COMMENT Over the past decade, the impact of music and cultural policy in real estate and city planning has advanced significantly. There are many successes to point to, from the landmark Grassroots Music Venues Rescue Plan issued by the mayor of London in 2015, which first introduced the night czar position, to the inclusion of the “agent of change” principle in the London Plan.
A host of cities have invested in music and cultural planning, including Cardiff, Manchester, Belfast, Hull and Leeds, and landmark music and cultural infrastructure has opened from Manchester’s Factory to Sunderland’s Fire Station.
Taking from London’s example, Manchester, Bristol and Birmingham now have officers responsible for the night-time economy, and Bradford and Glasgow are among the cities with music officer positions. The property sector has seen music venues increase yield, including at Printworks in Canada Water (to be brought back in 2026 despite initially being only a meanwhile use) and Mayfield in Manchester.
Cultural and night-time enterprise zones criss-cross London. The Music Venue Trust even launched a property company. Music – and the wider cultural night-time economy – is much more ingrained in how we plan and govern.
Bolted on, not built in
Challenges remain, however. Grassroots music venues and nightclubs are in crisis. Single noise complaints continue to threaten existing venues and entertainment premises, such as the case with Manchester’s Night & Day Café, which increases costs and the emotional burden for councils, landowners and residents.
A disconnect between long-term planning considerations and licensing on the ground continues to exist. No cultural creators were invited to prime minister Rishi Sunak’s AI conference, and there remains little understanding of the role of intangible assets in how they impact real asset value. And while there are bright spots, such as Ballymore’s investment in the arts and Legal & General’s turnover-based rents, which include cultural tenants, they remain outliers, not industry practice.
We must do better, because doing better makes financial sense. Music and culture should increase yield and IRR, but we need to incorporate it intentionally in order to solve problems in communities. And these problems are expansive, such as activating disused commercial space, animating high streets, supporting community development and developing a story to introduce and sell a place. Music and culture play an active role.
Incorporating music and cultural uses into planning obligations can foster better local relationships, reducing the cost and time involved in planning. A robust understanding of local music and culture creates more locally sensitive public art and cultural programming, which drives footfall and supports commercial tenants. But it’s often bolted on, not built in. Music and culture are costs, not investments, and as a result we lack a core foundation that asserts how music – and wider culture – has long-tail value in how we design, plan and build.
Rewired cities
This is why I wrote my book, This Must Be the Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better. I have been involved in both music and real estate since 2015, including producing, with U+I’s support, the first music and real estate conference in 2016. The book is my attempt to explain, and explore, how if we continue to rewire how we think about cities and places – and place culture at the heart of all decisions we make – we can create better, more prosperous and more equitable places that make landowners more money. At its core is a simple premise: value what happens inside the building at least as much as we value the dirt it sits on.
Music is one of the only things that we don’t need to live but most of us would struggle to live without. If we want better cities and places that return more on investment, we need the property sector to see music and culture not as a nice-to-have, but a need-to-have.
Shain Shapiro is the founder of Sound Diplomacy
