Creative chaos? Globalization, agglomeration and the metropolis

This article offers a formal macro-economic exposition of a creativity-driven metropolitan-region located within the global context of abundance of capital, demand, information, and uncertainty. It draws on recent literature and US data to estimate a nonlinear relationship between the global risk-reward premium and the size of a metropolitan region's creative labor force. The model offers criteria for interpreting each stage of the creative metro life cycle, including the conditions for creative take-off, a period of extraordinarily high rates of growth and the potential for instability with congestion and maturity. The article concludes with a discussion of the policy-relevant findings, limitations, extensions and mitigation.