What Are The Characteristics Of A Creative Neighborhood?

http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/05/what-a creative-neighborhood-looks/393038/

Creative neighborhood in Toronto, Canada
Greg Spencer
citylab.com

Hello Everyone:

Today we are going to take a look at creative neighborhoods. Specifically, with the help Richard Florida's CityLab article "What a Creative Neighborhood Looks Like," we are going to discuss the specific characteristics of a creative neighborhood. Mr. Florida writes, "Innovation and creativity are the basic engines of economic development in cities, regions and nations.  But what makes some places more innovative than others?  How do certain neighborhoods come to specialize in different types of creativity?"

Regional Studies recently published a detailed new study by Mr. Florida's Martin Prosperity Institute and University of Toronto colleague Greg Spencer at the types of neighborhoods that attract the high-tech industries versus those that foster cultural endeavors.  Mr. Spencer focused on Canada's three city-regions: Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal.  Mr. Spencer defined the high-tech (science-based) industries: spanning computer, software, pharmaceuticals and medicine, as well as research and development, while "creative" industries include film and video, music, radio and television, and design, as well as independent artists, writers and performers.

Summary of neighborhood characteristics
Greg Spencer
citylab.com

To understand the neighborhood differences, Mr. Spencer used "...unique and detail data form the commercial analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet on the locations of 1.4 million business in the years 2001, 2006 and 2011.  The study asks: To what degree do these two main types of innovative activity prefer urban versus suburban neighborhoods?"

The big conclusion of the study ...is that these two types of activities-science-based versus creative industries-are based in very different kinds of locations.  The table on the left, excerpted from the study, provides a summary of the differences.  In essence, the science-based industries are situated in low density suburban locations.  The creative industries are more urban based, "...dense, closer to the core of the city, walkable, mixed-use and often served by public."

'Creative' Neighborhood and 'Science' Neighborhood
Greg Spencer
citylab.com

The diagrams on the left outline the differences between science and creative neighborhoods in the city-regions Mr. Spencer studied.  The creative neighborhoods, on the left hand side, present greater density, more compact street grids, and more clustered firms.  The science neighborhoods, on the right hand side, are more spread out.  A second set of diagrams demonstrate land use patterns in each of the neighborhoods.  Mr. Florida writes, "The creative neighborhoods have a mix of residential, commercial, and government uses, interspersed by parks.  The high-tech neighborhoods are far more dominated by just industrial and commercial uses-typical of office and industrial parks."

Land-use pattern of 'creative' and 'science' neighborhoods
Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver
Greg Spencer
citylab.com

Greg Spencer also mentions that creative workers are more likely to live in or near the neighborhoods in which they work, while science and engineering workers live farther away and are more likely to commute by car.  A point worth mentioning is that in high-tech neighborhoods, clusters also tend to form.  Scientists and engineers form classic nerdistan living configurations near said office parks.  Mr. Spencer uses a third set of diagrams to illustrate the locations of amenities such as cafés, restaurants, and bars.  Once again we see a similar pattern.  The creative neighborhoods have a denser amount of food establishments, while the science-based neighborhoods have a more diffuse amount of restaurants and bars.

Locations of amenities in creative and science neighborhoods
Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver
Greg Spencer
popist.com

Food establishments do more than nourish the palette, they provide a place for creative types to seek out networking opportunities.  They also attract people from other neighborhoods and by doing so extend the time period during each that the neighborhoods [are active].  Mr. Spencer note This adds to the social vibrancy of the creative neighborhoods and possibilities for social interactions that are less available in places that science industries tend to inhabit.  Think the ubiquitous coffee house, club, yoga studio, Whole Foods, and an assortment of third spaces that function in a similar manner as "...offices and conference rooms for scientists and engineers."

Both neighborhoods have an institutional anchor.  For example, a typical anchor for a high-tech neighborhood  would engineering firms and/or research universities that specialize in science-based fields.  Typical anchors in creative neighborhoods can include universities with specialities in the humanities, fine and performing arts, design schools, galleries, and performance venues.

Yonge Street at Temperance (2008)
Toronto, Canada en.wikipedia.org

Greg Spencer infers that the different neighborhood patterns are the result of two basic structural differences between the two types of firms and industries.  The science-based industries are typical much larger than the creative firms.  Mr. Spencer cites the information he gleaned from Dun & Bradstreet that indicates ...the former are two and a half times bigger-with an average of 17 versus 7 employees.

Second, partly the result of this statistic, creative workers are more dependent on social networks.  By this, we can infer something other than Facebook or Twitter, although Blogger speculates that they are part of the way creative workers maintain friendships and familial relationships.  Mr. Spencer uses data from the Canadian General Social Survey which found that creative workers have the largest social networks of any class of worker.  On average these individuals report maintaining 60 relationships with family, friends, and acquaintance, wrote Mr. Spencer.  He continues, while those working in science and technology occupations have on average 46 connections...this disparity is almost entirely accounted  for by the number of local (same region) acquaintances that each group maintains relationships with.  Again, Blogger wonders if these connections are actual people or connections made online.  What we can conclude is that "...smaller creative firms thus benefit from and require denser conditions in neighborhoods to function."

Apartments in Montreal
Montreal, Canada
jetsetcitizen.com

Office space rents for smaller creative firms are typically higher than larger science-based industries.  Mr. Spencer writes, This suggests that traditional urban economic cost-based factors are not the main drivers of location decisions...Rather there seems to be a willingness, particularly of creative firms, to pay more in order to in close physical proximity to similar businesses.

Despite their myriad of differences, both types of neighborhoods tend to cluster in the same city or metropolitan regions.  Greg Spencer points out, 55 percent of Canada's science-based industries and 57 percent of its creative industries are concentrated in the city-regions of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, which house just 35 percent of the country's population.  Further, over the last several years, start-up companies have taken on a more urban orientation than the larger more entrenched tech companies that gave form to the study.  Richard Florida reminds the reader, "As I have written here previously, the urban districts of San Francisco now top Silicon Valley in start-ups and venture capital investments while New York City and London have generated large high-tech start-up clusters as well."

Finally, the overarching question becomes, "How do city leaders who want to attract different kinds of businesses and people go about doing that?"  Mr. Florida kind of answers his question, "It turns out this is harder for creative industries than for their science-based counterparts."  Greg Spencer also responds, Most of the creative neighborhoods highlighted in [the] paper were not produced intentionally but rather evolved into what they are due to their highly flexible and adaptable characteristics.  This in the end may hold the secret to any successful marriage between urban design and economic development.