Abstract

Creative industries are promising: they pay good wages, are space-saving in their production sites, emit little noise and pollution – apparently ideal for a sustainable, spatially mixed use urban and regional development. Additionally, earlier research has shown that creative industries are main drivers for urban and regional reconfiguration processes leading to complex spatial patterns. But concurrent monitoring of land use changes reveals a continuing increase in urbanized land for both residential and industrial purposes.
Against this background we ask how the spatial clustering of employees in knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) within a city region relates to both open and sealed land. Similarly, we examine whether available land, especially for building purposes, is a useful predictor for employment growth in KIBS in subsequent years and what this means for regional development policy.
We start our analysis from the twofold role of land in urban and regional development: the fact that – potentially available – built-up settlement area is necessary for doing business and the fact that urban open space serves as an amenity especially relevant for well-educated ‘creative’ people working in KIBS. Different spatial configurations (mono-, multi- and polycentricity) provide these land availabilities and uses in different spatial layouts associated with different location characteristics and associated economic effects.
We focus our analysis on KIBS, a subgroup of creatives. KIBS’ distinguishing characteristic is their ability to combine knowledge in order to create new knowledge suitable e.g. for regional sustainability and smart specialization. The choice of KIBS and their relation with land consumption may seem odd as offices are the easiest to stock buildings. Yet, considering the twofold role of (urban) land and combining it with KIBS as an essentially footloose industry facilitates fresh insights into the relationship between growth of a prospective economic branch (KIBS), land use and spatial patterns.