RENT GOVERNANCE AND THE RETENTION OF CREATIVE PRODUCERS IN INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE

УПРАВЛЕНИЕ АРЕНДНОЙ ПЛАТОЙ И УДЕРЖАНИЕ ТВОРЧЕСКИХ ПРОИЗВОДИТЕЛЕЙ В ИНДУСТРИАЛЬНОМ НАСЛЕДИИ

Малыгина Анна

студент, Институт управления, Президентская академия РАНХиГС,

РФ, г. Москва

ABSTRACT

The displacement of creative producers from converted industrial sites is usually described as an emergent effect of successful regeneration. This article argues that it is a predictable consequence of the rent-setting arrangement adopted at the outset. A comparison of four sites in Finland, the Netherlands and Russia identifies two working mechanisms of rent decoupling and shows that curating tenants without governing the rent selects for solvency rather than for creative production. Five design parameters are proposed for evaluating such projects.

АННОТАЦИЯ

Вытеснение творческих резидентов с реконструированных промышленных площадок принято описывать как побочный эффект успешной реконструкции. В статье обосновывается это явление как предсказуемое следствие модели установления арендной платы, выбранной на старте проекта. Сравнение четырёх площадок в Финляндии, Нидерландах и России выявляет два работающих механизма расцепления арендной платы и показывает, что кураторский отбор резидентов без управления ставкой отбирает по платёжеспособности. Предложены пять проектных параметров для оценки таких проектов.

Keywords: industrial heritage; adaptive reuse; creative clusters; cultural management; rent governance; displacement.

Ключевые слова: индустриальное наследие; адаптивное использование; креативные кластеры; менеджмент культуры; управление арендной платой; вытеснение.

The conversion of disused industrial sites into creative clusters is among the most widely replicated instruments of culture-led urban regeneration. A recurring pattern undercuts its promise: the creative producers whose presence makes a converted site attractive are, within a decade or so, priced out by the tenants that this attractiveness draws in, and the building keeps the visual grammar of creative production while its economic function shifts from making things to selling them. The standard explanation treats this as gentrification, a quasi-automatic cycle in which artistic occupation raises land values which in turn expel the artists. That explanation carries an unhelpful implication: if displacement is an emergent property of success, it cannot be managed, only regretted. This article treats it instead as a design variable, and specifically as a function of whether the rent paid by creative tenants is institutionally decoupled from the prevailing market rate.

Framework and method

A recent study of the Ouseburn Valley in Newcastle upon Tyne notes that although regeneration and displacement have been examined at length, considerably less attention has been paid to the characteristics that allow creative clusters to consolidate and stabilise over the medium and long term [1]. That study addresses the gap through the materiality of buildings; the governance dimension, the rules under which occupancy is granted and priced, remains largely open. Tenure insecurity is meanwhile structural rather than incidental, since most studio space is rented rather than owned and a substantial share is held on leases of under five years [2]. Rent decoupling is defined here as an institutionalised arrangement that sets the rent payable by a defined category of creative occupants independently of the market rate for comparable floor space. A temporary discount does not qualify: the arrangement must be fixed in a rule or contract, must persist beyond a single lease term, and must attach to a defined category of tenant. Occupants are classed as production, where goods, works or performances are made; mediation, where they are exhibited, taught or programmed; and consumption, where they are sold or consumed. Displacement is the erosion of the first in favour of the third.

The study is a structured focused comparison of four cases through documentary analysis, each described against an identical grid and forming a descending ladder of decoupling: internal cross-subsidy within a publicly owned operator (Helsinki), an external municipal instrument with a capped rent (Amsterdam), curated selection without a rent mechanism (Tula), and commercial letting (Moscow). Placing one Russian and one European case on each side of the decisive distinction prevents the comparison from collapsing into a contrast between national cultures. Three limitations apply. Tenant profiles are characterised from operators' own promotional descriptions rather than audited registers. The analysis is cross-sectional, and causal direction is addressed by establishing that in every case the governance arrangement was instituted, or conspicuously not instituted, before the profile now observed had formed. Four cases support analytical rather than statistical generalisation.

