مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

۱٫۱٫ Aim and rationale The urbanist Richard Florida has now successfully popularized the twin concepts of the creative class and creative capital to economists and to regional scientists.1 In this regard, Florida (2002, p. 68) helpfully explains that the creative class “consists of people who add economic value through their creativity.” This class is composed of professionals such as doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, university professors, and, notably, bohemians such as artists, musicians, and sculptors. From the perspective of regional economic growth and development, these people are significant because they possess creative capital which is the “intrinsically human ability to create new ideas, new technologies, new business models, new cultural forms, and whole new industries that really [matter]” (Florida, 2005a, p. 32).

As noted by Florida on numerous occasions, the creative class deserves to be studied in detail because this group gives rise to ideas, information, and technology, outputs that are important for the growth and development of cities and regions. Hence, in this era of globalization, cities and regions that want to be successful need to do all they can to draw in and retain members of the creative class because this class is the primary driver of economic growth.

The above discussion raises the following question: how is the notion of creative capital different from the concept of human capital? To answer this question, first observe that in empirical work, the concept of human capital is typically measured with education or with education based indicators. Even so, Marlet and Van Woerkens (2007) have rightly pointed out that the accumulation of creative capital does not have to be dependent on the acquisition of a formal education. What this means is that even though the creative capital accumulated by some members of Florida’s creative class (doctors, engineers, university professors) does depend on the completion of many years of formal education, the same is not necessarily true of other members of this creative class (artists, painters, poets). People in this latter group may be innately creative and thus possess raw creative capital despite having very little or no formal education.