assuage conflict (police and licensing), attract visitors (tourism) and develop a sense of place (marketing), whatever that may be, music is an asset.

So if we developed a framework to assess music’s role across these wide ranging policy issues, we will create music urbanists of all of us. From breathing life into a new building, or into someone undergoing palliative care treatment, music is around us and our built environment. This is music urbanism, a study of music’s role in our interactions with the built environment, and each other within our collective environment.

Music Cities vs. Music Urbanism:

The term that most of us use to look at the role of music on our urban environments over the past few years is ‘music cities’. It is everywhere, and this is partly my doing. This is how I make a living. There’s reports written on the term and what it means. Many of them — particularly ones I or my team haven’t written — look at ‘music cities’ from the lens of the commercial music industry, which is one singular perspective in this debate. One use of music in the built environment is to increase the industrialisation of it, so we consume more and those who create it — and the value chain it creates — benefit. This creates jobs, creates skills and of course, is a competitive tool for cities. It’s necessary to me, whatever the size of the city, town or place to have a talent development pipelines to promote the music industry and all its facets. A thriving music industry, like in Nashville or London, is good for business. Nashville has become a global healthcare leader, partly due to its relationship with music and the quality of life that comes from that, a quality that can be marketed to prospective workers. And music industry jobs are important. As I’ve written before, there’s dozens of jobs, skills and specialisms that make-up the global music industry. Here’s a few; stagehand, guitarist, luthier, lawyer, accountant, producer, engineer, mixer, advertising executive, marketing professional, therapist, manager, agent. And so on. A thriving music venue, as well, supports dozens of jobs, pays tax and creates skills. I spoke about this in my TED talk and wrote about it here, about my friend Dan Beaumont’s venue, the Dalston Superstore in East London.

But this is one road, not the entire map. First, music cities are about more than cities; they encompass towns, places and individual developments and neighbourhoods. Second, the growth of a music industry is one of many variables in which music touches or impacts our built environment. One has thriving music sectors in countries or cities that do not recognise music education as valuable (take my home of England, as an example). So I propose that music cities is one key proponent of music urbanism, but not the be all and end all in and of itself. Its imperative for each city to have a music strategy — I will always advocate for this — but it’s about more than the music industry. And when this is the case, the music industry benefits the most (as the business most beneficial of monetised music).

When we work with cities, each has a different objective, while still exploring the value of music across all city and regional policy areas. In Vancouver, our work focused on sector jobs and the music industry ecosystem. In Muscle Shoals, Alabama, our job is to look at the growth of music tourism and the production of new content and living culture. In Huntsville, Alabama, among other objectives we are looking at the role of music on the evening leisure, retail and entertainment economy, as well as jobs and skills. In Cardiff, it is a multitude of objectives, including industry engagement and community development. Music urbanism encompasses all of these, including those objectives more commonly associated with music cities related policy, or the development of a music industry. We need a thriving, engaged music sector, but we need more than that to realise music’s value in our towns and cities. It’s imperative the sector is our loudest and most supportive partner, and I am lucky that where we work, that is the case. If music benefits, the industry benefits. And most sector leaders know that. But music goes deeper than that in this case, so here are three music urbanism cases to explore.

Music Urbanism Case #1: Music, Health & Wellbeing

My colleague Dr. Julia Jones writes extensively about this topic, so much so she’s publishing a book soon on music and wellbeing, titled The Music Diet. To her, music encompasses all stages of life, from birth to death. And if take her influence and we look at utilising the power of music across all of life’s phases, its power is boundless. Exploring this temporally, we see music urbanism impacting all of us, all the time. While not scientifically proven, listening to Mozart in the womb is known to lead to smarter children. What is proven, however, is the positive impact of music — and early music education — on our cognitive development. There’s scores of academia on this topic, including what Julia’s written about, which you can read here. For example, according to Trost and Miendlarzewska in Frontiers of Neuroscience, “children who undergo musical training have better verbal memory, second language pronunciation accuracy, reading ability and executive functions. Learning to play an instrument as a child may even predict academic performance and IQ in young adulthood”. If such benefits exist, music should be mandatory in all nurseries. Moving into adolescence and early adulthood, singing in a choir or performing in an orchestra teaches collective responsibility, while performing in general releases dopamine and other chemicals that simply make us happy. This is why miners in Wales sing in choirs (and still do), or why us white collar workers perform in cover bands on weekends. Again, it makes us happy.

