The Creative Class is Spiky

Terrific new paper shows just how spiky the creative class is. The research by Mark Lorenzen and Kristina Vaarst Andersen of DRUID, a research center in Copenhagen -and who will be visiting with us at the Martin Prosperity Institute this winter - charts the statistical distribution of the creative class across 445 cities in Europe.

Using novel statistical data, the paper analyzes the geographical distribution of Richard Florida’s creative class among 445 European cities. The paper demonstrates that size matters, i.e. cities with a high proportion of creative class tend to get more creative through attraction of still more creative labor. More specifically, the distribution of the European creative class falls into three phases, each approximating a rank-size rule, with different exponents (i.e., inequality).