I was excited by the title of a recent post on the Americans for the Arts blog earlier this week.  “Assessing Cultural Infrastructure,” would seem to be right up the alley of my interests in evaluation and creative placemaking, but the bulk of the piece is about anchor buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and the new Louvre being designed for construction in Abu Dabai, whose emir wants it to become the cultural capital of the region.  Such projects stand in stark contrast to what Stern and Siefert call “Natural Cultural Districts,” in which neighborhoods grow cultural assets from within, often with the help of artists who work there.  Such areas seem to me to be at the heart of truly creative places.  That is why keeping the art and the artist at the center has become the hidden subtitle of the upcoming Pave symposium: Entrepreneurship, the Arts, and Creative Placemaking.  How can arts entrepreneurial activity build on the assets that already exist in communities while also building new ones?  Join the discussion in Tempe and Phoenix next week!