Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-25-2016

Publication Title

Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability

Abstract

Research into the locational decisions of creative class or knowledge workers has indicated that “classic” or “hard” factors, particularly employment opportunity and social connections, generally take precedence over “soft”, “quality of place” amenities such as art and cultural venues, historical assets, and tolerance/diversity. However, “soft” amenities are expected to shape where creative class/knowledge workers live within cities, and potentially whether they remain in the community long-term, or seek opportunities elsewhere. In this study, an online survey and questionnaire were employed to explore whether residents living in downtown Omaha, Nebraska with “creative” occupations exhibit stronger preferences for urban amenities relative to those with “non-creative” occupations. Generally in support of Richard Florida’s creative class thesis, the results suggest that creative workers may exhibit a stronger affinity for certain, primarily “soft,” urban amenities and characteristics, such as dining establishments, “third places”, arts/cultural venues, unique sense of place, and the hip, trendy, and youthful feel of Omaha’s downtown neighborhoods.

Comments

© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

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Funded by the University of Nebraska at Omaha Open Access Fund