Recent literature emphasizes the role of the constant supply of creative energy from citizens in fostering the development of places, countries and cities in particular (e.g. Florida, 2002). Attempting to explain why economic activity and creative people group in one place and not another, literature emphasizes the role of supply and demand conditions. The supply side refers to the personality and cognitive characteristics of individuals living in cities (e.g. Amabile, 1996). Furthermore the role of the context, the demand side, in which people live and make everyday decisions has been highlighted as having considerable impact on the level of individuals’ creativity.
In spite of considerable efforts to address the questions of why and how cities and regions attract people and stimulate creativity, which in turn leads to the economic growth, there is still a lack of sufficiently robust empirical evidence in this regard. By exploring the attitudes and preferences of managers and entrepreneurs from creative and knowledge-based sectors, this paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the factors fostering the flow of entrepreneurs to particular cities and regions in Central and Eastern Europe and Western Europe.
The cases of five metropolitan regions – Sofia, Riga, Budapest (East European capitals), Helsinki (a West European capital city) and Toulouse, a classic West European “second city” operating in the shadow of the national capital – are used for this purpose. 21 to 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted from February-April of 2008 in each city. The respondents were all “managers” – where “manager” was defined as the person being the leading decision maker of the company. Following sectors were covered: business and management consultancy; computer games and electronic publishing, motion picture and video activities, radio and TV activities, research and development.
Among other things, our the data suggests that, although very useful, the distinction between “hard” and “soft” factors is not a sufficient theoretical basis to explain the location patterns of creatives. In this light, the influential role of additional drivers, such as the “individual trajectory” considerations that overwhelmingly dominated in all studied groups in our sample, was identified by this study.
To conclude, it would be premature to “dismiss” Florida’s conceptual construct as a useful tool in explaining location patterns of entrepreneurs and managers from creative and knowledge based sectors in Europe. After all, if individual energy and creativity can compensate for structural deficiencies and push cities forward and onto the creative path, the duty of city planners is to create the optimal, favourable conditions for citizens to develop and harness their energy and creativity productively. This notion brings the discussion back, at least to some degree, to classic Florida “soft” themes, such as the importance of the availability of fri
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19.05.2011.
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