Annotated by TNC September 20, 2008; not yet rewritten for style, except for some
examples, esp. in 2ed half. No change in Dan’s proposed data analysis except for a few
points: 1. don't try to compute local vs. branches of bigger firms as is too hard for now.
(Maybe if we find someone who could work on just this, perhaps this fall.) 2 use log log;
3. See red notes at last section for more speifics than Dan had. TNC notes in Red/visible
with Track Changes in MS Word.
Eric already worked on a memo for data analysis from this ; I don't find. he was to
resend?
Chapter 5
Scenes and the Creative City: Linking Consumption and Production, or: how the way we
consume impacts the way we work.
Scenes, we argued in chapter 1, have increased in historical and theoretical
salience. Their role in social life merits study in its own right. Thus, we began, in
chapter 2, by defining scenes analytically as “third spaces” primarily devoted to the
pleasures of sociable consumption, in contrast to work, home, or politics, and distinct
from sub-cultures or milieus. In chapter 3, we turned to the internal structure of scenes
and articulated a conceptual model of scenes in terms of the different dimensions of
theatricality, authenticity, and legitimacy they affirm or resist. In order to assess the
impact of scenes, in chapter 4 we proposed methods for measuring scenes and elaborated
our core analytical model. In chapter 5 we offered a brief descriptive tour of the U.S.
Scenescape in order to highlight the extent to which our measures do in fact capture
considerable differences in the atmospheres and moods across and within regions and
cities. And in the following series of chapters, we move from questions about how
scenes arose, what scenes are, how we measure them, and where they are, to questions of
what scenes do.
In the present chapter, we begin investigating what scenes do by asking whether
and how scenes might be factors in fostering creative cities. That is, we seek to connect
the way people consume with the innovativeness in how they produce. Typically, there
has been a disparity between consumption and production models of culture [Terry add
references and briefly elaborate]. This chapter proposes a set of mechanisms and causal
linkages that join the two.
The Institutionalization and Internalization of Creativity. We begin our analysis
of the impact of scenes with the “creative cities thesis” because this topic has attracted
much recent attention, both among academics and policy-makers (Romein and Trip 2008
review key aspects of this literature). Spurred by the decline and outsourcing of
manufacturing in Western economies since the 1970’s, many cities have sought
alternative sources of vitality. Thus, cities have cheated “the death of distance”
(Craincross, others) through developing themselves, as in New York and London, into
hubs for business and financial services (Sassen); into centers for tourism, consumption,
and leisure activities as in Bilbao, the Boston waterfront, and Chicago’s Millennium Park
(Clark 2003); or, into focal points for gathering the talented, creative individuals (“human
capital”) crucial to success in “knowledge economies,” as in Silicon Valley, Seattle,
Barcelona, and the North Carolina “research triangle” (Florida, Reich, Becker).
What guides these policy and research agendas is the conviction that in “postindustrial” economies, the most essential resource a city possesses is its people. That is,
cultivating and concentrating innovativeness, ingenuity, dedication, motivation, and
aesthetic sensibilities matters more where economic and urban success depends not only
on efficiency and labor power but also on traditionally artistic and intellectual categories
like novelty, style, and insight (Landry, Reichert). Human performance is one of the key
factors of production (Parsons 2008). And innovation is not equally distributed across
space: the number of scientists and engineers per 1000 people in the U.S., Germany, and
Japan dwarfs the number in many other developed countries (from Geography 20. Find).
Variations within countries are equally striking (cite). Focusing the means of cognition
have become as defining to the success of cities as are means of production.
To be sure, creativity is not a new idea; it is as old as Genesis 1, after all! But
beginning especially in the 19th century, a number of intellectual movements made
creativity increasingly internal to their understanding of human action as such (Joas, The
Creativity of Action): Herder on Expression; Marx on Revolution and Praxis;
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Simmel on Life; Weber on Charisma; Durkheim on
Collective Effervescence; and James, Dewey, and Mead on Intelligence and Pragmatic
Improvisation. Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” built innovation and not only costeffective production into the core of economic activity, and Jane Jacobs made surprise
and disorder the very stuff of urban experience (Jacobs, see also Sennett). These
movements congeal in what Howard Rosenberg called “the tradition of the new”
(Rosenberg).
In the 20th century, and especially since the 1960’s, this tradition, formerly more
exclusive to an intellectual and artistic “avant-garde,” diffused to the broader public
(Clark NPC, Taylor, cite many others). Key drivers include mass education, mass
communication, increased geographic mobility (many cites), the sense that life’s fragility,
unsettledness, and alterability, made unavoidable by two world wars, is a basic existential
condition of modern societies (Joas), “expressive” reactions against a stifling,
bureaucratic, overly rational culture (Marcuse), the need of capitalism to constantly
generate new needs (Bell), as well as internal value-pressure within western culture
toward individuality, “inner-worldly” activism, and valorization of constant motion and
readiness to begin anew (Weber, Parsons, Taylor). Personalities formed on the basis of
the disciplined Protestant Work Ethic made room for the Bohemian and Romantic quest
for authenticity and expressiveness, unsettling distinctions between work and play
(Taylor, Bell, Brooks, Campbell).
