As numerous authors have noted since the 1980s, this championing of artists and creative types also sees them deployed as the “shock troops of gentrification” (Bowler and McBurney 1993; Harris 2013; Makagon 2010). Attracted to neighbourhoods that offer low rent, little surveillance, and large spaces for studios, visual artists, designers, actors, dancers and others have often unwittingly participated in colonizing poor, often racialized zones. As “creatives” move in, they, along with the services they attract (coffee shops, art galleries), make these neighbourhoods more appealing to affluent individuals and property speculators, thereby attracting the attention of the police and other authorities who were, hitherto, largely satisfied to ignore these areas.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 462