This paper examines the locational success of non-profit arts organisations (PAOs) in six mid-sized cities and their metropolitan areas in the United States. The cities are located in the US rust belt and they do not fare well on Florida's creativity index. Yet they are ranked among the top 30 of some 400 North American cultural cities. Based on interviews with 63 performing arts directors, it is found that localisation economies as well as creative capital theories explain the attractiveness of mid-sized cities to the performing arts industry. While urbanisation economy factors were ranked lowly, this may be explained by the non-profit nature of the industry so that a significant share of interfirm or interorganisational linkages is voluntary, donated and informal. The results also reveal that non-profit organisations are relatively embedded in their local urban economies and rely rather heavily on local communities for patronage, performers and reputation.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Americans for the Arts (2002) Arts and economic prosperity: the economic impact of nonprofit arts organizations and their audiences (www.AmericansForTheArts.org ; accessed 20 June 2005).
2.
Bayliss, D. (2004) Ireland's creative development: local authority strategies for culture-led development, Regional Studies, 38, pp. 817-831.
3.
Beyers, N. (2002) Culture, services and regional development, Service Industries Journal, 22, pp. 4-34.
4.
Blomstrom, M. and Kokko, A. (1998) Multinational corporations and spillovers, Journal of Economic Surveys, 12, pp. 1-31.
5.
Cooke, P. (1995) The Rise of the Rustbelt. London : UCL Press.
6.
Dumais, G., Ellison, G. and Glaeser, E. (1997) Geographic concentration as a dynamic process. Working Paper No. 6270, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.
7.
Florida, R. (2002a) The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books.
8.
Florida, R. (2002b) Cities and the creative class, City and Community, 2, pp. 3-19.
9.
Gertler, M. (1995) Being there: proximity, organization and culture in the development and adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies, Economic Geography, 71, pp. 1-26.
10.
Glaeser, E. and Gottlieb, J.D. (2006) Urban resurgence and the consumer city. Discussion Paper No. 2109, Harvard Institute of Economic Research.
11.
Glaeser, E., Kallal, H.D., Scheinkman, J.A. and Shleifer, A. (1992) Growth in cities, Journal of Political Economy, 100, pp. 1126-1152.
12.
Hall, P. (2000) Creative cities and economic development, Urban Studies, 37, pp. 639-649.
13.
Heilbrun, J. (1992) Art and culture as central place functions, Urban Studies, 29, pp. 205-215.
14.
Henderson, J.V. (1983) Industrial bases and city sizes, American Economic Review, 63, pp. 39-44.
15.
Henderson, J. (1986) Efficiency of resource usage and city size, Journal of Urban Economics, 73, pp. 164-169.
16.
Jacobs, J. (1969) The Economy of Cities. London : Jonathan Cape.
17.
Krugman, P. (1999) The role of geography in development, International Regional Science Review, 22, pp. 142-161.
18.
Krugman, P. andVenables,A. (1995) Globalization and the inequality of nations, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110, pp. 857-880.
19.
Krugman, P., Fujita, M. and Venables, A. (1999) The Spatial Economy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
20.
Lawrence, V.R. (1918) The growth ofAmerican cities, Geographical Review, 5, pp. 384-398.
21.
Lucas, R. (1988) On the mechanics of economic development, Journal of Monetary Economics, 22, pp. 3-42.
22.
Markusen, A. (2006) Urban development and the politics of a creative class: evidence from a study of artists, Environment and Planning A, 38, pp. 1921-1940.
23.
Markusen, A. and King, D. (2003) The artistic dividend: the arts' hidden contributions to regional development. Project on Regional and Industrial Economics, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
24.
Markusen,A. and Schrock, G. (2006) The artistic dividend: urban artistic specialisation and economic development implications, Urban Studies, 43, pp. 1661-1686.
25.
McCarthy, K.F., Brooks, A., Lowell, J. and Zakaras, L. (2001) The performing arts in a new era. MR No. 1367, RAND, Santa Monica, CA (http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1367/).
26.
Moomaw, R.L. (1988) Agglomeration economies: localisation or urbanisation? , Urban Studies, 25, pp. 150-161.
27.
Rapoport, J. (2003) U.S. Urban decline and growth 1950 to 2000. Discussion Paper, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas.
28.
Rosenthal, S.S. and Strange, W.C. (2001) The determinants of agglomeration, Journal of Urban Economics, 50, pp. 191-229.
29.
Samuels, S. and Tonsic, A. (1996) Theatre facts 1995: a report on performance and potential in the American nonprofit theatre based on Theatre Communications Group's annual fiscal survey, American Theatre, 3(4), pp. S1-S16.
30.
Sassen, S. (2001) The Global City, 2nd edn. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
31.
Scott, A. (1997) The cultural economy of cities, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 21(2), pp. 323-329.
32.
Scott, A. and Storper, M. (2003) Regions, globalization and development, Regional Studies, 37, pp. 579-593.
33.
Scott, E. and Grande, J.A. (1987) Second Looks: A Pictorial History of Buffalo and Erie County. Norfolk, VA: Donning Co..
34.
Sperling, B. and Sander, P. (2004) Cities Ranked and Rated: More than 400 Metropolitan Areas Evaluated in the U.S. and Canada. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing.
35.
Storper, M. and Manville, M. (2006) Behaviour, preferences and cities: urban theory and urban resurgence, Urban Studies, 43, pp. 1247-1274.
36.
Storper, M. and Venables, A. (2004) Buzz: face-to-face contact and the urban economy , Journal of Economic Geography, 4(4), pp. 351-370.
37.
Sweeney, S. and Feser, E. (1998) Plant size and clustering of manufacturing activity , Geographical Analysis, 30, pp. 45-63.
38.
Viladecans-Marsal, E. (2004) Agglomeration economies and industrial location: city-level evidence, Journal of Economic Geography, 4, pp. 565-582.
39.
Warf, B. and Holly, B. (1997) The rise and fall and rise of Cleveland, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 551, pp. 208-221.
40.
Wolpert, J. (1988) The geography of generosity: metropolitan disparities in donations and support for amenities, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 78(4), pp. 655-679.
41.
Wolpert, J. (1993) Decentralization and equity in public and nonprofit sectors, Nonprofit Sector Quarter, 22, pp. 281-296.