In this intellectual, cultural, and historical context, questions about how to
institutionalize and internalize the value of creativity in cities and individuals have
naturally become central. What infrastructure, education, work environments, public
policy, etc. best harness the human creative potential? How can artistic, entrepreneurial,
and scientific endeavor be instituted as activities unto themselves, and combined with one
another in ways that enhance the broader public good? With questions like these, “the
Creative Class” seems on its way to self-consciousness.
Factors of Creative Cities. No doubt the “creative cities thesis” has generated
much hype, and with it, ample opportunities for derision and scorn (Chatterton 2007).
One popular youtube video, “Juicing the Creatives,”1 depicts “creativity fields” where an
old English farmer grows various assortments of hipsters and artists, before distilling
their essence into “creativity juice” to be sold on the open market.
Much of this response is justified and understandable. Advocates have promoted
one-dimensional, one-size-fits-all quick fixes that generalize from single cases. A Bilbao
for every city! Bike paths for all! Bohemias everywhere! Attract The Gays and the Rest
will follow!
Such unilateral and rigid approaches defy the very fluidity, situation-specificity,
and nuance so central to successful creative endeavor. Thus, we introduce scenes as
factors that contribute to creative cities, and assess their impacts on the creativity of cities
as indicated by patents, job growth, population, rents, and wages in reference to and
interaction with a number of other key factors. Thriving scenes are elements of a creative
environment, but they are not the only ones, and they often operate to enhance other
components. A thick labor market plus a thriving music scene might be more significant
than either on its own; stable residential communities plus a family-focused scene might
generate a more stimulating city than either would separately; warm weather plus an
exciting festival scene might be more energizing than each would be independently.
We thus analyze the contribution of scenes to the creativity of cities together with
other factors typically cited as causes of creative cities. We first list a range of
potentially key factors of creative cities, along with their theoretical connection to
innovativeness. We then discuss how scenes may add to and alter the impacts of these
factors. And then we offer some empirical analysis that demonstrates that and how
scenes can contribute to creative cities, in different ways, in different contexts.
Education. The success of creative cities has been linked with the consequences
of the explosion of higher education in the U.S. and globally. Universities, not factories,
are increasingly at the centers of successful cities. Berkeley, Stanford, and Silicon Valley
provide perhaps the most famous example. The relative success of Columbus, Ohio
versus Cleveland, Ohio – the former with Ohio State University at its center, the latter
struggling after the decline of steel – speaks to a more general significance.
Talcott Parsons considered the “educational revolution” to be as important as the
industrial revolution in that it bound productivity more explicitly to cultural factors like
scientific research, organization, and intelligence. Daniel Bell linked “the coming of
post-industrial society” to the rising social power of professional groups (see also Melin
2003, Info Society Reader). Robert Reich ties success in the new, global economy to
“mind workers” especially trained in the manipulation of symbols (Work of Nations).
Richard Florida connects the “means migration” of educated, skilled persons to a
relatively small number of densely populated regions with success in the creative
economy.
These and other ideas suggest that education is a central factor in creative cities.
What is the connection between education and creativity? A number of pathways may be
cited. Increased education means that decisions are increasingly based on symbols and
cultural meanings, rather than tradition or custom. Symbols are infinitely more malleable
and manipulable than stuff; they can be combined in limitless ways, and can harness and
control vast quantities of energy (cite info theory). The scientific method presses
1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgYwTELj-fs
relentlessly toward new discoveries. Theories are born to be surpassed (Weber). XXX:
TNC: Don't need Weber for this; drop maybe ¼ of references, esp. the long lists? More
specifics the better. END COMMENT. Education opens persons to alternative ways of
living and thinking, breeding a more critical stance on life that is less willing to accepting
the world as given.
Mass higher education institutionalizes innovation in more organizations and internalizes
it in more individuals (Clark, Admin Quarterly, NPC books). Research Universities and
R&D investment are strongly associated with regional increases in knowledge production
(Jaffe 1989, Autant-Bernard 2001; Acs 2002; Fritsch and Slavtchev 2007.
Look in Hoekman for full refs). Through training engineers, computer scientists, and
other more technical professionals, scientific innovation and values diffuse from
universities into firms and cities more widely. Through the humanities and some social
sciences, values of critique, aesthetic novelty, and “paradigm-shifting” spread (Lipset,
Altbach, Shils Swiss guy ajs paper on Dutch, Zimmerman friend in Geneva, prof of soc
there, applied opportunity structure?). Creative designs, style, and marketing join with
technological innovation, as in the ipod.
Thus, higher concentrations of educated individuals should generate stronger
value-commitment to and capacity for novelty, leading, via humanistic critique and
scientific innovation, to more creative cities. This suggests that cities with higher
concentrations of college graduates and professional school graduates, more research
universities, and more research and development centers, would be leaders in various
Creative City Dependent Variables (CCDV), generating more patents of all kinds, as well
as more jobs, higher wages, increasing rents, and population. Good to set off some key
ideas in italics/propositions.