Moreover, the value of music in treating certain diseases is well documented, from autism therapy in children to dementia in the elderly, so much so the NHS calls music a “powerful connector” in reference to dementia treatment. In addition, no exercise class would be bearable without music and burgeoning wellbeing sector has used music as a tool for growth. It’s even a tool to improve workplace wellbeing. And in an age where opioid addiction costs over $1t in the US alone and we face a loneliness and obesity epidemic, it would be prudent to explore the role of music across our health and wellbeing ecosystem in our collective built environment. Music improves sociability and reduces some of the challenges of urbanism that Wirth outlined in 1938. It increases relational proximity — i.e brings us together — and gets us moving.

But there’s no joined-up approach to this and the tie that binds all of us here is that these challenges are happening in our built environment — hard and soft. A music urbanism approach would explore how music — as a direct, deliberate and intentional intervention, can improve our lives in our cities, towns and places. Could cities have music and wellbeing officers? Could every company deploy a music strategy in its workplace? Can every care home employ a resident musician?

I think it is possible, if we were all music urbanists.

Music Urbanism Case #2: Music and Regeneration

This is often an emotional debate, as when one is the victim of regeneration, it is hard to see the benefits of any urban revitalisation that happened at the same time. But at the time of writing, we are living in the safest, most densely populated world that has ever existed. By 2030, 68% of us will live in cities, according to the UN. And most crime statistics globally are trending down, despite a rise in the past year in some places, including London and the US. There are less wars now than ever.

All our cities, from Dhaka to Des Moines, are changing everyday. And while most are getting better, it is hard to see it through the lens of our news cycle. And for most cities, the most prevalent issue is housing. A frightening and inhumane practice written about in this article from LA, where businesses are fencing their sidewalks from a growing homeless population, is testament to this. From Lagos to Surabaya, Chengdu to Charleston, we all need a place to live and to create space to do so, other amenities, or land uses, have to adapt to this need for housing. So we either build up, or closer together, or both. And areas previously left for artists, musicians and creatives — as Florida’s seminal 2002 book, Rise of the Creative Class profiled, become fair game for housing and with it, the developers who build them. Land ownership is a complex, global behemoth, tied up in borderless pension funds, VC capital, banks and land trusts. There’s little emotion in it as a business. And it’s often not local. Many of those who own and build on the land are not sensitive to those living on and off of it. And as a result, we see Chinese ghost cities, protests and other conflicts that pair those who own land versus those who use it.

I don’t offer music as the solution to this problem, but is often the canary in the development coal mine, as I’ve written before in regeneration. Music is noisy and as such, often is created in land once previously meant for light industrial or, in our developing towns and cities in the global south, the street. One person’s music is another’s noise and the moment one can’t sleep due to noise is the moment that situation becomes untenable. And if we are to solve our global housing crisis in a way that supports places to live, rather than investments to accumulate, music is a valuable tool to deploy.

And if we’re conscientious urbanists, our job is to create places to live for, rather than simply places to live. A roof over one’s head is important. But the other roofs in the neighbourhood are important too. And if we’re to sustain strong communities, we must create open spaces to congregate. And if those places are developed to withstand sound, than they are open to all forms of culture. If we knew where music was being promulgated in a particular place, we can better protect it. And we valued music and its power for urbanists, we could protect it through legislation such as Agent of Change, better building codes, enforcing certain types of building material or even horticultural guidelines, as what you plant impacts how sound travels in public squares. And if we first fill the town with artists, as the saying goes, a successful regeneration project would infer that most of them would still be there after the fact. Regeneration is meant to improve our built environment, not displace those who use it.

