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Journal of Economic Geography Advance Access originally published online on January 17, 2009
Journal of Economic Geography 2009 9(2):147-167; doi:10.1093/jeg/lbn052
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Rethinking human capital, creativity and urban growth

Michael Storper* and Allen J. Scott**

*Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics; Master of Public Affairs, Sciences Po, Paris; School of Public Affairs, University of California, Los Angeles.
**Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles.

JEL classifications: R12, J24, J61

Do jobs follow people or do people follow jobs? A number of currently prominent approaches to urbanization respond to this question by privileging the role of individual locational choice in response to amenity values as the motor of contemporary urban growth. Amenities, it is often said, have an especially potent effect on the migration patterns of individuals endowed with high levels of human capital. However, these approaches raise many unanswered questions. Theories that describe urban growth as a response to movements of people in search of consumer or lifestyle preferences can be questioned on the grounds of their assumptions about human behavior, as well as their silence in regard to the geographical dynamics of production and work. We argue that a more effective line of explanation must relate urban growth directly to the economic geography of production and must explicitly deal with the complex recursive interactions between the location of firms and the movements of labor. In this context, we also offer a reinterpretation of the currently fashionable notions of ‘creativity’ and the role of skilled labor in cities.

Keywords: urban growth, amenities, creativity, human capital, migration, agglomeration, Sunbelt, Rustbelt, urbanization
Date submitted: 10 August 2008     Date accepted: 21 November 2008


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