Beyond mapping - understanding creative industries in post command economy cities: The Case of Riga

Creative industries are now more and more promoted as an important component of the “new economies”, which will drive the future economic growth. The economic development debates have now shifted from discussing countries to most often seeing urban areas as the drivers of countries economies, and a blooming creative economy is frequently named among necessities for fostering this development. Within the past decade a lot of work has been done in understanding creative industries in Western European cities, while Eastern European cities are still lagging behind. In the same time, the existent research in general often avoids researching the differences within the creative industries. This master thesis hence explores creative industries’ characteristics in Riga, Latvia, as a representative of post-command economy cities, and by doing so it aims to tackle a three-fold research gap – firstly, that of the underrepresentation of creative industries research in Eastern European cities, and secondly, that of overgeneralization of different theories to the great variety of economic activities, which fall under the term of creative industries, without empirically testing them and without accounting for the complexity of the sphere. Thirdly, it tests whether the development of a new, more holistic methodological approach of understanding creative industries is possible, allowing revising the potential policy target-dimensions. By employing an industry-based approach, the author combines the results from a traditional statistical mapping update with those of a survey of the enterprises and self-employed, which correspond to the NACE classifiers included in the scope of creative industries. The online-surveys-based study reveals new information about the employment socio-demographic characteristics, firm analysis, skills required, types of goods, financial sources, inter-industry collaboration patterns and other aspects characterizing creative industries Riga.