Technology. Educated residents are thought to be factors in creative cities in part
because they are more likely to be skilled producers and users of high technology. But
technology may well be a significant factor in its own right, linked with its own distinct
processes. Florida, for example, links creative cities not only to “talent” but also to
“technology.” Acs 1999 ties high technology employment to urban success. OTHER
CITATIONS ABOUT SPECIFICALLY TECH HERE.
Technology, however, is more than machines and enhanced craft-tools, as
Heidegger and Parsons and others pointed out. Technology may make cities into centers
for innovation by promoting a certain outlook on existence: the world can be altered,
transformed in new ways; nature – human or otherwise -- is not fixed and given.
Critics treat this as “domination,” leading to environmental disaster, the decline of
craftsmanship (Sennett), and impoverished personal connection to Mother Nature (cites).
Yet the “technological understanding of being” goes deeper than satisfying a range of
given human wants and needs. It involves expanding and continually transforming our
options for what we might want (Dreyfus, Spinosa, Borgmann). Its “instrumentalactivist” value-pattern means never being finished, being always already on the move to a
new understanding of self and world (Parsons, Social System).
Wikipedia, in contrast to Encyclopedia Britannica, exemplifies the difference. A
Britannica article purports to tell you how things stand with its topic. It is finished, and
fixes its subject in place. It aims at mastery. A Wikipedia article is never over, one link
takes you to another. It does not claim to be the last word on its subject, but encourages
“wikiquests,” where one follows the links to somewhere else. Wikipedia embodies the
creative potency of the technological standpoint: nothing is fixed and given, all is in flux,
in motion to Whatever Comes Next.
Thus, where there is more technology, we would expect there to be more creative
production. Empirically, this means that the presence of high concentrations of
technological jobs and technological firms would be significantly linked with CCDV’s,
and that this connection would not be explained away by how educated a city’s residents
may be. Further, we might expect that the interaction between education and technology
would predict CCDV’s more strongly than each would separately.
Social Climate. In addition to education and technology, creative cities may well
be fostered by the social climate within which firms and individuals operate. Many
authors posit a link between, on the one hand, diversity, openness, and tolerance, and, on
the other, innovation (Florida, Gates, Kotkin, Trip, others). Places whose residents value
tolerance support an environment in which alternative styles, unconventional ideas, and
diversity in thought and practice, can flourish. Florida and Gates treat percent gays as an
indicator of this sort of climate, not because gays are or are not particularly creative, but
because their presence might indicate a tolerant city. Though Clark 2003 shows the link
between gays and tolerance is generally spurious, as the specific impact of gays is
explained by education, other more direct indicators of a generally egalitarian social
climate may well vindicate the link between tolerance and creativity.
Other social climates might also feed into creative cities. For example, science is
not (simply) a democracy2. It does not value all contributions equally, but favors
achievement, success, and results (cite). More generally, as Tocqueville noted,
“achievement” and “equality” are competing, but equally basic, democratic values
(Lipset Am Excpetionalism). Cities with intense achievement and outcome-oriented
social climates might be centers of creative production to an equal or greater degree than
are tolerant cities. Moreover, much creative endeavor may be sparked by conflict rather
than harmony. Cities that are “too tolerant” might sap this particular source of innovation
(Landry 2000, Sennett The Uses of Disorder, Coser The Function of Conflict). If
everybody is a radical, nobody is. By contrast, if egalitarian and achievement-oriented
social climates promote creative cities, traditionalistic, hierarchical, and parochial social
climates might inhibit them. This is not to say that tradition is “bad.” But, whatever is
“good” about a traditionalistic social climate – stability, settledness, security, clear
distinctions between good and bad – might be less hospitable to fostering successful
creative cities.
Thus, we would expect cities with distinct social climates to exhibit differential
degrees of success in the creative economy. Empirically, residents’ value-attitudes
expressed in response to the DDB lifestyle survey would be linked with CCDV’s. More
2
This is not to suggest that science is not constrained by “external” factors, or that
scientific results might be enhanced through transparency and channeled to the public
good through democratic constraints (see Guston 2004). It is only to point out that
scientific questions, by their very nature, are not decided by majority rule. What they are
decided by is, of course, a matter of endless dispute.
egalitarian responses would indicate a more tolerant social climate, which could in turn
generate more CCDV’s. Yet more utilitarian responses would indicate a more outcomeoriented social climate that might also lead to more CCDV’s. Cities with small,
concentrated pockets of transgressive residents, embedded in a less radical, more
traditionalistic social climate, might also generate more CCDV’s. This could be
indicated by high Bohemian/transgressive zip code scores within more traditionalistic,
neighborly, localistic county scores, or by high scores on both tradition and transgression
on the DDB. By contrast, cities whose residents express highly traditionalistic, localistic,
neighborly, anti-transgressive, and anti-egalitarian DDB scores might lead to fewer
CCDV’s.
