The Geography of Buzz

Research about cultural industries argues that the arts economy helps to make cities more dynamic places, as the industry both supports and is supported by other advanced service sectors in the city. The reciprocity between these economic sectors helps to establish places with rich cultural environments that benefit all industrial sectors. While this argument has been made largely through ethnographic studies and interviews, attempts to spatially analyze these dynamics have been limited by data scale and to certain areas of the industry production chain (e.g. firm location and worker residence). This is because much of the arts and culture industry data available establishes where goods are produced, rather than informal spaces, where much of the industry transactions actually occur. It is these social settings, where the arts industry rubs up against its colleagues and those whom are interested in consuming their products that sets the economic pace of the industry.

In the summer of 2008, the Spatial Information Design Lab set out to analyze the unique spatial and social dynamics that are created by the arts and entertainment industries in New York City and Los Angeles. Working with Elizabeth Currid from the University of Southern California, the lab used a database of arts and entertainment event photography by Getty Images as a proxy for social interaction in geographical space. Because photographs taken by Getty are tagged with location information, they are transformed into data with an unexpectedly powerful spatial component.

The results of the research showed that both Los Angeles and New York have unique “event geographies”, or locations of interest to Getty photographers that reappear at a statistically high rate than the rest of the city. While each separate arts industry showed some tendencies toward specific geographic locations the events geographies of all the industries are largely held in very similar locations, suggesting that event geographies appear to be closely linked to iconic symbols in both cities.