Don't Shoot the Pianist

Creative Firms, Workers, and Neighborhood Gentrification

Bibliographic Data

ID3204544
AuthorsTasos Kitsos (0000-0002-5338-2714, Aston University), Max Nathan (0000-0002-4617-4300, University College London), Diana Gutierrez-Posada (0000-0002-0435-8056, Universidad de Oviedo)
Year2025
Volume101
Issue1
Pages60-85
Publication date2025-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomic Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0095 • E-ISSN: 1944-8287
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00130095.2025.2470721
OpenAlexW4408836148
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited76

We examine links between creative activity and gentrification at the neighborhood level. These dynamics are both complex and important to understand. Artists may help upgrade inexpensive neighborhoods before being displaced, including by higher-paid creative services workers. Alternatively, creative activity may follow patterns of high-income customers and locales. Many city leaders hope creative industries can drive urban growth while worrying about these highly localized impacts. However, outside case studies, these links are poorly understood. Drawing on urban theory and recent creative industries debates, we frame neighborhood upgrading in larger processes of competition for urban space, then identify distinct creativity–gentrification channels for firms, workers, and arts/service activities. We explore impacts on neighborhoods in England and Wales, via rich microdata on firms and workers between 2001 and 2021. We test aggregate links between creative activity and subsequent gentrification, then explore channels across actors, activity types, level of clustering, the urban hierarchy, and property types. Largely, we find very small associations between creative clustering and gentrification in the following decades. Associations are larger for creative workers than firms, though less stable. Links are stronger in London and larger cities; in neighborhoods with denser clusters of creative firms, changes in gentrification scores are three to seven times larger. Overall, arts workers and businesses are most implicated in gentrification, though the former lead and the latter follow neighborhood change. The findings have important implications for urban economic development and urban planning policy

Economic geography · Economic growth · Economics · Gentrification · Geography · Sociology · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Regional Economics and Spatial Analysis · Urban Planning and Governance

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