Towards a reconciliation of the 'context-less' with the 'space-less'? The creative class across varieties of capitalism – new evidence from Sweden and the UK

Abstract

The creative class across varieties of capitalism: new evidence from Sweden and the UK, Regional Studies. The interplay between place, individuals and creativity has, in recent years, received much attention. National differences of how capitalism is organized can be drawn into this discussion, but they are seldom examined systematically. By investigating data from the UK as a liberal market economy and Sweden as a coordinated market economy, this paper develops and tests a set of hypotheses to analyse the role of ‘varieties of capitalism’ in relation to the location dynamics of the creative class. Results confirm the effect of the coordinated market economy in flattening the distribution of the creative class, tempered by the Swedish urban hierarchy which acts to concentrate it in a smaller number of (larger) locations. Through combining both contextual and spatial elements, this approach generates new insights into observed variations between the coordinated market economy and the liberal market economy around mobility, adjustment and quality of place, but it also serves to highlight where other additional factors may be influential.