The economic role of mobile professional and creative workers and their housing and residential preferences

Abstract

This paper addresses the economic role of mobile professional and creative workers and their housing and residential preferences in local and regional development by means of a case study of the Tees Valley. Following this introduction, the first section examines the emergence of the 'creative class' as a driver of economic growth, comprising entrepreneurs and others involved in the development of KnowledgeIntensive Business Services (KIBS) and reviews the (limited) evidence about the housing preferences of this group. It explores the idea that the creative class does appear to have specific housing needs and aspirations which, if met, would help to attract mobile creative professionals to the region. In this context, housing policy and housing provision has become a driver of regional competitiveness and growth. The second section examines the uneven incorporation of these insights into current regional strategies in Tees Valley, North East England, a region seeking to address relative economic decline and attempting to develop the attributes of a creative economy. It shows that there remains a degree of misalignment between the principal regional strategies and a lack of robust data and analysis upon which to make considered policy responses to the housing needs of the creative class. At the same time, important current policy trends may be moving in the wrong direction in some cases.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.