Analysis of the creative class in Pécs

Abstract

Richard Florida (2012) envisioned an emerging new social and economic order on the ruins of the world economy shaken by the global crisis. According to his revised theory, the creative economy and the creative class are going to play an essential role in shaping this new order. Thus, the creative class will basically contribute to the evolution and operation of more liveable and sustainable cities in the future. This is exactly why it is essential to explore and research the characteristics and mobility issues of the creative class, and the way it functions. In recent years, several macro-analyses have been published about the Hungarian creative economic situation; however, only a limited number of empirical results are available regarding the characteristics of the creative class on regional and local levels. We intend to begin to fill this gap with our new findings on the creative workers in Pécs, a regional centre located in a disadvantaged part of Hungary.

This study aims, on the one hand, to explore those factors influencing the settling-down of the creative class in Pécs, and, on the other hand, to highlight work attitudes of local creative professionals. The novelty of our study is that micro-level (municipal, urban) analyses on the role of the creative economy and creative class are still missing in the Hungarian literature. Our outcomes are partly based on the analyses of the statistical database provided by the National Accounts Department of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. Based on spatial analyses we have been able to provide detailed information on the size and composition of the creative class in Pécs. Other research presented in the paper is based on an online questionnaire survey conducted among the creative employees living and working in Pécs. The survey was carried out in 2014, and the questionnaire contained 43 closed and open questions (n=110).

The analysis of statistical data showed that, over the last fifteen years, significant restructuring took place within the Hungarian creative class in favour of knowledge-driven industries. In the early 2000s, the number of creative companies and employees as well as revenues increased dynamically, but the economic crises broke the momentum and hit the creative industries first. A similar process took place in Southern Transdanubia, and in Baranya County as well. Actually, within the region, the county of Pécs appears as the only engine of the creative economy. However, for nearly a decade the city’s creative economy and creative class has also been shrinking. In practice, knowledge-intensive branches and especially R&D and higher education represent a ray of hope for the creative class in Pécs.

Empirical findings showed that features of the local creative class in Pécs meet the European global trends: personal factors play a key role and hard factors are also important but only to a lesser extent in the influx of creative people into the city and their settling-down within the city boundaries. In terms of decision making on the part of creatives, soft factors play only a subordinate role; however, as time goes by its importance increases significantly. For creative people the joy of work is the primary source of job satisfaction. With regard to the breakdown of satisfaction by industries, the role of motivating factors is the highest in branches where work is carried out in the traditional sense of creative work, while satisfaction in innovative and knowledge-intensive industries is dominated by hard factors. Creatives working as employees and in bigger companies prefer hard factors, while self-employed ones working for small- and micro-enterprises favour motivating factors. According to our empirical findings, the main expectations of creative newcomers towards the city is to maintain a proper labour market providing a sufficient number of quality workplaces and jobs, while creatives already wellembedded in the local labour market require more options to improve their personal networks and relationships.