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Economic
development based on attracting and retaining the
“creative class” includes rural Virginia, not
just the urban crescent. That’s one of the
conclusions one can draw from a new discussion
published in “Amber Waves,” the report of the
Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department
of Agriculture. And springtime is just the season
to consider such possibilities.
Experts
David McGranahan and Timothy Wojan have been
studying the creative class – the name George
Mason University Professor Richard Florida gives
those who have creative, development or design
skills and who can apply those skills anywhere –
and the attractiveness of rural amenities to feed
the “creative temperament.” Think rivers for
canoeing, mountains to climb, lakes to ski,
landscapes to paint and sunsets to enjoy.
“Despite
an urban affinity,” McGranahan and Wojan
conclude, “the creative class – perhaps more
able and apt than others in the workforce to
choose where to live based on quality-of-life
considerations – can be drawn out of cities to
high-amenity rural locations. Their activities, in
turn, appear to generate new jobs and local
growth.”
Pitkin
County, Colo., home to Aspen, is one outstanding
example they cite, but Cook County, Minn. is
another. At the center of Cook County and along
the shoreline of Lake Superior, Grand Marais
describes itself this way on the Web. “Ya gotta
love this place. Every nook and cranny has
personality — authenticity. You’ll enjoy an
amazing arts culture, unmatched natural beauty,
colorful restaurants, a wide range of
accommodations, unique and quaint shops, and, of
course, a body of water that demands your
attention. It gets better. One minute you’re in
this timeless harbor village enjoying a
cappuccino, the next you’re at the doorstep of
millions of acres of national wilderness just
waiting to be explored. It’s safe to say, it’s
like nowhere else on the planet. Except for,
maybe, somewhere in New England. But they have
funny accents.” The engaging humor goes more
than a long way toward masking effects of the
unmentioned subzero winters.
Authors
McGranahan and Wojan weighed business, science,
engineering, architecture, design, arts and
entertainment against rural growth, a type of
analysis already done for more urban areas, such
as Northern Virginia and the Research Triangle in
North Carolina. They found about 11 percent of
non-metro counties in the United States, 260
total, could be classified as “creative-class
counties.”
McGranahan
and Wojan then cranked in the chronic problem of
rural areas, including university towns, that
watch high school and college graduates depart for
more urban environments. They considered what
Professor Florida regards as a central
characteristic of the creative class, its
mobility, and concluded that the key to local
growth is to attract and retain talent, not
businesses or jobs. Where talent remains, they
suggest, new businesses and jobs will spring up,
i.e. the talent and skills will be reorganized
into another form right where they are. To balance
the flow of talent out, they suggest, rural areas
need to focus on attracting young families,
midlife career changers, active retirees and
others. That suggests rural Virginia can come up
with unique answers to Richard Florida’s simple
questions, “Who’s there? What’s there?
What’s happening?” to get in on the action.
The
authors found that what they call “non-metro
creative-class counties” do have more creative
activities (some artistic in nature, but also
including patents) and more advanced production
and information technologies and modern management
practices, such as broadband connections,
computer-assisted design and self-directed work
teams. One question still to be tackled: Do high
creative-class environments engender more patent
and technology adoption or do people who invent or
adopt new technologies and practice tend to locate
in high-amenity, creative class settings?
There
are numerous other factors, of course, but the
authors do establish a correlation between rural
creative class and local economic growth.
Creative-class non-metro counties tended to gain
jobs at a faster rate than their metro
counterparts over the 1990 to 2004 period that
McGranahan and Wojan studied. And they acknowledge
the competition among rural areas, too.
“While
rural creative-class counties may grow because of
the creative class, it is possible that the
amenities that attracted the creative class were
responsible for the higher job growth in
creative-class counties in the 1990s,” their
report suggests. “However, whether considering
high-amenity, recreation, high-education, or other
attributes, counties with a high proportion of
creative-class residents generally had job growth
rates that were twice as high as counties with
less creative class presence.”
Cultural
diversity, educational excellence, challenging and
collegial professional environments and
recreational opportunities turn out to be magnets
for the creative class, also known as knowledge
workers, in both urban and rural areas.
Permanently attracting and retaining talent may be
more important to economic development than
temporarily attracting jobs.
--
April 30, 2007
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