Publications

Following work by Richard Florida and Jane Jacobs, tolerance along with talent and technology are purported to attract the 'creative class,' seen as key in spurring economic dynamism in the knowledge economy. Representing both tolerance and diversity, we test an index of community-level ethnic diversity against the location decisions of workers in the Culture Occupations, a key component of the creative class, in the recently defined Canadian Framework for Cultural Statistics. Supporting past studies, we find that greater ethnic diversity is consistent with a higher cultural occupations share in urban communities (though not rural). However, even for urban areas, growth in cultural occupation workers over the past 15 years is not affected by prior ethnic diversity. The culture workers' share in an urban community, once established appears highly persistent, suggesting that it may be very difficult to significantly alter a cultural occupations share through policy initiatives. Thus, policy aimed at enhancing the livability of a community through increasing its cultural footprint appears to be misguided.