Just a few hundred metres from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion—one of the main venues of the Los Angeles Music Center and home to the city’s opera company—the streets of downtown LA, especially around Skid Row, told a story no official agenda could afford to ignore. Tents lined the sidewalks. Cultural wealth coexisted with systemic neglect. Tensions were mounting in the city, and riots would soon break out—adding an urgent, volatile backdrop to a gathering on the future of cultural districts. It was a setting as fitting as it was uncomfortable.
I was there to take part in the Global Cultural Districts Network (GCDN) Annual Convening, a three-day event from May 19 to 21 that brought together directors of major cultural institutions, public policy leaders, curators and urbanists from around the world. We came to explore how cultural districts can respond to the defining challenges of our time: climate adaptation, community resilience, cultural equity, or urban precarity.
And over the course of those days, housing became the silent protagonist. It wasn’t always at the centre of discussion, but it surfaced everywhere—on panels, in corridors, over lunch. Cultural districts want to lead processes of equity and regeneration… but how can they do that if the communities they aim to serve can no longer afford to live nearby?
Culture does not live in a vacuum. In the session I moderated—Creative Recovery: Restoring Places, Rebuilding Communities—we focused on the role of culture in post-disaster recovery. Leslie Ito, director of the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, highlighted how rooted institutions can create spaces of trust, continuity and emotional care after traumatic events. Janet Newcomb, director of the National Coalition for Arts Preparedness and Emergency Response (NCAPER), showed how the cultural sector in the United States is organising to become part of emergency response systems.
Yes, we spoke of disasters. But not just earthquakes or floods. Los Angeles knows fires, evictions and the homelessness crisis. It also knows that disasters don’t always strike suddenly. Sometimes they’re the slow erosion of inclusion, rising rents, and the loss of social bonds. We cannot speak of recovery or cultural infrastructure without speaking of housing. Period. Cultural districts cannot speak of equity while displacing their own communities. They must take responsibility—for the land, for the people, and for continuity.
When museums engage with housing, it doesn’t necessarily mean every cultural institution must directly build or lease apartments—though some pioneering cases are doing just that. What’s really changing is that more and more institutions are becoming central players in housing policy and urban justice conversations.
And that’s no coincidence. Cultural institutions often manage large amounts of land, receive public funding, and hold significant urban influence. They can—and must—be part of building a liveable, inclusive and sustainable urban environment. Not doing so would mean renouncing a core part of their transformative potential.
This commitment goes beyond artist residencies or staff accommodation. It’s about actively contributing to vibrant, diverse neighbourhoods where culture is not just programming, but also a vehicle for belonging, dignity and decent living conditions.
It’s a profound shift—but an urgent one. Because a cultural district that celebrates diversity while fuelling displacement is, quite simply, a contradiction. A home is the first cultural infrastructure. Without housing, participation becomes a privilege.
From Los Angeles to Valencia, recovery requires presence. Back home, the Innovació per a la Recuperació (Innovation for Recovery) initiative—launched by Placemaking Europe and eldiario.es—highlighted a similar tension. After the floods, people didn’t just want technical aid: they wanted recognition, stability and voice. They wanted to be part of a future that included them.
