Amenity, firm agglomeration, and local creativity of producer services in Shanghai

Abstract

Studies of creativity in urban China are heavily confined at the interurban level and have been criticized for unclear spatial mechanisms and missing local context. This study constructs a theoretical framework to understand the role of urban amenity on the local attractiveness to producer services and further analyzes such attractiveness in Shanghai in terms of agglomeration and creativity using open data. We find that creative firms are more clustered than other producer service firms and urban amenities in Shanghai. The regression results show that urban amenity is strong in explaining local attractiveness to creativity rather than firm agglomeration at the 1-km scale. The attractiveness of the local urban area to creativity may be affected by urban amenity in various ways, including co-location, accessibility, and high-density clusters. Such relationships also follow Shanghai's monocentric structure. The importance of urban amenity decays as the distance to the central business district (CBD) increases in regards to firm agglomeration but persists in terms of creativity level. These findings highlight the importance of considering the co-existence of different spatial relationships and accentuate the differentiated applicability of industrial agglomeration and creativity theories.