Creative Class
Cities and the Creative Class
Richard Florida∗
Carnegie Mellon University
Cities and regions have long captured the imagination of sociologists, economists, and urbanists. From Alfred Marshall to Robert Park and Jane Jacobs, cities have been seen as cauldrons of diversity and difference and as fonts for creativity and innovation. Yet until recently, social scientists concerned with regional growth and development have focused mainly on the role of firms in cities, and particularly on how these firms make location decisions and to what extent they concentrate together in agglomerations or clusters. This short article summarizes recent advances in our thinking about cities and communities, and does so particularly in light of themes …show more content…
We found that talent or creative capital is attracted to places that score high on our basic indicators of diversity—the Gay, Bohemian, and other indexes. It is not because high-tech industries are populated by great numbers of bohemians and gay people; rather, artists, musicians, gay people, and members of the creative class in general prefer places that are open and diverse. Such low entry barriers are especially important because, today, places grow not just through higher birth rates (in fact virtually all U.S. cities are declining on this measure), but by their ability to attract people from the outside. As we have already seen, human capital theorists have shown that economic growth is closely associated with concentrations of highly-educated people. But few studies have
10
CITIES AND THE CREATIVE CLASS
specifically looked at the relationship between talent and technology, between clusters of educated and creative people and concentrations of innovation and high-tech industry.
Using our measure of the creative class and the basic Talent Index, we examined …show more content…
Inspired by the Milken Institute study, we dubbed this the Melting
Pot Index. The effect of openness to immigration on regions is mixed. Four out of the top
10 regions on the Melting Pot Index are also among the nation’s top 10 high-technology areas; and seven of the top 10 are in the top 25 high-tech regions. The Melting Pot Index is positively associated with the Tech-Pole Index statistically. Clearly as University of California at Berkeley researcher Annalee Saxenian argues, immigration is associated with high-tech industry (Saxenian, 1999). However, immigration is not strongly associated with innovation. The Melting Pot Index is not statistically correlated with the Innovation
Index, measured as rates of patenting. Although it is positively associated with population growth, it is not correlated with job growth. Furthermore, places that are open to immigration do not necessarily number among the leading creative-class centers. Even though 12 of the top 20 Melting Pot regions number in the top 20 centers for the creative class, there is no significant statistical relationship between the Melting Pot Index and the creative class.
THE GAY INDEX
Immigrants may be important to regional growth, but there are other types of
Richard Florida∗
Carnegie Mellon University
Cities and regions have long captured the imagination of sociologists, economists, and urbanists. From Alfred Marshall to Robert Park and Jane Jacobs, cities have been seen as cauldrons of diversity and difference and as fonts for creativity and innovation. Yet until recently, social scientists concerned with regional growth and development have focused mainly on the role of firms in cities, and particularly on how these firms make location decisions and to what extent they concentrate together in agglomerations or clusters. This short article summarizes recent advances in our thinking about cities and communities, and does so particularly in light of themes …show more content…
We found that talent or creative capital is attracted to places that score high on our basic indicators of diversity—the Gay, Bohemian, and other indexes. It is not because high-tech industries are populated by great numbers of bohemians and gay people; rather, artists, musicians, gay people, and members of the creative class in general prefer places that are open and diverse. Such low entry barriers are especially important because, today, places grow not just through higher birth rates (in fact virtually all U.S. cities are declining on this measure), but by their ability to attract people from the outside. As we have already seen, human capital theorists have shown that economic growth is closely associated with concentrations of highly-educated people. But few studies have
10
CITIES AND THE CREATIVE CLASS
specifically looked at the relationship between talent and technology, between clusters of educated and creative people and concentrations of innovation and high-tech industry.
Using our measure of the creative class and the basic Talent Index, we examined …show more content…
Inspired by the Milken Institute study, we dubbed this the Melting
Pot Index. The effect of openness to immigration on regions is mixed. Four out of the top
10 regions on the Melting Pot Index are also among the nation’s top 10 high-technology areas; and seven of the top 10 are in the top 25 high-tech regions. The Melting Pot Index is positively associated with the Tech-Pole Index statistically. Clearly as University of California at Berkeley researcher Annalee Saxenian argues, immigration is associated with high-tech industry (Saxenian, 1999). However, immigration is not strongly associated with innovation. The Melting Pot Index is not statistically correlated with the Innovation
Index, measured as rates of patenting. Although it is positively associated with population growth, it is not correlated with job growth. Furthermore, places that are open to immigration do not necessarily number among the leading creative-class centers. Even though 12 of the top 20 Melting Pot regions number in the top 20 centers for the creative class, there is no significant statistical relationship between the Melting Pot Index and the creative class.
THE GAY INDEX
Immigrants may be important to regional growth, but there are other types of