Transportation and Communication. Jane Jacobs famously linked the creativity
possible within a city to its transportational and communicative possibilities. Solitary
ideas die; interaction with others enhances them (Mead, Dewey). Long commutes to and
from work can be mentally deadening. Opportunities to collaborate with others
specializing on similar topics may improve the work of all, as the incidence of
coauthored papers is steadily rising (Hoekman). Linking work, home, and leisure more
closely physically may link them more closely psychologically; individuals might not
“shut off” outside of work, but instead interact within multiple networks that stimulate
new ideas. Mixing residence, work, and play more closely may create a lively street
environment, in turn creating that buzzing sea of interaction within which ideas can
circulate and mutate while individuals can bump into others from all walks of life.
Walk.com provides a Walk Score for over 2500 zip codes based on its proximity to a
number of amenities such as restaurants, schools, bars, museums, and more.
Florida argues that the primary contribution of cities to creativity lies in dense
communication and interaction networks providing talented persons the opportunities to
meet and learn from others and to start collaborative projects. Smart people stuck in
Podunk, he suggests, do not have the opportunities to cultivate the skills that the
connections they can make in large cities provide. Sassen and Glaeser tie the success of
cities to the ease with which they allow information to flow among firms, a factor
especially crucial, they suggest, to financial markets. Much work in the geography of
innovation has shown that spillover effects are central to innovation (as summarized by
Hoekman 2008). Knowledge is not easily contained in one firm, and when
knowledgeable individuals change jobs (Almeida and Kogut 1999), start their own firms
(Klepper 2007), or exchange knowledge informally with others (Lissoni 2001), innovate
ideas spread rapidly. Such exchanges are known to be highly geographically
concentrated (Breschi and Lissoni 2001; Egeln et al. 2004).
Thus, cities whose transportation and communication networks bring residents
together may be better incubators of the sorts of interactions which lead to higher levels
of creative work in the aggregate. Empirically, this would suggest that lower travel times
to work, more users of public transportation, and more individuals working from home
would lead to higher CCDV’s. It might also suggest a link between residential
population density and CCDV’s, or perhaps the hypothesis that higher ratios of residents
to jobs to amenities (that is, greater overlay of living, working, and playing) would lead
to more CCDV’s. We might also expect that dense concentrations of individuals working
within specific specialties might generate more innovation. At the same time, the
presence of a diverse range of industries and specialties might also be an important
driver of innovation.
Artists. Education, technology, social climate, and transportation/communication
are all important factors that contribute to creative cities in different ways. But the
presence of a critical mass of active artists might be an independent factor, not reducible
to these others, driving creative production in cities. Of course, it is only relatively
recently that self-expression, novelty, and creativity have become central values for
artists. Medieval painters didn’t sign their names on their work, and many in the classical
style tried to embody and affirm a tradition rather than their unique take on the world.
But artists are masters at taking material offered up by the world – stone, color, sound,
etc. – and refashioning that material into something new that embodies human meaning.
More generally, as Daniel Bell suggests, avant-garde sensibilities of novelty and
contingency have in the past century come to dominate the cultural sphere in general and
artistic work in particular, though there are of course numerous exceptions (cite).
How might the presence of artists lead to more creative cities? Most
straightforwardly, concentrations of artists suggest concentrations of individuals devoted
to creative endeavor as such. Artists here refers to painters, writers, musicians and others
engaged in many symbolic/expressive media creation, although concrete measurement is
a serious issue. Moreover, artists often become linked with specific cities, perhaps
helping to define those cities as special sites of creative inspiration: Saul Bellow in
Chicago, Allen Ginsberg in San Francisco, Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village, Baudelaire
and Balzac in Paris, Kurt Cobain in Seattle, John Steinbeck in Monterey, Georgia
O’Keefe in Santa Fe, Rembrandt in Amsterdam, Kafka in Prague, and more. Whatever
drew these artists to these places initially, such connections between artist and city might
well help to sustain these cities as muses for others, attracting tourists and residents as
well. Independently of its technology, education, social climate, etc., Chicago is, in part,
as stimulating as it is because residents and visitors can draw on Bellow’s representations
of it; Monterey, CA is in part a haven for creative artists because John Steinbeck
romanticized its past.
Not only does artistic endeavor lead by itself to creative outputs like paintings,
novels, musical works, and so on, but artistic work is embedded within “art worlds”
(Becker) that employ many others in creative work, from stage managers to museum staff
to art dealers. Further, workplaces increasingly resemble artists’ studios in many ways,
not least in that they require many artists for services like graphic design or web design or
product design or marketing or voice-overs or advertising copy (Markusen). Artists sell
their work to firms, creating a more stimulating and interesting work environment, and
sometimes lead workshops for employees. More generally, high concentrations of artists
might well contribute to high quality of life, attracting talented and artistically inclined
workers to firms (Florida, Markusen). Lets keep definitions and consequences as distinct
as possible; otherwise all is muddled.
