The space of ideas: Public art policy and the concept of urban model spaces

The urban policy mobility literature describes the widespread circulation of policy ideas while highlighting their mutations along the way. At the same time, the literature often analyzes the localization of such ideas by examining their adoption in one or several cities. To better understand policy replications and mutations, we develop theoretical and methodological strategies that provide sensitivity to both local distinctiveness and global variability. We build on the Urban Policy Mobility literature and combine it with ecological theories of conceptual spaces to develop the concept of Urban Model Spaces—a matrix of discursive possibilities evolving from the accumulated replications and localizations of a model. We articulate it via three core properties central to Urban Policy Mobility—Temporality, Scale, and Position—and test how they shape the emergence of policy discourses. To demonstrate the concept we analyze public art policy and the funding mechanism of the Percent for Art ordinance from 26 cities combining Structural Topic Modeling and regression analysis.