Aestheticizing Space: Art, Gentrification and the City

Abstract This article explores the relationship between art and gentrification at the urban scale. In particular, it maps shifting conceptualizations of this relationship through a focus on art, artists and arts spaces in the successive waves of gentrification. The first half of the article outlines the conceptualization of the arts in the first and second waves of gentrification, beginning with artist location preferences, detailing how and why these areas become attractive for higher income groups, and the agency prescribed to artists within the process. In the second half, the article places these findings in conversation with current debates taking place in the field surrounding third wave gentrification, in particular, how the arts are incorporated into public‐policy and urban regeneration with a focus on public art and arts infrastructure. The conclusion raises questions about how the incorporation of the arts in city programming complicates understandings of gentrification, and presents future avenues for research.