Typically, authors who have empirically studied the connection between artists
and creative cities have focused on artists as a monolithic group. Yet different kinds of
artists might be linked with creative cities in different ways, and some not at all. Sleepy
Carmel, CA is home to numerous landscape and pastoral painters. But Carmel is not a
center for creative industries like software design or biotechnology. Large numbers of
graphic artists might feed into design and advertising jobs, adding value through their
creativity to firms’ output, but the High Art tradition may foster values opposed to
economic success, technology, and the market.
Thus, we might well expect that where there are more artists, there would be both
more total jobs and more creative output from the economy more generally. That is, more
arts jobs should lead to more CCDV’s. But me might also expect concentrations of
different kinds of artists to lead to different aspects of cities being emphasized: more
graphic design (and “practical arts”) might lead to more technology patents; more
“impractical” arts might lead to less technology, and more artistic patents, or even fewer
patents.
Nature. Kant held that aesthetic appreciation of nature’s beauty provoked
spontaneous play among our faculties that could not be reduced to rules. He also wrote
of the sublime experience of awesome mountains and oceanic depths as shattering our
sense of stability and settledness. Romantics celebrated the wilds of nature, seeing in its
unpredictability a source of creativity beyond rational calculation and aesthetic harmony.
Transcendentalists saw in nature an expression of the divine whole that could be mixed
with human will in the production of art.
These and other cultural and intellectual traditions would suggest that cities with
natural assets might have advantages in inspiring creative work, and that different sorts of
natural environments would be linked with different types of creative work. For
example, Van Ulzen 2007 (in Romein and Trip) suggests that many architects and
designers choose to live in more industrial Rotterdam over more tourist-oriented and
cultural Amsterdam because of Rotterdam’s port city image and the inspiration provided
by “the rhythm of the river.” Populations in U.S. Sunbelt cities are booming, primarily
among older persons (Clark 2003), leading Kotkin (2000) to suggest that natural assets
are less attractive to creative talent who prefer the action of central cities, while, by
contrast, Clark forthcoming (Grey Creative Class) suggests that age creativity is not the
exclusive property of the young. The proximity of the Bay Area to crashing waves and
wild Redwoods and non-US examples? Australia New Zealand Vancouver? of Los
Angeles to inviting surf may well provide independent stimuli to and resources for the
distinct sorts of creative work residents of these cities pursue. Cultivating the beauty of
viewing and the pleasure of playing in Lake Michigan has been one of the central pillars
of Chicago’s recent urban cultural policy successes (cites?). OTHER REFERENCES
AND EXAMPLES?
More generally, these potential linkages between a city’s natural assets and its
creativity may lead us to formulate a number of empirical propositions. We might expect
that, controlling for education, income, etc.: temperate warm climates would be linked
with population increase in general; that coastal cities might be strongly linked with
CCDV’s; that cities with easy access to national parks and wildlife reserves might have
more CCDV’s; that the interaction effects of artists and various natural assets would
lead to more CCDV’s than either would otherwise….OTHER, ESPECIALLY
INTERACTIONS. THAT IS, NATURE PLUS TECHNOLOGY, OR EDUCATION.
OR MOUNTAINS VS. FOREST VS. OCEAN VS. RIVERS VS. LAKES VS. DESERT.
Do we want to frame all or most of these propositions as interacting positively?
Can estimate with log/log model for that reason. We discussed in July or so, and
tentatively agreed to do so. This is also call a Cobb Douglas production function; used in
City Money.
Bohemia. In addition to education, technology, communication-transportation,
nature, and artists, the presence of thriving Bohemian neighborhoods has been the subject
of much recent theorizing about what makes for creative cities (Jane Jacobs Life and
Death of cities, Ed Glaser paper in J of Urban Affairs on Jacobs, Lloyd, Florida, Clark…
others specifically using the term bohemia?).
What kind of connection might there be between the presence of bohemian
neighborhoods and creative cities? Bohemias are more than artists. Most bohemians are
not themselves artists, but dress, speak, and consume in an “arty” way (cite and quote
some articles from Grana’s collection). Bohemian neighborhoods spatially concentrate
individuals against The Establishment, producing a common mood of transgressing the
rules in a quest for unusual, exotic experiences. Bad is Good: crime, marginal groups,
drugs, may all be positively valued: quote CB and RL on “the horror.” Bohemias are
always already dying, mourning the loss of a special authentic moment in the past. They
are beset by “constitutive nostalgia” (Lloyd), and so always restlessly moving within the
crisis moment between sunset and sunrise, Old and New. Bohemias arise in and
celebrate transitional, liminal moments: Paris in the mid-19th century, Greenwich Village
and Haight-Ashbury in the 60’s, Wicker Park in the 90’s. Bohemias crystallize in a place
the spirit of transgression, but they need not be revolutionary – Marx and Benjamin and
Sartre criticized bohemians for being more concerned with etiquette, manners, and
experiences than transforming the economic bases of society.
All of this makes bohemian neighborhoods – filled with used clothing boutiques,
late night bars, tattoo parlors, smoke shops, galleries, ethnic restaurants, marginal
individuals, etc. -- highly suitable as laboratories for generating new consumption styles.