Four governance models

Helsinki: internal cross-subsidy. The Cable Factory occupies a complex built between 1939 and 1954 for cable manufacture. Artists moved into the vacated halls in the late 1980s and, when demolition was proposed, organised as the association Pro Kaapeli, whose objectives the City then endorsed [3]. In 1991 the City established a real estate company to renovate and let the buildings for the needs of the arts, culture and handicrafts; it is city-owned but self-financing, deriving income almost entirely from rents without public subsidy, and now has more than three hundred long-term tenants [4]. The decisive mechanism is neither ownership nor curation: the Cable Factory introduced a staggered schedule of rents under which tenant artists pay less than commercial operators [3]. Decoupling here is internal, with commercial tenants and event lettings cross-subsidising creative occupants within a single balance sheet, which answers the objection that below-market rents require permanent public expenditure. The profile remains production-weighted, comprising studios, three museums, ten galleries, dance theatres and art schools [4].

Amsterdam: an external instrument with a capped rent. Here the mechanism sits outside the operator. Bureau Broedplaatsen, created by the City Council in 1999 with a mandate described as reproducing the low cost and light regulation of the squats within a legitimate policy framework, identifies vacant property, calls for proposals from creative entrepreneurs and negotiates a low-cost or no-cost lease for a fixed period, typically ten years [5]. The subsidy regulation converts this into explicit numbers: up to three hundred and fifty euros per square metre of gross floor area, conditional on at least forty per cent of the space being reserved for creative occupants, the building remaining available for at least three years, and studio rents staying between one hundred and fifty and three hundred and ten euros per month [6]. That the best-known site under this framework, the former NDSM shipyard, also hosts cafes, bars and music venues is a finding rather than a defect: decoupling does not exclude commerce, it reserves a share against it.

Tula: curation without a rent mechanism. The Oktava cluster occupies part of a radio equipment plant in central Tula, developed jointly by a private investor and a state corporation. Its occupants include a library with a lecture hall and bookshop, a higher technical school, a technology laboratory, a recording studio and a multimedia museum of machine tools [7]. Selection is substantive: the operator admits organisations directly connected with the creative industries. What it does not do is govern the price, since occupancy is arranged as long-term commercial tenancy and residents are accordingly expected to be able to pay [8]. This case is the most instructive of the four, because it shows that curation and rent governance are separable instruments. A sectoral filter applied to a market price selects for solvency as much as for creative relevance, and the consequence is a profile weighted towards organisations with institutional or corporate funding rather than independent makers working at their own risk.

Moscow: commercial letting. The Moscow site opened in 2009 on the territory of a former crystal factory and was founded by an entrepreneur who specialised in acquiring industrial enterprises and converting them into office centres [9]. The business model was declared from the outset and the creative programme layered onto it. The current public directory of residents lists agencies and design studios alongside an educational project for the beauty industry, two clothing brands, a pasta bar, a loft space let for celebrations and a guitar shop [10]. In 2021 the founder sold the complex while retaining the Flacon brand for himself, after which the site was renamed simply Design Zavod [9]. The creative identity proved separable from the place: because no rule attached a reserved creative share to the property, nothing in the transfer of ownership obliged the new proprietor to maintain one.

Table 1.

Governance parameters across the four cases

Discussion and conclusion

Three propositions follow. Rent decoupling is not a single instrument but a family of them, achieved internally in Helsinki by cross-subsidy within one operator's accounts and externally in Amsterdam by a capital subsidy conditional on a capped rent. Public ownership is neither necessary nor sufficient: the Helsinki operator is city-owned yet self-financing, the Amsterdam instrument attaches to property frequently in private hands, and the Tula cluster enjoys state-corporate backing with no mechanism at all. The operative variable is therefore the rule governing price, not the legal form of ownership, which matters mainly as a means of making such a rule durable. And decoupling reserves a share rather than excluding commerce: both European cases host bars and commercial lettings, but there those revenues are tied to the creative share, whereas in the two Russian cases they compete with it on equal terms.

Five design parameters follow, applicable at the planning stage of a reuse project. Is the concession expressed as a rule rather than as a discretionary discount? Is the creative share defined as a minimum proportion of floor area rather than as an intention? Is the rent expressed as an absolute corridor or as a stated fraction of the market rate? Is the term long enough to allow the tenant to invest in the premises, given that a low rent held for two years is not [2]? And, decisively, does the arrangement attach to the property in such a way that it survives a change of owner? Displacement is on this reading better understood as the consequence of a decision than as a side effect of success. Russian practice has developed a sophisticated capacity for curation but not rent governance, and the missing instrument is not a theoretical construct, since it exists in at least two working versions with published parameters. The natural extension of this work is empirical: a systematic coding of complete tenant directories into production, mediation and consumption, compared across time and applied to sites that have undergone a documented change of ownership.

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