This is not meant to state that those who regenerate, build houses and improve neighbourhoods are not meant to profit off of it. I believe they are, but I also believe leading with people — and using music as an asset — is the most profitable way to regenerate. Music is a valuable and impactful tool to do this. From bringing communities together for open days to creating a sound strategy for a particular area, music has multiple uses in how we regenerate our cities.

If at least to recognise that when music is displaced, it is time for a rethink.

Music Urbanism Case #3 — Music and Civic Responsibility

I believe that an area is unsafe when there are either too many people in a particular place, or too few. And urbanists from engineering firms around the world are exploring such issues of density to design street lighting, pavements and public transit stations. There’s a science to this, but I believe it is buttressed through simple human interaction, and the promotion of responsible civic engagement. And responsibility begets responsibility, as we wrote about in our Night Time Guide. Especially in crowds, in public.

As Le Bon wrote in 1895, “the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power”. I also believe that if put in the right context, a crowd also creates invincible responsibility. When we are immersed in a song, or in a moment, it doesn’t matter who you are standing next to or what your individual beliefs are. We are only one thing; immersed in that particular song, or moment. I believe if we look at these moments from the frame of a music urbanist, it can be used to foster and embolden a greater sense of civic responsibility. Let’s take the phenomenon of playing classical music on public transit to promote calmness. While not scientific, it did reduce complaints of antisocial behaviour. A mood was created that eschewed a certain civic responsibility, whatever that meant to each individual, and we were tricked, or encouraged into behaving. When a street performer is enrapturing his or her audience, those watching are not doing anything else in that moment. They are part of a real, spontaneous community — if only for a few seconds — and that community brings all of closer together.

If we explored the role of music across a number of civic policy areas, it could be used as a tool to make us all more responsible and as a result, make our cities, towns and places safer, cleaner and better. From improving our environmental health to enlivening our towns and squares, music is a benefit. It calms commuters in train stations, it offers an experiential window to learn about someone different to you, either through a tourism experience or a one-off performance. And it can make us safer. The closure of youth clubs and other amenities aimed at bringing communities together is one of the reasons attributed to the rise in crime in London. Music was an active element in these clubs. Now, kids are using music to worsen gang rivalries — a sure sign of a strategic failure in music urbanism.

What if we used music as a tool to engage at-risk youth and built studios in low-income neighbourhoods for the community, or played soothing music in all our stations, or enforced better building standards so homes and flats had better insulation? Our lives would improve. For example, a campaign in Rembrandtplein in Amsterdam — pioneered by the cities Night Mayor Foundation — requested that people use toilets, instead of the street. They did just that.

We all respond as members of a crowd. Music can be a force for good in this regard.

And This is Just The Beginning:

I know this article scratches the surface, especially in linking music urbanism to other avenues of thought exploring what urbanism means and how it is being used as a scholarly topic across city and urban studies. But I hope it is the beginning to a realisation that the use of music in our cities is much more than going to a live concert, clicking play on YouTube or stopping and watching a busker for a few minutes. Music unconsciously weaves through who we are, much like the cities we live in. When we walk down a street, we rarely think about how that street was planned, why it is that length, diameter, size and so on. Moreover, I know few of us (unlike me) walk past buildings thinking about why these were designed that way, how the planning process impacted it and what financial arrangements led to it being there. Every building tells a story and those of us who inhabit, create and live in them exponentially increase these stories, creating our urbanism fabric that — as we continue to move to cities — grows by the day.

If we took a moment to think about the role of music, and act to ensure it is supported, protected, enriched and made available to everyone who wishes to play, experience, profit off of or simply listen to it, we will improve our cities as they change. And all of us, music urbanists from around the world, will be complicit in that improvement.

BTW: Please do comment on this article and let me know your thoughts. This piece is part of a series I’m working on, explaining and exploring what music urbanism means. Hopefully it will end up as a book. Thanks for reading.

Shain Shapiro, PhD

London, UK