Analogous on the consumption side to scientific R&D on the production side, they are
integrally connected to, and not necessarily in combat with, the creative economy
(Campbell). Where it is important for firms to be on the cutting edge and to appeal to
youth, edginess, difference, otherness, retro style, then the presence of a Bohemia could
be a key factor. Bohemias also provide cultural economies with “useful labor.” Not only
in the form of artists and designers, but also in all the support staff, marketers, and
executives who can go to the bars and find out what is hip (Eliz Currid, The Warhol
Economy). They can consume on the edge of accepted conventions, without themselves
having to be artists or revolutionaries, and so feel that they are true to the bohemian spirit
they learned to value in college and culture.
Thus, the presence of thriving bohemian communities would add to creative
workplace by providing relatively safe spaces for more educated workforce that has
internalized avant-garde culture to experiment with new styles, see what emerges and
incorporate it into their work. This may not mean that higher scores on a bohemian index
would in all cases and contexts lead to more CCDV’s. Rather, we might hypothesize that
in counties with high bohemian scores in the aggregate, bohemian neighborhoods would
provide less creative stimulus: if the Establishment is the anti-Establishment, then the
Edge is blunted. By contrast, in more traditionalistic counties, we might expect
Bohemian neighborhoods to lead more strongly to CCDV’s: here there is something
against which a Bohemian can stand; there is an Old World whose passing is to be
lamented and a New World whose momentaneous birth is to be channeled.
Scenes. The liveliness of a city’s scenes has also been cited as a key engine
driving “the city as an entertainment machine.” Being surrounded by “buzz” may be
central to much creative endeavor (Storper and Venables, 2002). Scott 2000 ties “buzz”
to linked networks of cultural producers, like musicians, filmmakers, or writers. Others
focus more explicitly on concentrations of spaces and places devoted to sociable
consumption. Landry 2000 writes of the importance of “third-spaces” like cafes,
restaurants, clubs, bars, record shops and bookstores. These are neither work nor home,
and as such offer spaces for unplanned encounters unconstrained by the conventions of
either, enhancing and refocusing personal creativity. Kotkin treats central city cultural
areas as attractive to creative workers because “that is where the action is,” while Florida
2002 and Glaeser 2001 suggest that a lively street scene contributes to a successful
creative city. Clark 2003 and Florida 2005 claim that by generating interesting
experiences amenities like operas, juice bars, bike paths, rare bookstores and more
contribute to an innovative atmosphere.
Clark 2003 stresses that what is interesting varies for various sub-cultures.
Florida initially stressed the creative class as opposed to others, but in 2008 divided the
“creative class” into various sub-groups according to age and lifestyle. Kotkin 2000
distinguishes between the different built environments attractive to “nerds” and to young
childless couples. The Theory of Scenes developed in chapters 2 and 3 adds much more
subtlety to these distinctions, treating scenes less as a series of opposed Types – Nerds vs.
Bohemians, etc. – and more as a matter of a range of analytic elements – self-expression,
transgressiveness, charismatic authority, local authenticity – that may combine in
numerous ways in varying degrees. Asking whether a city’s scenes provide more or less
occasion for self-expression, combined with more or less occasion for transgression or
glamoursness and so on, provides offers a more powerful way to compare many cities
and different sets of amenities, globally. How much scenes may or may not contribute to
creative cities can be investigated in a way that would not be possible by only
determining whether cities have single amenities like juice bars vs. operas or single
scenes like Nerdistan or Bohemia.
More generally, the addition of focus on scenes as spaces of sociable consumption
builds on and enhances the other factors of creative production noted above. To education
and technology, the scene-factor adds the presence of interesting and attractive spaces for
consumption. A workplace in an office park surrounded by only smart people and
technology may well be less creative and innovative than one embedded in a scene,
surrounded by cafes, restaurants, clubs, bars, galleries, festivals.
To nature, the scene-factor adds the notion that “nature” is not a natural category.
The creative mood along the Big Sur Coast arises not only through the cliffs and the
ocean but through restaurants that hang out over the water or through institutions like the
Henry Miller Library that celebrate, as Big Sur Resident Miller did, the wild side of life
beyond the constraints of “civilization.” The Miami Beach stimulates the kind of mood it
does not only because of the sandy beaches or the warm water, but also through the beach
clubs, bars, cafes, restaurants, amusement parks, etc. With a scene to channel and
celebrate its energies, nature might become a more significant factor for creative
endeavor than it would “on its own.” These civilized hybrid scenes of course conflict
with the more purist naturalism of the John Muir/Sierra Club. Each type of scene has its
devotees.
To artists, the scene-factor adds that a city with many artists, creating much
revenue from selling their paintings or albums, may not be stimulating to workplace
creativity if that city were to contain only artists. Artists and the arts alone are not enough
to make a scene or to determine whether a lively scene has emerged. Musicians in their
basements and recording studios, without clubs; writers in their attic, without cafes and
readings; sculptors in their workshops, without sculpture gardens; painters in their
studios, without galleries, and so on -- this would be a city with “artists but no art scene”
(Sartre). In such a city, the potential connection between artists and high urban quality of
life, excitement and vitality contained might lie fallow. Number, type, concentration of
amenities is more important than the number of artists.
