How Much Does Place Influence Creativity

How Much Does Place Influence Creativity

Numerous viewpoints about creativity have been suggested. Voicing common opinions as a process, product and/or skill, the characteristics of creativity include originality, novelty, appropriateness, usefulness and mental flexibility, with intrinsic motivation also playing a key role (Henry, ed. 1999 & 2001; Lubart & Sternberg, n.d.; Pope, 2005). A widely used definition is cited by Niu and Sternberg’, stating that ‘creativity refers to one’s ability to produce ideas or products that are judged by a group of people to be both novel and appropriate’ (Amabile, 1996; Csikszentmihalyi ,1996; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995, 1999; cited in Niu & Sternberg, 2001).

In everyday life, creativity as a development of original ideas is considered an effective response to evolutionary changes that contribute to the complexity of the information age (Runco, 2004). Being a cultural and social event, creativity, involving a person making a change in a domain, (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999), can be either nurtured or inhibited by social environment (Simonton, 1998), with the effects varying across different social situations.

‘Cities function as collectors of human capital’ (Karlsson & Johansson, 2008). Human Capital, consisting of motivation, skills and the creativity of workers (Walberg, n.d.), is the motor of economic growth. Different levels of human capital vary the level of regional economic growth.

Different people have sorted themselves into different places with different identities (Florida, 2002a) and creative people are often willing to move into large cities or places with a high level of economic development because creative ideas flow in a place where new ideas are welcomed (Henry ed., 1991). Large urban regions are always tolerant, with diversity that provides a good foundation for creativity to bloom. Their creativity becomes an impulse of economic development, so the regional economic growth of creative centres is...