No 2005/10 Rethinking the Spatial Organization of Creative Industries

Abstract

This paper argues the need to rethink the dominant theory on the spatial organization of creative industries. According to this theory, creative industries tend to locate in the largest metropolitan areas as this location, it is argued, constitutes an arena allowing for accessing face-to-face based buzz on new industry trends and for utilizing the presence of a diverse portfolio of creative competencies. The locational choice reflects that creative industries are organized around inter-firm collaborative projects. This theory, however, is not appropriate to explain the spatial organization of the all types of creative industries. Other types of creative industries rely on different types of knowledge externalities and partly replace knowledge externalities with in-housing, which in turn leads to a different spatial organization. This is documented by a study of the mass media industry, represented by the Danish newspaper industry.