Creative cities in Northeast Ohio

What can our cities in NEO learn from Auckland, NZ? Civic leaders in Auckland just issued a major report on the creative industries. Learn more [1]. Download the report [2].

Philadelphia is promoting the creative economy as an economic development strategy. Read more [3].

This approach goes beyond Richard Florida's rather simplistic prescriptions. Instead, it focuses on building clusters of creative businesses. This approach first emerged in Europe in the late 1990's, and it has now spread to Australia and New Zealand. A few years ago, the New England Council introduced the approach to the U.S. Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island have all moved in this direction.

Here's an article on how Rutland, Vermont is moving ahead with a strategy based on the Creative Economy. Read more [4].

If you are interested in learning more about the creative economy, I recommend Charles landry's book, The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators [5].