223R_Creativity, cities and innovation (research summary)

What is The Future for Cities?

Are you interested in the connection between creative industries and cities?

Summary of the article titled Creativity, cities and innovation from 2014 by Neil Lee and Andrés Rogríguez-Pose, published in the Environment and Planning A journal.

This is a great preparation to our next interview with Julian O’Shea in episode 224 talking about the importance of creative people in cities.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see the link between creative industries, occupations and the innovation within cities. This article investigates the effects of creative industries and creative occupations on cities.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Creativity is crucial for economic innovation, with creative occupations across various sectors playing a key role in fostering innovation, challenging the traditional focus on urban creative industries alone.
2. There is no strong empirical evidence supporting the notion that urban settings, particularly larger cities, have a distinct advantage in driving innovation within creative industries and occupations.
3. Policies that support creative roles across both urban and rural settings are needed, emphasizing the universal importance of creative occupations in enhancing innovation, rather than focusing solely on location-based advantages.

You can find the article through this link.

Abstract: The creative industries have long been seen as an innovative sector. More recent research posits that creative occupations are also a fundamental, but overlooked, driver of innovation. Theory also suggests cities are important for both creative industries and occupations, with urban environments helping firms innovate. Yet little empirical work has considered the links between creative industries, occupations, cities, and innovation at the firm level. This paper addresses this gap using a sample of over 9000 UK SMEs. Our results stress that creative industries firms are more likely to introduce original product innovations, but not those learnt from elsewhere. Creative occupations, however, appear a more robust general driver of innovation. We find no support for the hypothesis that urban creative industries firms are particularly innovative. However, creative occupations are used in cities to introduce product innovations learnt elsewhere. The results suggest that future work needs to seriously consider the importance of occupations in empirical studies of innovation.

Connecting episodes you might interested in:

• No.002R - Intelligent cities: Variable geometries of spatial intelligence;
• No.041R - A 100 smart cities, a 100 utopias;
• No.076R - Smart innovative cities: The impact of smart city policies on urban innovation;

You can find the transcript through ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠this link⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@WTF4Cities⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or on the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wtf4cities.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ website where the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠shownotes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠are also available.

I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.

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