The identity that residence in the inner city provides is important for the gentrifier, and this is particularly so in the artists' case. Their cultural emancipation from the bourgeois makes the central city an appealing alternative that distances them from the conformity and mundaneness attributed to suburban life. They are quintessential city people, and the city is often a functional choice as well, for city life has advantages that include connections to customers and a closer proximity to a downtown art scene, all of which are more likely to be limited in a suburban setting. Ley's research cites a quote from a Vancouver printmaker talking about the importance of inner city life to an artist, that it has, "energy, intensity, hard to specify but hard to do without".