CONTENTS

BOOK REVIEWS

Agri-Food Commodity Chains and Globalising Networks, edited by Christina Stringer and Richard Le Heron
Stefano Ponte, Pages 483-484
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Taking Southeast Asia to Market: Commodities, Nature, and People in the Neoliberal Age, edited by Joseph Nevins and Nancy Lee Peluso
Harvey Neo, Pages 485-486
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From Communists to Foreign Capitalists: The Social Foundations of Foreign Direct Investments in Postsocialist Europe, by Nina Bandelj
Christian Sellar, Pages 487-488
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The Moving Frontier: The Changing Geography of Production in Labour-Intensive Industries, edited by Lois Labrianidis
Andrea Morrison, Pages 489-490
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2008-2009 Reviewers, Pages 491-492

Volume 85 Annual Contents, Pages 493-496

ABSTRACTS

Guest Editorial: Introduction to the Creative Class in European City Regions, by Bjørn Asheim

Abstract: This special issue presents the results of a European research project on the creative class in European city regions. In this Introduction, the need for contextualizing the approach is underlined, taking into account the differences between the United States, where Richard Florida's ideas were developed, and Europe. In modifying the approach to suit European conditions, varieties of capitalism and social capital perspectives were applied.

Key words: creative class, Europe, city regions, context, varieties of capitalism, social capital.

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Centrality and Creativity: Does Richard Florida's Creative Class Offer New Insights into Urban Hierarchy? by Mark Lorenzen and Kristina Vaarst Andersen

Abstract: To provide new insights into urban hierarchy, this article brings together one of economic geography's oldest and most well-established notions with one of its newest and most disputed notions: Christäller's centrality and Florida's creative class. Using a novel original database, the article compares the distribution of the general population and the creative class across 444 city regions in 8 European countries. It finds that the two groups are both distributed according to the rank-size rule, but exhibit different distinct phases with different slopes. The article argues that the two distributions are different because market thresholds for creative services and jobs are lower than thresholds for less specialized services and jobs. The article hence concludes that centrality exerts a strong influence upon urban hierarchies of creativity and that the study of creative urban city hierarchies yields new insights into the problem of centrality.

Key words: creative class, urban hierarchy, rank-size rule, urban amenities, market size thresholds.

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Creative Class and Regional Growth: Empirical Evidence from Seven European Countries, by Ron A. Boschma and Michael Fritsch

Abstract: This article analyzes the regional distribution and economic effect of the “creative class” on the basis of a unique data set that covers more than 500 regions in 7 European countries. The creative class is unevenly geographically distributed across Europe; the analyses show that a regional climate of tolerance and openness has a strong and positive effect on a region’s share of these people. Regional job opportunities also have a large effect on the size of a region’s population of the creative class. The findings reveal some evidence of a positive relationship among creative class occupation, employment growth, and entrepreneurship at the regional level in a number of European countries. On the basis of the analysis, however, it is not clear whether human capital, measured by creative occupation, outperforms indicators that are based on formal education, or if formal education has the stronger effect.

Key words: creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, regional development.

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Knowledge Bases, Talents, and Contexts: On the Usefulness of the Creative Class Approach in Sweden, by Bjørn Asheim and Høgni Kalsø Hansen

Abstract: 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.

Key words: knowledge bases, creative class, business climate, people climate, context, Sweden.

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Knowledge Sourcing Beyond Buzz and Pipelines: Evidence from the Vienna Software Sector, by Michaela Trippl, Franz Tödtling, and Lukas Lengauer

Abstract: This article examines the nature and geography of knowledge linkages in the Vienna software cluster. Empirical studies on the software sector have provided contradictory evidence of the relative importance of different sources of knowledge, the spatial dimension of exchanges of knowledge, and the relevance of different channels for the transmission of knowledge. Recent conceptual work on the geography of knowledge linkages has highlighted that the innovative dynamics of clusters rests on both local and global knowledge flows, that is, the combination of "local buzz" and "global pipelines." However, the buzz-and-pipelines approach fails to provide a precise understanding of the mechanisms by which actors in a cluster gain access to knowledge at different spatial scales. This article goes beyond the buzz-and-pipelines concept and suggests a differentiated typology of knowledge linkages, distinguishing among market relations, formal networks, spillovers, and informal networks. Drawing on a survey of firms and face-to-face interviews with representatives of companies, we demonstrate that in the Vienna software industry, knowledge flows are informal. We found that spillovers and informal networks are highly significant at all spatial scales and are complemented by formalized research-and-development partnerships at the local and national levels. We also show that the character of knowledge linkages is dependent on the nature of innovation. The more radical the innovation, the larger the variety of sources of knowledge and the stronger the diversity of the mechanisms for transferring knowledge.

Key words: software industry, innovation, knowledge linkages.

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Working on the Water: On Legal Space and Seafarer Protection in the Cruise Industry, by William C. Terry

Abstract: With a focus on Filipino seafarers, the largest cohort of workers on cruise ships, this article argues that recent legal decisions in U.S. courts on the employment and protection of international cruise ship workers have repositioned the historical relationships between seafarers and their employers and have created a new extraterritorial legal space in which seafarers' rights are diminished. In this context, Filipino seafarers find themselves embedded in a dynamic transnational system that facilitates their entry into the cruise industry, yet structures a diminution of their protection under the law. This process represents a rollback of historical protections that have favored seafarers in U.S. courts. This case calls into question how laws and legal framings serve to buttress labor relationships between people and places, thereby shaping economic geographies. Thus, this article illustrates the power of a legal geographic framework to examine economic relationships and therefore to shed light on how economic globalization is facilitated and shaped at multiple scales. It offers a geographic perspective on how the legal and the economic are implicated in one another and suggests that further attention to legal geographic aspects of economic and labor geographies would be useful for analyzing the maintenance of inequalities in the global system.

Key words: cruise industry, labor geographies, legal geographies, Philippines.

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