We spend a lot of time talking about Tacoma as an arts town. Having lived in some spectacular arts communities – from Brooklyn to Houston to San Francisco and Seattle — it’s easy to see why Tacoma wants to make art and creativity a centerpiece in its grand development plans. Communities that support and build on their creative assets grow quickly. And fostering creativity as an economic driver is really, really hot right now. That’s right — arts as an economic development platform is trendy. Really, really trendy. And I’m not sure I like the trend.

John Eger, executive director of the California Institute for Smart Communities, says that cities across the country have been struggling to reinvent themselves to capitalize on fundamental changes occurring in our economy. We are becoming a nation of thinkers and inventors — a nation of creatives — and moving away from the manufacturing stuff as an economic foundation.

You’re getting bored. I can feel it. Sorry. Back to arts.

So Eger, one of many economic development hipsters emerging on the scene, says that we’ve done a great job of preparing for the information economy. Remember America’s No. 1 Wired City? But the information economy is passé now. Next up is the creative economy, as popularized by economic development hipster Richard Florida, who came to Tacoma a few years ago to teach us how to capitalize on our creative assets.

 “At the heart of this effort is recognition of the vital role that art and culture play in enhancing economic development, and ultimately, defining a ‘creative community’ — one that exploits the vital linkages between art, culture and commerce, and in the process consciously invests in human and financial resources to prepare its citizens to meet the challenges of the rapidly evolving post-industrial, knowledge-based economy and society,” Eger says.

So why, when I read this, does it make my artistic soul shiver?

I guess it’s because I fear that we’ll do to creativity what we’ve done to industry — exploit it until its left as dry and useless as a dead locust. We’ve already capitalized all material being. Next target — commoditization of the imagination. I rue the day when all creativity and awareness is privatized – our will to create being packaged, appropriated, adulterated, marketed and sold back to us at a premium. Even our rebellion against this process is being turned into a marketing scheme — “Be a rebel — buy a Scion!” or “Image is nothing, taste is everything” as a slogan for some tasteless soft drink.

As we build on Tacoma’s creative assets, it will be important to remember why art and creativity is so meaningful and potent as an economic driver. Its true significance — its power — depends on its continued existence outside the clutches of commerce, in the realm of imagination — in its ability to generate the ideas that become the products and institutions that drive our economy. How, or whether at all, we’ll preserve that sacred power as we build this arts town remains to be seen.