Micro-geographies of creative industries clusters in Europe: From hot spots to assemblages

The aim of this paper is to provide basic stylized facts about the spatial patterns of location and co-location of clusters of creative industries in Europe. The research proposes a novel methodology for detailing the spatial delimitation of clusters, based on a geo-statistical algorithm and firm-based micro-data. The procedure is applied to a continuous space of 16 European countries and 15 creative industries in 2009. The investigation reveals that creative firms are highly clustered, and that clusters are concentrated in a creative belt stretching from the South of England to the South-east of Germany. These clusters are predominantly metro- politan, heterogeneous, cross borders, and may co-locate to form assemblages.The authors would like to thank the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (Spain) for funding this research (ECO2010-17318 MICINN Project, Research Project no. 2677-UPV, and PAID2012-487-UPV). We also would like to thank the three anonymous referees by their valuable comments.Boix, R.; Hervás Oliver, JL.; Miguel Molina, MBD. (2015). Micro-geographies of creative industries clusters in Europe: From hot spots to assemblages. Papers in Regional Science. 94:753-772. doi:10.1111/pirs.12094S7537729