Richard Florida is digging deeper into his premise that bohemian, artistic, and gay populations in a region have a direct impact on home values and economic vitality. In his weblog, he links to a new working paper he co-authored on the subject. Says he:
The findings indicate that the Bohemian-Gay Index has substantial effects on housing values across all permutations of the model and across all region sizes. It remains positive and significant alongside variables for regional income, wages, technology and human capital. The Bohemian-Gay Index also has a substantial direct effect on other key variables, particularly income, and because of that has an additional indirect effect on housing values.
As ever, some might quibble with Florida’s categories and their broad inclusion of many different groups (the ”creative class” seemed to include almost everyone). Florida counts as ”bohemians” everyone who works in arts, design, entertainment, and media occupations (about 1.3 million in the U.S. by his count). Whether all artists would consider themselves bohemians, or all gay people would choose to associate with the group, is a fundamental question behind his calculations.
Regardless, the theories and their findings make it all worthwhile when you picture the conversations they must generate at city councils and among conservative real-estate developers.
This actually may engage a serious issue in planning for artists’ spaces. For example, when a community has decided to entice the creative class, it might offer artists studio space in areas that are ripe for redevelopment. So artists go in, make their places vibrant and fun and “artsy” and of course, what happens? Exactly what planners want – these areas become more attractive to all sorts of folks and property values go up.
Truth is that while painters and actors and architects and graphic designers are all part of the creative class, and no doubt all doing important work, some of ’em earn more than others. That’s why it can become important to make sure when the city fathers/mothers start going ga-ga over the creative class, that some protections are built in for the working artists (who are generally the urban pioneers) so that they and their spaces are somehow protected from the fruits of their success!
Marc