To transportation communication, and networks, the scene-factor adds that what
is exciting and attractive about dense local networks often involves more than simply
being downtown, riding a bus, or conversing at work. Florida 2008 argues that dense
connections of educated people are the common factor that make “super star cities”
(Gouryeko) super, downplaying potential variations among cities in quality of life and
consumption possibilities. Yet Florida’s own interlocutors frequently cite factors like
“glamour” as their reason for moving to a particular city over another. Gouryeko
“explains” the rise of super star cities by the fact that wealthy individuals are
concentrating in them, without asking or theorizing what lures such individuals; Glaeser
goes further by suggesting that high urban rents to wage ratio means that consumption is
what is attractive in cities, but does not ask what amenities in what combinations lure the
talent and the money. A neighborhood may be walkable in the sense that it contains
many amenities within close proximity, but that does not tell us much about the feel of
the neighborhood – an equally high Walk Score can be achieved on walk.com thanks to
many McDonalds or many local bakeries being nearby. A city may have many different
industries, but without diverse scenes, the spillover effects noted by geographers may not
occur. In order to informally interact, there needs to be somewhere to meet. And this is
likely to occur outside of work. Lively restaurants, cafes, music venues, and so on,
facilitate the informal interactions so central to the spatial concentration of high
innovation areas. But which scenes best facilitate the circulation of ideas? Analyzing
scenes allows us to develop and test hypotheses about where and how individuals and
ideas circulate.
To social climate, the scene factor adds that values are not only “in people’s
heads” or “in the air.” They are also performed in concrete places and spaces (Gieryn).
A city may contain many residents who value individual self-expression. But without
jazz clubs or fusion restaurants or art galleries, that value-attitude would be harder to
translate into living reality. There would be no special places devoted to cultivating the
pleasures of individual self-expression (or glamour or exhibitionism or transgression) in
tandem with others. If scenes without a nurturing social climate lie fallow, a social
climate without a scene is dead.
To neo-Bohemia, our scene perspective adds that Bohemia is one scene among
many, Chicago is one city among many, Transgressive, rule-breaking scenes might make
waves in certain kinds of creative cities (like Paris). But glitzy glammy scenes centered
on charismatic figures who aren’t necessarily transgressive -- like top chefs or conductors
or pop icons -- might as well (like Chicago). The Star might be more of a stimulant to
creative work than entering into the Margins. Putnam and others (cites) suggest that
interactive activities like bowling or sports clubs rather than passively spectatorial
activities (like watching TV) provide more opportunities for collective improvisations
that move in unforeseen directions. These cultivate habits of mind hospitable to
creativity and inhospitable to simple acceptance of authority, but need not be
unconventional or antinomian (Terry to add more cites of those who claim
“interaction leads to creativity”—we have too many cites if anything; we don't need
more than some quick cites of some things outside our key areas and literature here;
already dense). Nor are New Age scenes particularly Bohemian – they stress
contemplative release and bodily awareness rather than Angst. But yoga, meditation,
bodywork, and similar practices are diffusing widely [Box Insert on History of Esalen] –
even the Government Accountability Office offers yoga at lunch to its employees. These
might stimulate creativity as much or more than Bohemian neighborhoods, but through
instituting quite different sorts scenes. Bohemia is also more than Urban Grit – X writes
that Carmel, CA is a “Rural Bohemia,” and its distinctive mix of Bach and Jazz festivals,
art galleries, nature, and quaintness are one factor in attracting and retaining firms that
might typically locate in Los Angeles, like Monterey Bay Recording Artists, one of the
top booking agencies in the world.
Thus, scenes add a more general theory of sociable consumption to the more
singular theory of neo-Bohemia or Nerdistan and so on. We would therefore expect that
the presence of collections of different kinds of amenities might provide different kinds
of atmospheres encouraging different kinds of creative cities. Moreover, we would expect
scenes to contribute to creative cities independently from, but also in interaction with, all
of the other factors listed above. To be sure, some can conflict. Science, cognition, and
technology can be hostile to aesthetic expression and innovation. Bohemians can want to
épater les bourgeois, and see success as signifying failure. Scenes might be a drain on
workforce, sapping workers’ energy away from work-projects into going out on the
scene, or not ever getting a “real” job. Too much scene can be overwhelming, make it
hard to concentrate and focus (Bell’s worry). Overinvestment in scenes, like art galleries
in Carmel, can lead to stagnation [Box on this]. But they can also mutually enhance one
another, in the ways outlined above. We need to be sensitive to both positive and
negative interactions. Which scenes, which creativity? That is the question.
Data Analysis Notes, pasted from outline, with TNC’s comments in italics.
1. How to turn these theories about the sources of a creative workplace in education,
technology, artists, bohemias, and scenes into testable empirical hypotheses?
