LECTURE 2: FROM THE CREATIVE CLASS TO THE CREATIVE CITY - UNPACKING THE CREATIVE ECONOMY AT THE MACRO-SCALE

Question 1

Old (Adam Smith style) theory of why some places prosper and why others don’t?

Answer 1

Cities become rich or powerful because of the access to specific resources –> e.g. being located next to fertile farmland, forests and mineral deposits was the key but being next to rivers, harbours and good transportation routes was also important.

Question 2

Driving force behind the I.R. was…and…

Answer 2

.. manufacturing woo!

availability of lots of cheap labour

Question 3

What does regional competition imply?

Answer 3

Cities would try to attract manufacturing companies to set up a factory in their town or city because they knew this would create jobs and prosperity

Question 4

1) What would cities promise (during regional competition?)

2) Name

Answer 4

1) Cheap land, low taxes and relaxed labour and environmental regulations if they relocated there
2) Smoke-stack chasing.

Question 5

Most prosperous economies are it is not about big polluting factories anymore is it?
So what happened?

Answer 5

Economy has shifted from being based on natural resources or manufacturing to ideas and innovation

Question 6

1) What is the ‘new knowledge economy’ based on?

2) How does it generate growth and wealth? (2)

Answer 6

1) Intellectual capital

2) By creating new products and new markets and by coming up with better ways to design or build existing products

Question 7

1) e.g. of Apple generating wealth

2) Value of materials vs product design

Answer 7

1) Didn’t invent computers etc but through knowledge, innovation and design, they improved upon them to become successful
2) Value of the materials, the production and the distribution is very small compared to the value of the product design

Question 8

If ideas drive the economy, then prosperity increasingly rests on…

Answer 8

… attracting skilled knowledge workers or talent

Question 9

Skilled knowledge workers or talent are not tied to specific places but instead are…

Answer 9

… highly mobile in the global economy

Question 10

Talent ___in certain attractive places and firms…

Answer 10

CLUSTER

follow the talent

Question 11

Origin of Florida coming up with idea of creative class

Answer 11

• At the time was living and working in Pittsburg which was a booming city in the industrial age (steel city)
• But during 1980/80s = lost companies, jobs and over 1/2 its pop

Question 12

What could Florida not understand?

Hint: relating back to Pittsburg

Answer 12

Why Pittsburg was losing peeps and jobs and all when the city had world class universities, and infrastructure

–> Had lots of technology companies, sports teams and cultural facilities –> So by any conventional measure it should be attractive for people and companies and should be thriving in the new economy.

Question 13

What did Florida find out after contemplating Pitsburg?

Technology, for example, is important but insufficient if…

Answer 13

Certain things were important on their own not but enough for economic development and prosperity

… you don’t have talent.

Question 14

As florida argues, if the creative capital theory for economic development argues that skilled and educated people drive growth and these people are mobile then the fundamental question becomes…

Answer 14

…why do creative people cluster in certain places?

Question 15

How does Florida define the creative class? (2)

Answer 15

1) “distinguishing characteristic of the Creative Class is that its members engage in work whose function is to create meaningful new forms”
2) Essentially members of the creative class are ‘paid to think’

Question 16

2 groups of creative class

Answer 16

1) SUPER-CREATIVE CORE
- includes scientists, engineers, uni professors, poets and novelists, artists, designers, actors etc

2) CREATIVE PROFESSIONALS
- Work in a wide range of knowledge-intensive industries such as high-tech sectors, financial services, legal and healthcare professions etc

Question 17

US 2014 CC statistic

Answer 17

His creative class included about 41 million Americans which represented roughly 30% of the US workforce

Question 18

Service work vs creative work for importance

Answer 18

In the US, more people do work in the service sector but the majority of the wealth that is generated comes from the creative jobs

Question 19

Critique of Florida…

… but what he actually says

Answer 19

Often accused of promoting the interests of a small group of creative elites at the exclusion and expense of lower skilled workers in the service and working classes

… all human beings are inherently creative and have the potential to be members of the creative class but only a small group are lucky enough to get paid to think.

