Category: issues

San Francisco To Make Its Busiest Street Car-Free

“It can’t be overlooked that San Francisco has some heavyweight car-free peers. Once, pedestrianized urban cores were largely the domain of enlightened mid-sized cities in northern Europe. But now Paris and Barcelona have expanded the concept, and Toronto is mulling a car blockade for multiple downtown corridors. London charges a pricy fee for vehicles entering its busy streets, and New York City will follow with its own congestion pricing scheme in 2021.” – CityLab

Orange County’s Segerstrom Center Gets A New Leader

He’s Casy Reitz, currently executive director of New York’s Second Stage. “Before taking the position at the Second Stage Theater in September of 2010, Reitz was director of development at the Public Theater and director of individual giving at Manhattan Theatre Club. He holds a master’s in fine arts in theater management from Yale School of Drama and an undergraduate degree in theater from the University of Alabama.” – Voice of OC

Who Are The Bots Watching Us (And Our Stories)?

Bots worm their way into everything, including the once much more intimate Instagram Stories. Why? To get more engagement back. (There’s a Russian “secret app” for this social media marketing tool. Truly.) “This mass viewing strategy exploits our tendency to take an interest in people who appear to take an interest in us, a phenomenon social psychologists call reciprocal liking.” – Slate

Do We Need Critics For Cities?

Given how long we’ve relied on the work of critics on film, music, food, and much else besides, as well as the ever-increasing relevance of cities in our lives, it’s time we recognised city criticism as its own distinct category of writing. But what is city criticism — or rather, what isn’t it? – The Guardian

Dallas Placed 149th Among U.S. Cities On The Arts Vibrancy Index. Here’s How One Organization Is Trying To Change That

“The Arts Community Alliance (TACA) … has been raising money for the arts in Dallas since 1967. Today it doles that money out in the form of more than 60 general operating, artist residency and new works grants each year. … But in addition to providing monetary support, a big part of TACA’s role in Dallas is what [TACA’s executive director] calls arts leadership. It more or less means helping carve a path forward for the local arts community as a whole.” – SMU Data Arts

Activists Want The Oscars, Emmys And Tonys To Give Up Gendered Acting Categories. That Isn’t Happening. (Yet.)

“The debate has roots in older conversations about whether carving out places in a male-dominated field for one group, in this case women, comes at the cost of excluding others. Proponents of gendered categories say that absent such distinctions, men would dominate the nominees and winners.” – The New York Times

Band-Aids And Sticking Plasters: UK Government Promise Of More Culture Investment In Perspective

With local authority funding for culture now more than £236m lower than in 2010, and museums alone having lost £109m in annual funding over the past decade, the Government’s promise of £250m for culture over the next five years will at best put a sticking plaster on a patient with a life-threatening injury. – Arts Professional

There’s Doublethink At The Heart Of Arts Awards, And This Year’s Double Booker Prize Brought It To The Surface

“Everyone agrees that competition is the enemy of art. And yet, on the whole, there is also an agreement to conspire in the notion that it isn’t. This paradox, this doublethink, usually works fine, since it opens up the space in which the extra-artistic functions of prizes can be fulfilled.” Charlotte Higgins analyzes how this doublethink works — and how the decision of this year’s Booker jury to flout the prize’s rules messed it up. – The Guardian