What makes for a creative-friendly community? Untangling the location attributes of creative clusters

Abstract

Increasing investment in attracting creative clusters has become a quintessentially common practice at the municipal level, particularly in progressive cities, which have long been concerned with economic development. While rationales behind such investments are highly contingent on the potential economic outcomes of creative clusters, a thorough understanding of factors that help foster creative-friendly communities could facilitate municipal decision-making processes. This paper revisits factors relating to the location attributes of creative clusters that have hitherto remained insufficiently explored. Contributing to the development of creative-friendly communities, these factors complement the mainstream literature, which is overly preoccupied with the creative class theory, by addressing soft, cultural features as well as hard, material attributes, including the built environment, creative individuals, the local creative identity, networks and technology, leadership and the economic context, and the consumer market. This paper introduces a framework that incorporates those factors into three phases of creative activity, including idea-generation, production, and circulation/consumption, which operate on different tiers but nonetheless mutually interact. The paper reflects on the policy implications of the framework for local communities at large and concludes by proposing future avenues for research into how to promote creative-friendly communities.

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