The role of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ factors for accommodating creative knowledge: insights from Dublin's ‘creative class’

Abstract

The idea of the creative knowledge city has received considerable attention in the last number of years, not only in the academic literature but also from urban policymakers. Much of the attention has centred on the ‘creative class’ thesis and its relevance for regional economic growth. By taking the thesis at face value, this paper empirically analyses the extent to which Dublin's creative knowledge workers conform or otherwise to the characteristics of the ‘creative class’. Thus, we investigate the satisfaction of Dublin's creative knowledge workers with the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ factors associated with the city's living environment. We also analyse the most important reasons attracting creative knowledge workers to the Dublin region. In addition, the paper also explores the mobility of Dublin's creative knowledge workers within the context of locational and workplace mobility. The results show that workers within the creative knowledge class are attracted to Dublin on the basis of classic factors: employment availability, family and birthplace. ‘Soft’ factors play an important role in the decision-making process of only a small minority of workers.

Keywords:

• creative class
• creative economy
• creative cities
• new economy
• location theory

Acknowledgements

This research forms part of a large EU research project funded under priority 7 ‘Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge-based Society’ within the Sixth Framework Programme of the EU (contract no. 028270). The project is entitled ‘Accommodating Creative Knowledge – Competitiveness of European Metropolitan Regions within the enlarged Union’ (ACRE) and involves comparative research in 13 EU metropolitan regions. The authors gratefully acknowledge numerous insightful discussions with various ACRE institutions and team members over the course of the project. We would also like to offer our gratitude for the helpful comments provided by three anonymous referees. Their comments improved the paper considerably.

Notes

1. The average turnover growth is a useful economic indicator to measure the growth in a particular sector(s) in comparison to growth in the overall economy within a given timeframe.