I've personally noticed that multiple US cities have (conveniently?) removed 'room for the arts'/counterculture slowly and almost imperceptibly since the 1980s.

I've personally noticed that multiple US cities have (conveniently?) removed 'room for the arts'/counterculture slowly and almost imperceptibly since the 1980s. Easily-affordable housing (for creatives and low-income students) and storefronts (for their works, performances, and socializing) have been (carelessly? carefully?) shoved aside for more gentrified concerns. Individualized 'cafes' have been 'Starbucked'. The 'unifying conformancy' is never matched by unified rights or incomes. Non-journalist Gibson smelled the 'trend' early. It is also visible in videos which wander 'developed' world city streets. Space for inscrutable (nothing to say) welded sculptures/'child-like' murals always seems to be found. And space for 'approved' historic cultures. But not for an underground press, nor for non-violent protest, nor for authentic graffiti. Not nearly as total, then, but somewhat like North Korea, the land of identical choices. Edit: "Through the policing of all these scales, moral geographies contribute to the construction of desired "Singaporean" identities." ( Singapore Lily on "Music and moral geographies: Constructions of "nation" and identity in Singapore" [https://www.jstor.org/stable/41148026 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41148026])