Question 20

2010: overall average wage for members of CC vs average for working class and service class

Answer 20

• CC members = $70,000/pa
• Working class = $36,000/pa
• Service class = $20,000/pa

Question 21

Variations within the $70,000 earners

Answer 21

Lawyers and people in management earn about 97,000 while designers, media works and people in education earn closer to 50,000.

Question 22

Brian’s research of income of super-creative core

Answer 22

Super creative core like musicians, actors and dancers earn below $15,000

Question 23

When Florida says ‘class’ he doesn’t mean economic class but rather…

Answer 23

… a group unified by the type of work they do

Question 24

So some policies directed at CC, like building new cultural quarters, may be great for… but…

Answer 24

may be great for wealthy lawyers who can afford to take advantage but won’t benefit lower paid creatives let alone manufacturing or service workers

Question 25

CC members and exercise

Answer 25

They are drawn to places that offer active outdoor recreational activities like hiking, cycling, kayaking, skiing and snowboarding –> because creative work is largely intellectual and sedentary = want to go out and be active after a long day of working on the computer

Question 26

CC members preferences @ the cultural level (acc. to Florida)

Answer 26

They are not attracted to places that have professional sports teams or big museums or operas but rather vibrant street level culture e.g. coffee shops, restaurants and bar, bookstores

Question 27

Presence of what attracts creatives who want to be stimulated?

Answer 27

musicians and music scenes

Question 28

CC members and hours

Answer 28

have flexible hours, they want activities that are available all the time. If you don’t finish work until 10 pm, an art gallery that closes at 5 is no good. You need places that are open and music venues and coffee shops usually are

Question 29

CC members and importance of community aspect of a place

• 2 things they want

Answer 29

Because creativity is all about having new ideas, experimenting and taking chances, members of the creative class want to live and work in cities and environments where people are open to new things

• TOLERANCE and DIVERSITY

Question 30

Why ultimately did Pittsburg not keep its top students?

Answer 30

super conservative and corporate that one by one the top talent from his department left for more interesting and tolerant cities like Austin Texas that has a lot of artists and a vibrant live music scene.

Question 31

E.g. of Steve Jobs and why he’s in Silicon Valley

Answer 31

Went to San Fran in 1970s because he was a high school drop out with long hair and no shoes. He said no bank in New York or Chicago would give him a loan or take his business ideas seriously because of his attitude and appearance. But in California, a place filled with immigrants, gays, musicians and artists, nobody cared if you looked crazy, only the talent and the quality of the idea mattered. So Jobs moved to Silicon valley, started apple there and the rest if history.

Question 32

3 main indices to measure tolerance and openness (just names)

Answer 32

1) BOHEMIAN INDEX
2) GAY INDEX
3) MELTING POT/FOREIGN-BORN INDEX

Question 33

BOHEMIAN INDEX

Answer 33

the concentration of working artists, musicians, writers, designers, and entertainers across metropolitan areas

Question 34

GAY INDEX

Answer 34

measure of the fraction of the population that is gay. According to florida, the gay index is a good proxy for diversity, because the gay population is a segment of the population that has long faced discrimination and ostracism

Question 35

MELTING POT/FOREIGN-BORN INDEX

Answer 35

Finds out the percentage of people in a city that were born in another country

Question 36

Purpose of 3 indices of tolerance/diversity

Answer 36

Using them to say that if a place is open to these different people, they will be open to new ideas and will be attractive to members of the creative class

Question 37

Impact of the theory on policy

Answer 37

Idea that people and creativity drive the economy and that in order to prosper economically, places need to cater to and attract members of the creative class has been one of the most influential and controversial academic theories and government policies over the past 10 years

Question 38

Importance of CC theory to geography

Answer 38

Suggests that the local characteristics of specific places matter to attracting talent, it has certainly been one of the biggest topics in geography and is important to be aware of

Question 39

Jamie Peck’s critical qu

+ quote

Answer 39

Where essentially didhe audience for florida’s arguments come from?

“Apart from hisobvious promotional and presentational skills, what made him ‘the toast of city conferences from Toronto to Auckland’?”

