Toronto has this, as a percentage of construction costs. Art installations must go through a process, and it has created some beautiful art for the city.

I think for major sites that will have a significant public impact, this makes sense to be mandatory. Some cities are requiring 1% of hard costs to be put towards public art for every project. That is a considerable amount of money being invested in art that could be going to a variety of other things, such as affordable housing. I don't think its needed on every single street corner. It makes sense for smaller projects to pay into a public art fund for larger civic art projects and major projects to incorporate iconic pieces. The pendulum has swung a little too far in this case and many cities are following Vancouvers lead.

That's a great point about the money going to other more important initiatives like affordable housing, Brad. Certainly Vancouver is a place that is wanting for more affordable housing rather than public art -- as nice as much of the city's art is.

For large scale projects developers are mandated to provide a certain level of CACs (Community Amenity Contributions), which involves a negotiation with the City and often results in parks, social housing or investment in arts. The reason that small artists are not seeing the benefit is that the amount of the CACs required is several hundred thousand to several million. If the City did not mandate such high CACs then investment in small local artists could be made, but unfortunately its much harder to buy 500 $2k pieces of art than one $1M piece. Also if CACs were reduced the cost to build would be less and sale prices would be reduced leading to more artists being able to afford their own place.