Considering the Core Creative Class in Dayton

I did a little mini-atlas of a few of the “creative class” occupations identified in Richard Florida’s book. I didn’t use all of the occupations he uses, more the artistic, media, and technical professional ones in engineering, computers, and sciences (which are also fields that are growing here). My selection was influenced somewhat by CP Snow’s concept of the “two cultures”
Here’s a look at what I call the “core creative class”, people in the arts, applied art and design plus entertainers, musicians, and people in athletics. For a list of all the occupations covered by this group click here.

The maps give a % by census tract (% of people living in the tract who are core creatives) and a raw count, for the top 10 census tracts (I put in some neighborhood or location names so you can recognize them).


As one can see smaller tracts can have higher %s, even if the raw count of core creatives is small, and vice versa.

Next, media workers, including authors, tech writers, photographers, broadcasting, movies (including the various craft/trades associated with media, like cameramen and sound technicians).


Putting it all together.


One can see where this core creative class lives in Montgomery County. And it seems to be both in the city as well as out in some suburban areas one would not expect, like apartment complexes out near the Dayton Mall and fairly generic subdivision neighborhoods, as well as some neat inner suburbs like Southern Hills.

This shouldn’t be too surprising when one thinks of some local creative folks who live in suburbia. Robert Pollard is a good example of that (lives in Kettering). The band members from Dementia Precox (from Beavercreek) are another .

The sources for the numbers is the census, and this is for the work people do most of the time. Thus it doesn’t account for the “day job” aspect of doing creative work, where people who, say, play in a band might have day jobs to survive, though their personal focus is on music. Same with visual artists and authors.

on edit, here is a good article on the importance of Day Jobs (from Austin, Texas)

What is the connection between the Creative Class concept and bohemia? Bohemia is increasingly of interest to urban theory, both as a social milieu and a geographic expression.

Two Tales from Urban Bohemia
(apologies to the Dandy Warhols)

Neo Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City is about Chicago’s Wicker Park, and has a bit of an ideological axe to grind, though entertaining as a history/ethnographic study.

Selling the Lower East Side is about Loisaida/East Village in NYC, and is quite interesting as a history of multiple bohemias occupying the neighborhood—and sharing it with white ethnics and later Puerto Ricans--- through time. (check out the website at the link for a good chronology).

One of the lessons of these books is that urban bohemia pioneered by the core creative class of artists, writers, and musicians becomes attractive to other creatives and professionals with more remunerative occupations, hence the importance of milieu. People just like the vibe and energy of places that have a lot of core-creative folks, AKA “making the scene”.

Another example is what happened in northern England, where pop culture (and gay culture so some extent) became connected to urban regeneration.

A good local example of missing all these points is Mary McCarty’s recent opinion piece. Her point is that one should involve mainstream performing arts orgs and presenters, or (tongue in cheek) spend the money on them instead of a consultant.

I had referenced this study in an earlier post as a caution on the Creative Class theory. The study does, however, stress the importance of milieu, and says this:

Public spending on the arts, justified on the basis of increased regional competitiveness may very well be wasteful if directed to high visibility projects that do nothing to increase human-scale interaction…Any metropolitan region pursuing a creative economy strategy in earnest should engage local artists in devising the best ways to encourage the social and cultural interaction that engender creative milieus. The research community can contribute to this effort by empirically examining the evolution of creative milieus across all cities.

Note were it says “engage local artists”. This would be people like David Sparks, Bing Davis, the people who organize and perform at the Dayton Music Fest, Reggae Fest, Blues Fest, local indy music labels, The Circus, the people who organized the performance art thing at the Gym Club, The Front Street artists, the printmakers up off of Keowee in North Dayton, Mick Montgomery and some of the other local live music bar owners, and so forth

In other words, engage the more underground and bohemian side of the local cultural scene.

That's what needs to happen as part of the upcoming creative class study.