Row Houses
Excerpt # 5 from
Beyond The Numbers: Inadequacies of Creative Placemaking Criteria
A different example of a way to group people into a community that has been noticed due to the transformational success of a more individualized project is Project Row Houses, located in the Third Ward of southeast Houston. Rick Lowe began the project in 1993. Having moved to Houston and taken up residence in the predominantly black Third Ward, Lowe says,
“I was doing big, billboard-size paintings and cutout sculptures dealing with social issues, and one of the students told me that, sure, the work reflected what was going on in his community, but it wasn’t what the community needed. If I was an artist, he said, why didn’t I come up with some kind of creative solution to issues instead of just telling people like him what they already knew. That was the defining moment that pushed me out of the studio.”
Project Row Houses has blossomed from an initial idea of restoring a few abandoned row houses into an entire, active, thriving community. The houses are filled with artists’ studios and exhibits, subsidized housing for young mothers and offices for non-profits. In 2011 the houses were listed on Travel and Leisure’s “America’s Coolest Houses” list. There are many personal testimonies of individual lives that have been touched, transformed and changed by the work accomplished through the Project Row Houses.
As with another community project, the Mural Project of Philadelphia, a similar phenomenon has occurred with the Third Ward of Houston. Since the success of Project Row Houses it has garnered media attention and an influx of tourists interested in seeing exactly what is happening. This has occurred naturally because what is thriving attracts activity, but this attention was definitely not the initial goal of Lowe when he purchased the first group of row houses. However, it is hard to deny the impact that the project has had on many elements of the community, including its overall image and economics. It is also important to note that the point of the Row Houses, as with the Mural Project, was to offer solutions to very real community issues, not to create a creative place. The Row Houses’ success stemmed from the building and rebuilding of a network of relationships, an establishment of a community ecosystem, where each part is connected to the other. Lowe himself states, “We’re talking about continuity. Our interest is not just in affordable housing. It’s also to create opportunities for artists to live here. Diversity allows people to grow, through each other.” Places like Philadelphia, Delray Beach, Fla., and Watts in Los Angeles have approached Lowe about doing urban renewal projects.
“I talk to them… but never with the intention that I could reproduce what I’m doing here. Change depends on people who know, live and stay in a community; it has to come from inside and starts with an artist’s mind-set.”
Copyright 2013