Locating creativity in the city using Twitter data

Abstract

This study applies a new methodology using the location of tweets from creatives to study where economic creativity takes place in a city. Based on a Twitter network in Brighton and Hove (United Kingdom), a creative hub, we identify freelancers and entrepreneurs in the creative industries that form the ‘core’ of the ‘creative class’ but have rarely been captured in existing spatial research. We use a comprehensive geodatabase of ‘Points-of-Interest’ and Census of Population residence and workplace locations to match tweets with types of places. Findings show that practices of economic creativity are less spatially clustered in central parts of the city and more spatially distributed across the city than studies that used business register data or cluster approaches suggested. Residential areas, which proxy for home locations, have a high incident of creative activities besides urban amenities and coworking spaces. It is concluded that local economic development should support the creation and maintenance of attractive places of social interactions across the city to foster creativity and innovation which has become even more important with the surge in homeworking due to Covid-19.