Question 40

Answer to Jamie Peck’s critical qu

Answer 40

Early 2000’s = many countries and especially regions within the US were struggling with a recession and looking for any way to stimulate their stagnating economic fortunes
–> Florida’s book says that if you make your city an attractive place to live = can attract talent and prosper so it was like “throwing policy a lifeline”

Question 41

Andy Pratt’s reason for Florida’s popularity

+ quote

Answer 41

Who would not want their city to be scientifically ranked as the coolest on earth or the most creative city? It makes the residents feel good, politicians feel even better, and makes outsiders envious: so much so that they might even visit

“It is not the moniker that matters for the exercise but what it is suggestive of: growth”

Question 42

What did most planners and politicians do? (Misunderstanding)

Answer 42

Instead of understanding or caring about the whole argument, many of these places only focussed on providing cafes and bike paths to attract talent.
- They thought if they could attract artists, gays and bohemians they would attract talent and firms that would create jobs.

Question 43

1) What does Florida suggest is more useful to a city’s quality of life?
2) Compared to what?

Answer 43

1) Small, low- cost, community- initiated, and bottom-up improvements like parks, bike paths, neighborhood improvements etc
2) Big stadiums etc in the name of ‘magnetizing’ CC - never bring the spillover effects they promise

Question 44

1) Result of applying CC principles

2)

Answer 44

1) Majority failed to create jobs and growth

2) Partly because the planners did not truly understand the theory and partly because it is still hard for struggling places to change their situation and compete with more attractive places
- -> not impossible but v difficult and just adding bike paths, coffee shops etc is not going to work

Question 45

Critique of theory size (2)

Answer 45

1) Takes a huge group of people, over 40 million in the US, and says they are all very similar
2) It says that they do similar kinds of work and that they have similar values, characteristics and preferences

Question 46

Florida’s literature fails to acknowledge that…

Answer 46

… locational choice is highly individualized and that specific amenities such as culture, climate, low crime levels, good schools, and tolerance matter to varying degrees depending on individual tastes, subjectivities, and life cycle requirements

Question 47

2) Chicken and egg critique of Florida’s argument

2) What does Florida explain?

Answer 47

What comes first in a chicken and egg way –> argue that jobs must logically come first before people will migrate to places

2) but as Florida explains in the 2014 article, jobs vs amenities is a false dichotomy, it is not on vs the other.

Question 48

1) What does Florida’s lit privilege?
2) What does the literature assume?
3) Why is this important?

Answer 48

1) Large urban areas
2) Assumes that mobile talent will flow in one direction from rural communities, regional incubators and even second tier centers to national and global centers such as Berlin, Stockholm, London and New York
3) Suggests that smaller regional centers like Soton can’t compete and must accept the fact that the workers they train will inevitably leave without ever coming back

Question 49

1) Where does one of the most common definitions from creative economy come from?
2) What does it say?

Answer 49

Influential report in the UK called the
Creative Industries Mapping Document –> produced in 1998 by the Dept of Culture, Media and Sport

2) “the creative industries have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”

Question 50

Why is the term ‘cultural industries’ hard to define? (According to Pratt)

Answer 50

Because sometimes it related to commercial activities and other times it did not
–> He explains that the shift to the creative industries, as we will discuss later today, was politically driven

Question 51

Pratt - 3 reasons why the shift to creative industries was politically driven?

Answer 51

1) By applying export values and employment measures to the arts and culture government’s we able to justify supporting them in an era of downward pressure on budgets
2) Whereas cultural was associated with old labour, new labour wanted to signal a new beginning by shifting to the term creative industries
3) Terminology of creativity is politically agile –> creativity is seen as a positive as against the ambivalence of culture

Question 52

Ambivalence of culture

Answer 52

Carries with it suspicions of high culture and exclusion, as well as antipathy to business

Question 53

At the core of creative industries we see individual creators e.g. artists but also see…

Answer 53

… the more traditional cultural industries like music, publishing, broadcasting etc

Question 54

What’s not included in older definitions of creative industries?

