Kristina Vaarst Andersen

Nordic City Regions in the Creative Class Debate—Putting the Creative Class Thesis to a Test

The Nordic countries have a quite different urban structure and social systems than the USA. Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden may then constitute a critical test of the empirical reach of Richard Floridas much cited creative class thesis beyond its empirical basis in the USA. This paper employs comparative statistics to examine the importance of the quality of place in attracting members of the creative class to Nordic city regions, and it analyses the role of the creative class for regional economic development. Floridas original study focused only on city regions with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Our statistical analyses mainly support Floridas results with regard to these larger Nordic city regions. The paper, however, also analyses smaller city regions, which are important in the Nordic urban structure. The findings are clearly less supportive for these smaller regions, which mean that the original creative class approach has to be considerably refined when used in the Nordic context.

Centrality and Creativity: Does Richard Florida’s Creative Class Offer New Insights into Urban Hierarchy?

Abstract To provide new insights into urban hierarchy, this article brings together one of economic geography’s oldest and most well-established notions with one of its newest and most disputed notions: Christäller’s centrality and Florida’s creative class. Using a novel original database, the article compares the distribution of the general population and the creative class across 444 city regions in 8 European countries. It finds that the two groups are both distributed according to the rank-size rule, but exhibit different distinct phases with different slopes. The article argues that the two distributions are different because market thresholds for creative services and jobs are lower than thresholds for less specialized services and jobs. The article hence concludes that centrality exerts a strong influence upon urban hierarchies of creativity and that the study of creative urban city hierarchies yields new insights into the problem of centrality.

One Size Fits All? Applying the Creative Class Thesis onto a Nordic Context

The creative class thesis put forward by Florida [(2002a) The Rise of the Creative Class and How its transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books)] has in recent years been subject to vivid debate and criticism. This article applies the creative class thesis onto a Nordic context in order to examine whether Floridas theory proves fruitful in a context different from the US. Based on qualitative data, the paper analyses the role of people climate and business climate for the location of the creative class and firms in three different kinds of regions in four Nordic countries. The analyses demonstrate that the people climate tends to be of secondary importance to the business climate in explaining the location of the Nordic creative class. This should be seen as a result of the urban hierarchy within the Nordic countries as well as a strong welfare policy, which ensures an equal distribution of public provision and supports dual career households. Together, these factors diminish the role of people climate for location choices. The study also finds that the notion of people climate has different meanings in various places, and what attracts or repels the creative class depends on the life phases of the members of the creative class. The study raises concerns about the potential for applying the creative class approach beyond large city regions, which limits its usability in regional planning.

The Evolution of Great World Cities – Urban Wealth and Economic Growth

The Evolution of Great World Cities – Urban Wealth and Economic Growth, Christopher Kennedy, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON (2011). xi + 242 pp. CA

The problem of embeddedness revisited: Collaboration and market types

24.95 (pbk). ISBN 9781442611528 The que...