Between myths and realities: Mexican cities that concentrate the creative class

The purpose of this document is to conduct an exploratory study of the demographic and economic attributes of cities in Mexico where the creative class is concentrated, in other words, the sector of the urban labor market comprising professionals, university professors, researchers, and those engaged in the arts, entertainment and sports. The term "creative class" was coined by Richard Florida (2002) and this segment of the working population has been given a connotation of competitive advantage for the city where it lives. Accordingly, attempts have been made to test the link between local economic performance and the presence of the creative class. This study, however, does not use the creative class as an explanatory variable of local economic behavior. Instead, it seeks to shed light on the characteristics of the cities with the greatest intensity of the creative class in its occupational structure. To this end, a multivariate logistic regression model was designed. The results show that cities where the creative class was concentrated in 2010 were mainly state capitals and/or with a low share of manufacturing output in their economic structure. Likewise, those engaged in the creative class had a higher rate of internal migration with regard to the total working population. The places of origin and destination of creative migration were cities specializing in this type of employees.