Treat each of the above as theories of what generates creative workplace, find
variables to serve as proxies for them, and include in multiple regressions. Note
that we don’t have copyrights, so we lose a lot. But nobody has copyrights at
local levels.
a. What dependent variables? These are our standard book DVs in other
chapters and that we have been using, except Patents is new here. There
are three types I crated at county level, total, hi-tech, and entertainment.
Sam and I reviewed the US Patent Office and found noting more recent
than in City as Ent. Machine. Now is various versions of Merge20 and
earlier from other sources.
i. Patents (of various kinds).
ii. Jobs and change in jobs.
iii. Population and change in population.
iv. Wages
v. Income
vi. Rents
b. What Independent Variables (in addition to the core)?
i. For “knowledge workers”: education (maybe BA and postgraduate separately?)
ii. For technology: technology firms, or maybe technology jobs.
1. I’m dropping “tolerance” from Florida’s three t’s, since
Terry showed that came down to education.
iii. For artists: arts jobs, arts revenues – in the future these would be
easier to refine than local firms, and seems to be a more powerful
variable statically.
iv. For Bohemia: some individual bohemian YP items, like tattoos,
20th century art galleries, piercing, second hand clothing stores,
maybe ethnic restaurants, adult entertainment, custom clothing
stores. Go through and compile a list of these. Could also be a
good time to (finally) compute a separate independent café or
record store or boutique measure, using YP data to select only
those cafes and record stores and boutiques with, say, 5 or fewer
locations (did Heather Rogers already do something like this?).
We need to redo as we added more variables and cases. Not yet—
too much work. Also our transgression dimension, and our
bohemian/river styx variable. Draw from Social Forces paper,
where we outline this, and explain how it matches with
expectations for Chicago. Dan: why not try at least the composite
Boho index item too, used there? And in various files as Bliss
Point Boho? Exact var name?
v. For scenes: our dimensions. Easiest is to compute one main factor
based index for each of the 3 sources: Bizzip, YP, DDB. Eric has
done for DDB (Sept 3 email to TNC) only as still assembling the 2
first in a new Merge file. Then include specific sub dimensions of
the 15 as Dan specified.
vi. What is not clearly laid out here, but important in esp. the Boho
section at the end is the combination of say artists or bohos with
other non-artists, non-bohos. We might try to compote these with a
few rough items that could be even quintile like empiricist or to
simplify say 3 hi to low numbers of non-artists as a % of the total
population. There are empirically very few 100% artistic areas
across 40,000 zip codes, maybe just outliers. So maybe first just try
a transformation like log or even deleting the extreme artistic
locations as outliers? This is the hardest statistically to model,
different from our past more linear additive models.
vii. Note that this is specified as log/log, so either take logs of all
individual variables, (adding a small constant to the minimum
score first to make all values greater than zero) OR in stata
(maybe Spss?) choose a regression routine that automatically
computes logs for all variables. I am not sure how state handled
zero, missing, or negative numbers.
c. Then run regressions. First include the other variables, then add scenes,
you don't need to run separately to get the b Coefficients if you use the
Enter command, all are forced in; but you can run both separately if you
want the Variance Explained by the different sets of IVs or other such
stats. Aha, as I read below, you are also looking as change in other
variables due to the scenes; suppression or interaction, fine. asking if
these are significant, and in what contexts (urban vs. rural, gemeinschaftvs. gesellschaft), for what types of outcomes (patents vs. jobs vs.
population, etc.), and how interactions among the variables change picture
– that is, if we add scenes to artists and education, or artists to education
and bohemia, or other scenes besides bohemia to bohemia and artists and
technology, do these change their impacts?
i. Note: could test the “bohemia vs. new age” idea of course by
contrasting transgression to self-expression. But maybe more
specifically with some of the above individual items for bohemia
(like tattoo parlors, body art, or indie cafes) vs. yoga instruction in
regressions (with the rest of the core), and dv’’s of patents, jobs,
etc. Does yoga or tattoos lead to more patents, jobs, income,
wages, etc. is a way of testing relative impact of bohemian
edginess vs. new age harmoniousness. Shows how limited it is to
only think about Bohemian edginess. Careful too many ecological
fallacies as over aggregated. We don't know if the small firm fits or
deviates from the whole zip code, etc. Probably keep simple the
empirical work for this reason and push on to where we have more
strength. Yes if we have all the firms in all the zip codes we are on
stronger ground, but there are many other intervening variables
between patents and scenes that we don't have measured. And w
don’t know how many people got the patents before they moved
their current zip code, 10 or 30 years later.
d. Try all permutations for the key IV’s: education, technology, artists,
bohemia, scenes dimensions. See last sections of Chapter 5 outline v. 1
for some summaries of analyses on these. Be sure to do bohemia zip
codes in more or less Gemeinschaftlisch county quintiles. Other key
finding was that glamour way more important for patents than selfexpression or transgression. Self-expression was important, I think, but
only in the most Gesellschaftlich counties. But check on that.