Development and the Politics of a Creative Class: Evidence from the Study of Artists. Environment and Planning A 38:1921−1940

anonymous reviewers for critical feedback on an earlier draft. Comments welcome. In this paper, I critique the notion of “the creative class ” and the fuzzy causal logic about its relationship to urban growth. I argue that the creative class bunches together, purely on the basis of educational attainment, occupations that exhibit distinctive spatial and political proclivities and with little demonstrable relationship to creativity. I use a case study of artists, one element of the purported creative class, to probe this phenomenon, demonstrating that the formation, location, urban impact and politics of this occupation are much more complex and distinctive than suggested in Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class (2002). Artists’ spatial distribution is a function of semi-autonomous personal migration decisions, local nurturing of artists in dedicated spaces and organizations, and the locus of artist-employing firms. Artists, an occupation with very high rates of self-employment, boost regional growth by providing import-substituting consumption activities for residents and through direct export of their work. Their contribution to attracting high tech activity is ambiguous – causality may work in the opposite direction. Artists play multiple roles in an urba