Leadership Quote by Gavin Newsom

Newsom’s line is a politician’s greatest hit: culture framed not as a luxury, but as infrastructure. The intent is pragmatic persuasion. He’s selling the arts to audiences who might tune out at the word “artist” but perk up at “jobs,” “public safety,” and “revitalizing neighborhoods.” It’s arts funding translated into the language of city hall metrics, the kind that can survive a budget meeting.

The subtext is a careful rerouting of the usual argument. Instead of claiming art is inherently valuable, he claims it is instrumentally useful: it “uses” vacant space, “generates” foot traffic, “improves” safety. That cascade of verbs does political work. It positions creativity as an engine for order and economic activity, not disorder or indulgence. “Eyes on the street” nods to Jane Jacobs’ urbanist gospel, borrowing her legitimacy to imply that murals, galleries, and performances can function like informal policing: people out late, streets watched, crime deterred.

Context matters because “revitalization” is rarely neutral. It’s a word that can mean community renewal or the prelude to displacement, depending on who gets the new jobs and who can still afford the rent once the neighborhood becomes “an opportunity.” By foregrounding vacancy, Newsom points to a real civic problem - dead space - while softening the harder questions about why it’s vacant and what happens after it becomes desirable.

It’s effective rhetoric because it makes the arts legible to power: not a plea for beauty, but a promise of measurable outcomes. The risk is that it reduces artists to a tool of redevelopment, celebrated until they’ve raised property values high enough to be priced out.