Knowledge Bases, Talents, and Contexts: On the Usefulness of the Creative Class Approach in Sweden

The geography of the creative class and its impact on regional development has been debated for some years. While the ideas of Richard Florida have permeated local and regional planning strategies in most parts of the Western world, critiques have been numerous. Florida’s 3T’s (technology, talent, and tolerance) have been adopted without considering whether the theory fits into the settings of a specific urban and regional context. This article aims to contextualize and unpack the creative class approach by applying the knowledge-base approach and break down the rigid assumption that all people in the creative class share common locational preferences. We argue that the creative class draws on three different knowledge bases: synthetic, analytical, and symbolic, which have different implications for people’s residential locational preferences with respect to a people climate and a business climate. Furthermore, the dominating knowledge base in a region has an influence on the importance of a people climate and a business climate for attracting and retaining talent. In this article, we present an empirical analysis in support of these arguments using original Swedish data.