There are plenty of comparative studies of the innovativeness of metropolises. However, I made another one examining innovativeness in the sphere of social media. In Futura journal, I represented a comparison between the Nordic metropolises, which are usually performing well in different innovation rankings.
Examining where there is the most Twitter activity related to the exact term of innovation, Swedish cities are the top performers. When examining Twitter activity proportional to city size, Stockholm is the leading innovation hub in Northern Europe with Malmö following second. What comes to themes related to innovativeness, Helsinki is the most important concentration of startups and technology in the Nordic countries. Stockholm and Malmö are the second and the third largest concentrations of both, startups and technology. Related to innovativeness and economic growth, also the tolerance of the citizens was considered. Interestingly, perhaps the most famous city in the Nordics facing problems related to immigration, Malmö is welcoming refugees most generously. In fact, Malmö is the only metropolitan area, where there is significant movement related to hashtag #refugeeswelcome. Different themes related to innovativeness combined, the same cities appear high in ranking. Overall, Stockholm (in the picture below) is the most innovative metropolis in the Nordic countries. Helsinki has the second most Twitter activity related to innovativeness and Malmö the third most. From the results, it is obvious that metropolitan areas should be compared to metropolises approximately the same size - even if measured proportional to city size. The capitals and the largest metropolises of the Nordic countries are competing with each other, while the secondary cities of Nordics are competing in their own race (empirics of them later on).
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I have lately been involved quite heavily in the dataset below :) I hope it's enough for some meaningful results. At least I have worked on it like on a hot summer day years ago on a conveyor belt, in one freezing cold store! :D This time I have had no night additions nor overtime, though... But hey, doing research is just such a fun :D Okay, the data collection not that much, perhaps...XD
Well, what an earth would I do with the data below? It's about social media activity around creativity in 99 cities. Sorry to say, it's too late to answer. I have made up my mind already :) I am going to research economic geography of creative capital, one of the three main forces led to cities we live in (see Rossi 2016). Well, how am i going to research creativity? Although Florida, already in 2012, added social media into a consortium of creative class, social media and cities, social media has yet to be appeared in research dealing with creative class too much. Combining creative class, cities and social media, I'll make the difference! That's where I'm going to narrow my next paper down :) Okay, enough of the heavy stuff! :D As a bonus, there are the most used keywords related to creativity below. Art seems to be the most popular act of creativity. Marketing, design, research and writing follow. Art is perhaps a keyword least bounded to a profession. Anyone can tweet about art, but maybe not about marketing? Yet marketing is still the second most common creative word in tweets. Hmm... interesting. But that's not enough, I'm afraid. Have to do something big! :) Okey, maybe the term is not the most innovative, like the horses were the accelerator of the innovation cluster in Helsinki Metropolitan Area. I'm sure it's something else, like the products of the creative professionals who have concentrated in that cluster (which btw, now in this presentation, looks like a doughnut:).
Be that as it may, a vast majority of the members of the creative class live in that doughnut, or horseshoe, and almost all the knowledge intensive workplaces locate in that one cluster. Only a few tiny concentrations of creative class and innovative firms lay outside the main cluster. I decided to form only one large cluster to the Helsinki Metropolitan Area based on analyses, because it felt the most natural thing to do. Remembering the flows of information it is not hard to see that the neighbourhoods with the high points from the analyses forms not an archipelago but a cluster of chained islands. With the history in master planning it is too the most natural thing to form larger objects from the smaller entities. If policy implications are dear, I could state that every penny invested in that cluster will pay off positive amounts of money and other much seeked products of the information age city: namely innovations and productions. Also, talking about the humans in the cluster, it emerges human capital there, which is essential in producing the just explained benefits of innovative and productive city . Often the talk concerns creative people, but the people outside that class or movement or just a lifestyle or something, are forgotten. But hey, don't worry about the workforce with less or no skills. They benefit from the investments to the cluster too. It is calculated that in American cities every creative job generates five low-skill workplaces! Another recommedetion would be that you can't create a new cluster outside the cluster. They just don't make it (Porter 2010). But, if you are working with Vantaa, you might have noticed first the points of creativity and innovativeness in Vantaa. The former flourish in Western Vantaa and the latter one in the central parts of the city. A cluster formed of one or two neighbourhoods are not bad at all. After all analysis has estimated the creativity and innovativemess of the neighouring areas as well. So the points in Vantaa could be thought of as larger entities than just one district. And if you think of the division of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, so called "pienalueet" (what on earth it would be in English; minor areas? ;D) are still quite large, despite the name they have. Because these clusters are maybe not so large, they are significant (estimated with spatial statistics), that they are most warmly recommended to be directed all kind of developments in. Also in Eastern Helsinki, widely criticized as socially and ethnically segregated area, has also it's tiny clusters. However, these clusters could grow or merge in the main cluster not so far from them. On the other side of social spectrum, fighting against segregation, the city of Helsinki has pumped loads of money to Eastern Helsinki, but besides some bright stars, like Myllypuro, not much positive has evolved what comes to research I have read. With the results of the paper visible and bearing in minds Porter's wisdom of the theory he created, it is clear that the city of Helsinki could rethink the areas where the funding should be aimed at geographically. It is important to remember that I believe that Porter not by any means meaned that the areas outside the clusters could be left on their own and segregate from the areas belonging to the cluster and funded exclusively. Areas with the ability on innovation or human capital production should of course be funded with different objects than the areas with no significant potential. We found a cluster that does not bother boundaries of municipalicies. This is normal to clusters (Porter 2000). We named the cluster of innovations and creative class as an "innovation horseshoe" because of its shape.
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Photo by Rob Hurson
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July 2018
AuthorJuho Kiuru, geographer living in Helsinki, Finland. |