Competing on Creativity: Placing Ontario's Cities in North American Context
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Competing on Creativity: Placing Ontario’s Cities in North American Context A report prepared for the Ontario Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation and the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity Meric S. Gertler Richard Florida Gary Gates Tara Vinodrai November 2002 Executive Summary Creativity has replaced raw materials or natural harbours as the crucial wellspring of economic growth. To be successful in this emerging creative age, regions must develop, attract and retain talented and creative people who generate innovations, develop technology- intensive industries and power economic growth. Such talented people are not spread equally across nations or places, but tend to concentrate within particular city-regions. The most successful city-regions are the ones that have a social environment that is open to creativity and diversity of all sorts. The ability to attract creative people in arts and culture fields and to be open to diverse groups of people of different ethnic, racial and lifestyle groups provides distinct advantages to regions in generating innovations, growing and attracting high- technology industries, and spurring economic growth. This report examines the relationship between talent, technology, creativity and diversity in city-regions in Ontario – and Canada more generally – and compares these to the relationships found to exist in American metropolitan regions. Our findings strongly indicate that the relationships first captured for US city-regions in the work of Florida and colleagues are also evident in Canadian city-regions. If anything, the relationships in Canada are stronger than those found in the United States. In particular, we find that a vibrant local creative class and openness to diversity attract knowledge workers in Ontario and Canada. We also find that, in general, Ontario city-regions have a solid foundation in these areas to compete against US city-regions. In summary, there appears to be a strong set of linkages between creativity, diversity, talent and technology-intensive activity that are driving the economies of Ontario’s – and Canada’s – city-regions. For policy makers, this work confirms the importance of urban centres in the knowledge economy and the need to investigate further the importance of higher education in this knowledge economy. At the municipal level, this work points to the importance of collaborative efforts between local governments, firms, and individuals to reinforce and strengthen the unique urban character of their city-regions. For all Ontarians, this work underscores the importance of immigration and settlement, as well as the nurturing of arts and creativity. ii Table of Contents Executive Summary..................................................................................................................ii Table of Contents.....................................................................................................................iii List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ v List of Figures........................................................................................................................... v 1 Technology, Talent, Creativity and Diversity Create Advantages for City-Regions........ 1 2 Data and Methods..............................................................................................................3 2.1 Key Variables........................................................................................................ 3 3 How do City-Regions in Ontario and Canada Perform? ................................................... 5 3.1 City-Regions in Ontario and Canada .................................................................... 5 3.2 Talent .................................................................................................................... 6 3.3 Creativity and the Bohemian Index ...................................................................... 7 3.4 Diversity and the Mosaic Index ............................................................................ 8 3.5 Technology ........................................................................................................... 9 4 Technology, Talent, Creativity and Diversity in Canadian City-Regions....................... 10 4.1 Talent and Creativity........................................................................................... 10 4.2 Talent and Diversity............................................................................................ 11 4.3 Talent and Technology ....................................................................................... 12 4.4 Technology, Creativity and Diversity................................................................. 14 5 Technology, Talent, Creativity and Diversity: Comparing Canadian and US City- Regions ................................................................................................................................... 16 5.1 Canada and the United States: National Differences.......................................... 16 5.2 Comparing Canadian and US City-Regions: Key Findings ............................... 16 5.3 Canadian and US City-Regions: A Multivariate Analysis ................................. 22 6 Conclusions and Implications for Ontario....................................................................... 24 7 Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 26 About the Researchers ............................................................................................................ 27 Acknowledgements................................................................................................................. 28 iii Appendix A: Defining Bohemian Occupations in Canada and the United States.................. 29 Appendix B: Defining High-technology Industries in Canada and the United States............ 30 Appendix C: Ranks of Key Variables by Size of Metropolitan Region................................. 31 iv List of Tables Table 1: Census Metropolitan Areas in Canada by Size........................................................... 5 Table 2: Canada and the United States: Comparing key indicators........................................ 16 Table 3: Ontario’s City-Regions – North American Ranks by Population Size..................... 21 Table 4: Multivariate Regression Results – Canadian and US City-Regions......................... 23 List of Figures Figure 1: Talent in Canadian City-Regions .............................................................................. 6 Figure 2: Bohemians in Canadian City-Regions ...................................................................... 7 Figure 3: Mosaic Index for Canadian City-Regions................................................................. 8 Figure 4: Tech-Pole Index for Canadian City-Regions ............................................................ 9 Figure 5: Talent by Bohemian Index for Canadian City-Regions .......................................... 11 Figure 6: Talent by Mosaic Index for Canadian City-Regions............................................... 12 Figure 7: Tech-Pole Index by Talent for Canadian City-Regions .......................................... 13 Figure 8: Tech-Pole Index by Bohemian Index for Canadian City-Regions.......................... 14 Figure 9: Tech-Pole Index by Mosaic Index for Canadian City-Regions .............................. 15 Figure 10: Talent by Bohemian Index for North American City-Regions ............................. 18 Figure 11: Talent by Mosaic/Melting Pot Index for North American City-Regions.............. 18 Figure 12: Tech-Pole Index by Talent for North American City-Regions ............................. 19 Figure 13: Tech-Pole Index by Bohemian Index for North American City-Regions............. 19 Figure 14: Tech-Pole Index by Mosaic Index for North American City-Regions ................. 20 v 1 Technology, Talent, Creativity and Diversity Create Advantages for City-Regions A distinct advantage of city-regions is their ability to produce, attract and retain those workers who play the lead role in knowledge-intensive production and innovation – those who provide the ideas, know-how, creativity and imagination so crucial to economic success. Because value creation in many sectors of the economy rests increasingly on intangible assets, the locational constraints of earlier eras – for example, access to natural harbours or proximity to raw materials and cheap energy sources – no longer exert the same pull they once did. Instead, what matters most now are those attributes and characteristics of particular places that make them attractive to potentially mobile, much sought-after talent. Traditional theories of economic growth and development emphasized the role of natural resources and physical assets. Such theories were used to inform strategies typically based on various incentives to try to alter the location decisions of firms. In recent years, several more robust theories have emerged. The first, associated with the work of Michael Porter (2000) and others, emphasizes the role of clusters of related and supporting industries. According to this work, clusters operate as geographically concentrated collections of interrelated firms in which local sophisticated and demanding customers and strong competition with other firms in the