One of the crucial underpinnings of New York as a culture capital is that there are multiple markets. There is not just one art gallery district, there are several art gallery districts. I feel that there should be art galleries and art studios in every neighborhood without exception. They should be integrated into the social and physical fabric of the streets. If we want a lively city, we can't just have high towers and dense constructions, we have to have living organisms of streets and neighborhoods. And the arts are a crucial part of that.

A lot of us New Yorkers have bought apartments or bought lofts or are struggling to do it because at least that gives you some respite from the inexorable tightening of the screw every year - rent. But that puts you on this treadmill where you are constantly thinking, "Should I sell this place and move somewhere cheaper?" Artists have migrated across the East River and eastward in Brooklyn - as have non-artist populations, apparently going back to the Lenape Indians. There's been a migration to New Jersey, to Philadelphia, and farther afield.

Every New Yorker spends a certain amount of nervous energy thinking, "How can I afford to stay here? What do I have to sell in order to stay here, where I have an economic life and where I like my life?" At least back to the beginning of the twentieth century, New Yorkers have always complained that it's hard to find a decent apartment at a rent you can afford.

I think the entrepreneurial activities that make art visible and attractive are what lure people into the amusement park that SoHo has become or that Bushwick or Williamsburg has become. It's not that outsiders come to an area because they hear artists are living there. A lot of people came who were not that interested in living with artists, but they were interested in living like artists and socializing the way that they thought artists socialized.

I think that there is a middle-class desire, and maybe an almost universal desire, among many human beings to live in clean neighborhoods, among people like themselves, around people with whom they feel comfortable. That can be exclusive, it could be exclusionary. It could be racist, classist, genocidal, and so on. Most people like comfort. Now what provides a sense of comfort varies. I do think that people who like living in cities like small-scale human interaction and they like the social dimensions of aesthetic diversity that Jane Jacobs wrote about.

When new businesses open that are trying to attract people with cultural capital or cultural ambitions, they are often more expensive than traditional neighborhood stores and cafés, they offer different products, and they have a different atmosphere. Longtime residents may feel uncomfortable there. Structurally, as a group of gentrifiers gets bigger, there is less room for longtime residents. When it becomes a pattern and you can see the effects, we call that displacement.

One of the crucial underpinnings of New York as a culture capital is that there are multiple markets. There is not just one art gallery district, there are several art gallery districts. I feel that there should be art galleries and art studios in every neighborhood without exception. They should be integrated into the social and physical fabric of the streets. If we want a lively city, we can't just have high towers and dense constructions, we have to have living organisms of streets and neighborhoods. And the arts are a crucial part of that.