Answer 54

Include more commercial oriented creative activities like advertising and design and a whole range of supporting industries that help to finance, promote and distribute creative goods and services

Question 55

Broader definition takes into account…

Answer 55

… all of the intermediaries in the music marketplace or what I call sonic eco-system including spottily and music bloggers

Question 56

as the creative marketplace develops with new technologies, activities, policies and behaviors, our definitions/understanding…

Answer 56

…struggles to keep pace

Question 57

Why is there so much fuss about the creative industries? (2)

Answer 57

1) Creative industries are rapidly becoming key features of successful economies that they provide exciting jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities for talented and passionate people
2) As we shift from industrial –> knowledge-based economy where ideas are really important = creative industries are becoming a significant and growing source of production, innovation, competitiveness etc for many countries - esp UK

Question 58

What keeps workers hooked despite the often highly precarious, insecure and low paying nature of creative jobs?

Answer 58

Psychic income or non-monetary forms of compensation
–> might be the extrinsic resignation you get from performing on stage or the intrinsic satisfaction of creating something new

Question 59

2013 worth of the global entertainment and media market

Answer 59

$1.6 trillion dollars

Question 60

What does the 2014 EU report ‘Creating growth’ measure?

Answer 60

It measures cultural and creative markets in the EU

Question 61

1) What does the 2014 EU report ‘Creating growth’ do??
2) Key Finding
3) Turnover stats
4) Employment

Answer 61

1) Breaks down the creative industries into 11 sectors or markets and provides sales and employment figures for each
2) Creative represents the 3rd largest sector behind construction and food services
3) Says that the creative industries generate over 500 billion euros ever year or about 4% of europe’s GDP
4) Over 7 million europeans work in creative industries which places it in 3rd again - in fact HIGHER bc notoriously difficult to find accurate data on creative workers

Question 62

Why so hard to find data on creatives??

Answer 62

Official statistics only include people who work full time as creatives or generate most of their money from their creative activities

Question 63

Chart in 2014 EU report

Answer 63

Shows the breakdown per sector - says 3.3% of Europe’s active population works directly or indirectly in the creative industries

Question 64

3 other interesting charts in the report that help explain why governments are promoting the creative industries

Answer 64

1) They are supposedly resilient in tough economic times e.g. recent financial crisis –> create more jobs in good time and lose less jobs in bad times
2) Gov argue that the creative industries are great places for youngsters to find work e.g. why there are so many Master level programmes in UK now
3) Although digital tech disrupt some creative activities like selling CDs they also open up huge new opportunities for wealth and job creation (eg. rise of Fb/Netflix)

Question 65

Description of creative industries (2)

Answer 65

1) Complex, integrated and they encompass a range of activities that are carried out across different scales and spaces
2) They involve producers, promoters, distributors and these people may work within giant global firms or be individuals who work as local entrepreneurs

Question 66

Why do creative industries tend to cluster in dense agglomerations within large cities? (6)

Answer 66

• Can access local buzz or the valuable bits of knowledge and information that is said to be just floating around in the atmosphere
• Can hire the best workers from a large pool of skilled labour
• Can interact with their co-located clients quickly and effectively in face-to-face meetings
• Can monitor, learn from and be pushed to perform by their competitors
• May benefit from place-based branding and reputation.
• May benefit from specific spatial structures or resources like universities or favorable policy environments.

Question 67

1) Why do certain creative industries develop and prosper in specific locations and time periods?
2) good example is…

Answer 67

1) Path dependence - things don’t happen randomly but often for a set of reasons that geographers can identify
2) … fashion in NY

Question 68

Case study: Fashion in NY

Answer 68

Paris had long been the fashion capital of the world but during the second world war all production and designing of new collections stopped. To fill the gap, New York which was far removed from the war and already had a burgeoning set of small factories and workshops to make clothes started to handle the design elements as well. And over time New York’s role in the global fashion market grew

Question 69

Economy transitions over time: no longer about manufacturing but ___ and now about
and because of this, the prosperity of places is tied to ___ rather than ____

Answer 69

ideas/knowledge/innovation/creativity

talented people rather than natural resources or big factories

Question 70

1) Knowledge economy reference
2) Knowledge Industry reference
3) Network society

Answer 70

1) Peter Drucker (1969) - Age of Discontinuity book
2) Fritz Machlup (1962) - Divided into 5 sectors
3) Manuel Castells (2000)

Question 71

Daniel Bell (1976) reference

Answer 71

“A post-industrial society is based on services. (…) What counts is not raw muscle power, or energy, but information. (…) A post industrial society is one in which the majority of those employed are not involved in the production of tangible goods”