INTRODUCTION

Creative policy in world cities has often focused on the development of spaces where culture is showcased, exhibited or sold, such as flagship museums, galleries and performance spaces. Yet studio spaces are also a vital part of the cultural infrastructure of cities, providing the basis of the networks and spaces where art is produced and disseminated. In the visual arts, for example, without studio spaces there is no possibility of developing an arts scene based on the co-location and networking of creative workers, with the physical space of the studio being particularly important for providing opportunities for coworking and socially engaged arts practice (Zilberstein 2019). Yet in the super-gentrified cities of the global North – London, Paris, New York, San Francisco and Sydney, for example – the declining affordability of spaces for cultural production has proved a major challenge for urban policy predicated on the cultural economy as a driver of regeneration and renewal (Shaw 2014).

In such world cities, manufacturing decline in the 1980s frequently left swathes of abandoned industrial units that leant themselves to artistic production practices and were available at relatively affordable rates. The emergence of vibrant and profitable art scenes in specific inner-city districts was often the instigator of neighbourhood changes associated with residential improvement and economic growth, providing the basis of a seemingly sustainable model of arts-based urban regeneration that was trumpeted as part of the “creative city” agenda. Indeed, it has been repeatedly noted that creative industries generate significant amounts of economic, social and cultural capital for their host cities; for example, recent, pre-Covid, figures from the UK show creative industries were growing at twice the rate of the rest of the economy (Creative Industries Council 2021), with the creative economy accounting for one in six jobs in London (Greater London Authority 2022a). Here, the sector contributes £52 billion a year, with the Greater London Authority (GLA) estimating that related supply chains generate an additional £40 billion a year for the city's economy (2019a).