Locating creativity in the city using Twitter data
Locating creativity in the city using Twitter data
This study applies a new methodology using the location of tweets from creatives to study where economic creativity takes place in a city. Based on a Twitter network in Brighton and Hove (United Kingdom), a creative hub, we identify freelancers and entrepreneurs in the creative industries that form the ‘core’ of the ‘creative class’ but have rarely been captured in existing spatial research. We use a comprehensive geodatabase of ‘Points-of-Interest’ and Census of Population residence and workplace locations to match tweets with types of places. Findings show that practices of economic creativity are less spatially clustered in central parts of the city and more spatially distributed across the city than studies that used business register data or cluster approaches suggested. Residential areas, which proxy for home locations, have a high incident of creative activities besides urban amenities and coworking spaces. It is concluded that local economic development should support the creation and maintenance of attractive places of social interactions across the city to foster creativity and innovation which has become even more important with the surge in homeworking due to Covid-19.
Brighton, Social media, United Kingdom (UK), creativity, economic geography, freelancing
2607-2622
Reuschke, Darja
224493ce-38bc-455d-9341-55f8555e7e13
Long, Jed
78c596a8-6db6-4fce-82b3-426197626d94
Bennett, Nicholas C
79835441-a16a-4d79-99b3-5dc342fe1438
November 2021
Reuschke, Darja
224493ce-38bc-455d-9341-55f8555e7e13
Long, Jed
78c596a8-6db6-4fce-82b3-426197626d94
Bennett, Nicholas C
79835441-a16a-4d79-99b3-5dc342fe1438
Reuschke, Darja, Long, Jed and Bennett, Nicholas C
(2021)
Locating creativity in the city using Twitter data.
Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 48 (9), .
(doi:10.1177/2399808320980745).
Abstract
This study applies a new methodology using the location of tweets from creatives to study where economic creativity takes place in a city. Based on a Twitter network in Brighton and Hove (United Kingdom), a creative hub, we identify freelancers and entrepreneurs in the creative industries that form the ‘core’ of the ‘creative class’ but have rarely been captured in existing spatial research. We use a comprehensive geodatabase of ‘Points-of-Interest’ and Census of Population residence and workplace locations to match tweets with types of places. Findings show that practices of economic creativity are less spatially clustered in central parts of the city and more spatially distributed across the city than studies that used business register data or cluster approaches suggested. Residential areas, which proxy for home locations, have a high incident of creative activities besides urban amenities and coworking spaces. It is concluded that local economic development should support the creation and maintenance of attractive places of social interactions across the city to foster creativity and innovation which has become even more important with the surge in homeworking due to Covid-19.
Text
Manuscript accepted
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Accepted/In Press date: 4 November 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 11 January 2021
Published date: November 2021
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was funded by the European Research Council, the Starting Grant WORKANDHOME (ERC-2014-STG 639403).
Funding Information:
This paper has greatly benefitted from discussions with and practical help provided by Susan Halford. We are extremely grateful for her contributions. We are also grateful to Samantha Cookings and Andy Harfoot (University of Southampton and GeoData) for pointing us at the ONS workplace classification and the OAWZRATIO variable in particular. We also would like to thank Donald Houston for comments on an earlier version of the paper. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was funded by the European Research Council, the Starting Grant WORKANDHOME (ERC-2014-STG 639403).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
Keywords:
Brighton, Social media, United Kingdom (UK), creativity, economic geography, freelancing
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 444959
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/444959
ISSN: 2399-8091
PURE UUID: 7e17afd7-ba61-43e1-a034-dea75ef1e877
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Date deposited: 13 Nov 2020 17:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 06:03
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Author:
Jed Long
Author:
Nicholas C Bennett
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