Artists, architects, fashion designers ... New York used to be a magnet for them. But as the cost of real estate and health care skyrockets, and other locales are willing to cut them a deal, many are fleeing the metropolis.

Some excerpts from the NYT story:

... 20 years ago, New York was the headquarters for half of the world's advertising agencies, but is now home to fewer than a third, according to the report, written by the Center for an Urban Future, a left-leaning New York research group that analyzes urban policy issues.

While the city still is home to most of the American publishing industry, the number of jobs in that field fell 3 percent in the last decade in New York, while increasing in San Francisco, Boston and Denver. And from 2001 to 2004, the number of jobs in New York City's motion picture and sound recording industries declined by 36 percent.

"The danger for New York is, if we don't really start addressing the needs in the creative sector," said Robin Keegan, the lead researcher of the study, "we will not be able to do the origination" of many artistic products that the city has long been known for.

It is generally agreed that world-class cities are defined by a vibrant and diverse cultural life that offers both a large symphony and small theater companies, couture dress designers and tiny hat makers, art museums filled with impressionist paintings and hole-in-the-wall galleries where local glass makers show their stuff.

Only in New York and London, the report pointed out, could Willem Dafoe make a big-budget holiday film by day and then make his nightly constitutional downtown to work with an experimental theater group. ...

Skyrocketing prices on housing and professional space have driven many artists out of the very neighborhoods they helped to pioneer, and other cities, including Philadelphia and Minneapolis, have been very aggressive at luring artists their way with marketing campaigns and housing incentives.

To a lesser exent, this is happening in Toronto. Queen West between Peter and Spadina was the height of bohemia 20 years ago.

The artists are continually getting pushed further west along Queen as rents rise (even between Bathurst and Shaw, you now get such non-funky businesses as Gabby's Food and Fuel, The Nutty Chocolatier and Hero Burger. Queen West is turning into the Beaches. Blecch!!)

From what I've heard, if you're a Canadian artist making $50K/yr off your work, you're very successful. Most young artists I know work construction or do other stuff to feed their passion.

They need cheap space in which to create, yet that's becoming rare in Toronto. At what point will we see an exodus of the creative class from here?