‘The’ creative class does not exist: contrasting the residential preferences of creative and technical workers in Amsterdam and Eindhoven

Abstract

The creative class is a much-contested concept, yet still very much in vogue among policy makers. Although a range of studies have built on, refined and improved this concept, there is still a tendency to under-estimate the heterogeneity of higher-skilled workers. Although various scholars, including Florida, also pay some attention to the heterogeneous nature of the creative class, much emphasis is placed on the lifestyles and preferences that these workers supposedly have in common. In this chapter we will focus on the residential preferences of highereducated workers in general, and creative and technical workers in particular. Residential preferences play an important role in Florida’s ‘creative class’ thesis. Florida (2002) claims that the ‘creative class’ have particular preferences in terms of their residential location and environment and their use of amenities that would set this ‘class’ apart from other segments of the working population. In his view the ‘creative class’ would have a strong preference for highly urban environments, including features like a diversity of functions, people and lifestyles, a high level of tolerance for this diversity, a vibrant nightlife, ‘street-level culture’, and ‘third places’ where the borders between work and leisure disappear. He suggests that urban economic strategies should focus on attracting the ‘creative class’, amongst others, by creating or improving the types of highly urban environments they demand. Initially basing his thesis mainly on data from US metropolitan areas, he has meanwhile expanded his ‘creative class’ research network to Canada, Europe, Australia and East Asia (e.g. Mellander et al. 2014).