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

Kristina Vaarst Andersen; Høgni Kalsø Hansen; Arne Isaksen; Mika Raunio

doi:10.1080/13662711003633496

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

Kristina Vaarst Andersen, Høgni Kalsø Hansen, Arne Isaksen, Mika Raunio

Geology

70 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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 Florida’s 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. Florida’s original study focused only on city regions with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Our statistical analyses mainly support Florida’s 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.

Original language	English
Journal	Industry and Innovation
Volume	17
Issue number	2
Pages (from-to)	215-240
ISSN	1366-2716
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/13662711003633496
Publication status	Published - Apr 2010

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10.1080/13662711003633496

Cite this

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title = "Nordic City Regions in the Creative Class Debate: Putting the Creative Class Thesis to a Test",

abstract = "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 Florida{\textquoteright}s 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. Florida{\textquoteright}s original study focused only on city regions with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Our statistical analyses mainly support Florida{\textquoteright}s 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.",

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