DEMOCRACIA

So What is Needed for a Creative Economy?
Because the social and cultural spheres are so important for the emergence
and functioning of a creative economy, creative people and creative organizations
tend to cluster physically. Their presence in a town or region tends to attract
others to that town or region. Creative people need each other for their creativity
to blossom, as Richard Florida has been able to show (FLORIDA, 2002). It is just
what Csikszentmihalyi had observed.
It is less clear what attracts creative people to certain areas, other than
the presence of creative people. It could be the attractiveness of a town or city.
But that is not a sufficient factor as many attractive city without a strong creative
sector can attest.
The cases of the Dutch cities of Hilversum (my home town) and Eindhoven
provide some clues. What Eindhoven has, and what Hilversum lacks, are
institutions of higher education. Both a technical university and an academy of
design have contributed to a social environment that inspires innovative practices.
Hilversum lacks such institutions of higher education, and does not, therefore,
attract young creatives and does not experience an annual influx of well-trained
creatives as Eindhoven does.
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The presence of research facilities, starting with the famous labs of
Phillips and continued with the research environment of companies like ASML,
is responsible for an innovative and creative environment in Eindhoven. The
technical university of Eindhoven is a strong support for such an environment. As
we learned in the Silicon Valley, researchers do not just work in their own working
environment but they socialize in all kinds of settings and develop dense networks
that constitute the innovative environment. It is the kind of social innovation
that is characteristic of an emerging creative economy. The cultural facilities of the
town Eindhoven facilitate and stimulate the informal interactions. They function
as meeting places, as generators of serendipitous moments. Recall the notion
of the creative commons; it is what a community of creative e people generates.
Hilversum is lacking such a strong innovative environment and is too small and
too close to Amsterdam and Utrecht to generate a dense cultural life, or a rich
creative commons, in which the creatives can mingle and flourish. They prefer to
do the mingling in Amsterdam and do the work in the media campus in Hilversum.
Eindhoven also more than Hilversum has been able to transform old and
abandoned industrial sites into creative spaces where creative companies gather
and creative activities take place. Here we see another important factor and that
is a responsive government. Even though the governors of Hilversum are eager to
support the media industry in their town, they lack the means and the endurance
to collaborate with private companies to realize such transformations of old
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