Creative Class: A Key to Rural Growth, The

Amber Waves, Apr 2007 by McGranahan, David A, Wojan, Timothy R

The names are familiar-California's Silicon Valley, North Carolina's Research Triangle, and Boston's high-tech Route 128 Corridor. Over the past several decades, research has shown how university research facilities, high-tech firms, and other creative endeavors have sparked significant growth in these and other urban economies. While high-tech firms and major research and development (RSD) activities are not typically located in rural areas, talent and creativity are needed throughout the U.S. economy-in the creation of new types of products and in the adoption of new production and information technologies and new marketing strategies.

ERS researchers explored the importance of the "creative class"-people in highly creative occupations such as business ownership and top management, science, engineering, architecture, design, arts, and entertainment-for rural growth in the 1990s (see box, "How Is the Creative Class Measured?"). They found that the creative class was present in rural areas, particularly in high-amenity areas, and that its presence was associated with measures of creativity, such as patent awards and technology adoption, and with growth in jobs during 1990-2004. Many rural analysts have declared that the era of smokestack chasing is over; the creative-class analysis suggests that chasing talent is a viable alternative for sparking local growth.

The Creative Class Theory

Many economists and geographers point to high-tech firms, research and development (R&D) activity, and patents as sources of new economic growth, but regional scientist Richard Florida focuses on people, arguing that the knowledge and ideas requisite for economic growth are embodied in occupations involving high levels of creativity. These occupations constitute the "creative class," the ultimate source of economic dynamism in today's "knowledge economy."

The geographic mobility of the creative class is central to Florida's thesis. He argues that people in these occupations tend to seek a high quality of life as well as rewarding work, and they are drawn to cities with cultural diversity, active street scenes, and outdoor recreation opportunities. Good local universities alone will not lead to local economic dynamism as graduates may move to more attractive places upon obtaining their degrees. In this context, the key to local growth is to attract and retain talent, as talent leads to further job creation.

While developed with major metropolitan areas in mind, the creative-class thesis seems particularly relevant to rural areas, which lose much of their young talent as high school graduates leave, usually for highly urban environments. These rural areas, especially, need to attract talented young families, midlife career changers, active retirees, and others to maintain their talent base and thereby their economies. Given that rural earnings tend to be lower than urban earnings, especially for those with a college degree, rural quality of life would seem an essential part of that attraction.

Where Is the Creative Class?

The creative class is predominately urban. In both 1990 and 2000, two-thirds of the "creative-class counties," those ranking in the top quarter in the proportion or residents employed in creative-class occupations, were metropolitan even though nonmetropolitan counties are twice as numerous. Metropolitan creative-class counties are found across the country, but especially in the major urban areas.

In 2000 (as in 1990), about 260 or 11 percent of nonmetro counties ranked as creative-class counties. Regional differences are more pronounced than with metro creative-class counties; New England and the mountain areas of the West have higher shares of rural creativeclass-counties than the Midwest and South. Consistent with the thesis that quality-of-life considerations strongly motivate the creative class, counties high in natural amenities are most likely to be creative-class magnets. Pitkin County, Colorado (which contains Aspen), for example, had the largest creative-class proportion of all nonmetro counties in both 1990 and 2000.

Counties dominated by colleges and universities also ranked high in creativeclass proportions. Tompkins County, New York, for example, has Cornell University. Jefferson County, Iowa, a Midwestern creative-class magnet, is home to Maharishi International University. As a draw for Transcendental Meditation adherents, the county has attracted many urban professionals who have started or work for more than 100 software development and professional service firms located there. Most of the nonmetro creative-class counties in low natural-amenity areas have colleges or universities.

Mountain landscapes and universities are not required to attract the creative class to rural areas. Llano County does not contain a large college or university but is in the Texas Hill Country near Austin and borders on two large lakes. Robust growth in the number of artists in the county during the 1990s is representative of "artistic havens" emerging in select rural counties. Cook County, Minnesota, is a hiking and canoeing area, but it also has the oldest active artist colony in Minnesota. With a playhouse and a music association, it is where "culture merges with woods and water" (Grand Marais Chamber of Commerce).