A very compelling and very careful new study of the United States by Timothy Wojan, Dayton Lambert and David McGranahan provides substantial support for a large bohemian effect on local economic development. The authors conclude that their “results support the hypothesis that an unobserved creative milieu that attracts artists increases local economic dynamism.” The study, published in the Journal of Economic Geography, is here.
October 18th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Wow. From my West Coast, urban prejudices it’s fascinating to see the rural distribution and all the places in the South. So the heat maps may have been working on something after all. It would be interesting to compare them to this.
My statistics aren’t that good, but the narrative is great. Especially “evidence of a strong creative milieu is conclusive only in the nonmetropolitan sample, where a surplus of Bohemians was also associated with faster rates of new firm formation and employment growth.” So they actually found more correlation of artists and economic growth in rural areas, although the metro areas were statistical uncertainly, not lack of correlation. Looking at counties rather than cities gives different information.
Also “Public spending on the arts, justified on the basis of increased regional competitiveness may very well be wasteful if directed to high visibility projects that do nothing to increase human-scale interaction.” This is of course exactly what Richard has been saying, but government types misinterpret.
Wallowa Co, Oregon is interesting in showing what one mature artist can do to a community. Valley Bronze, the first foundry started out there in the early 1980’s, attracted others and led to the little town of Joseph becoming an artist’s colony. Or Nevada County, California (over on the right side at the bottom of the straight line) — I’d guess this started when Gary Snyder bought land in Grass Valley in the 1960’s.
The North California Coast’s low numbers is a surprise, I would have thought that Humboldt County would be a hotbed. But actually the artists I knew there moved to Mendocino and to Grass Valley, so maybe the college in Arcata wasn’t enough to keep it going.
Of course, this is only a part of one of the three T’s, so it’s different kind of economic development than the full Creative Class theory and the authors acknowledge that.