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  Forget London and Paris: An Inside Look at Europe's Coolest Cities

Forget London and Paris An Inside Look at Europe's Coolest Cities

By Erich Follath and Gerhard Spörl

Part 2: 'A Balance Between Chaos and Order"

Creative types all part of one class may sound like something of a contradiction. Economically speaking, they have no common interests aside from a decent standard of living and making good money. They defy political and ideological categories, however, they do share a similar culture.

According to Landry, they want “a balance between chaos and order.” They seek variety in their lifestyles, they like to be among other creative people from other professions, they switch between being part of the bourgeoisie and not. They are individualists and hedonists, but they pursue their ideas with a Protestant work ethic and start over when they fail. They like to live in lofts, near waterfronts and enjoy working in old factory buildings.

The creative classes find this wild and colorful mixture of lifestyle and work most readily in second cities. And second cities are cool when they attract as many innovative and industrious creative types as possible. That’s why many urban planners, economists and mayors around the world are currently trying to puzzle out in meetings and symposiums how best to lure the creative classes to their cities. Naturally, almost all of them have read Florida’s book "The Rise of the Creative Class" and they can often recite parts of it verbatim.

But which European cities are cool, trendy, sexy and well positioned for the future? Where might the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs find the best conditions to realize new ideas and start a company? Where would an intelligent, ambitious, young engineer from Warsaw or Madrid prefer to live?

To help develop its own strategy, the northern German city of Hamburg -- which is hoping to create its own fresh iconic landmark with a new concert house for its philharmonic orchestra -- had the consulting firm Roland Berger survey which European cities were most effectively competing for the creative class and which have best laid the groundwork for the move from the industrial to the knowledge age. The results include five cities that are of manageable size and well poised to bring together the three Ts:

• Copenhagen is ahead of the game in Europe touting a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of €56,000 and population growth of 3.1 percent. It has Florida’s talent and technology criteria covered with plenty of new patents and a number of workers involved in knowledge-intensive professions (62.5 percent). The reasons for the city’s success include the centralized efforts to lure new companies, the high portion of Denmark’s students (11.6 percent) compared to the total population, €270 million in venture capital for startups, and tax breaks for investment in research.
  
• Barcelona has long been a favorite with creative types and it’s a city that places high value on tolerance. The Catalan metropolis still has to catch up as far as technology is concerned and GDP per capita in 2004 only reached €23,000, however, it’s rising strongly, as is the number of new arrivals bolstering the population. The Berger survey was particularly surprised by just how popular the city is: Polish engineers, for example, repeatedly named Barcelona as the city they’d like to move to. The city is currently a huge Petri dish for the creative classes, which already make up 43.9 percent of all workers there.
  
• Amsterdam and Dublin have a similar GDP per capita of €48,000 and both have strong population growth (5.6 percent and 7 percent respectively). Dublin, of course, is a special case profiting from European development aid after Ireland joined the European Union. Amsterdam, by contrast, has long been known as a tolerant and cosmopolitan city with the ability to constantly reinvent itself. Creative professions in the Dutch city account for 47.1 percent of the workforce, whereas only 36.9 percent do in Dublin.
  
• Vienna's per capita GDP is €40,000, but the population has stagnated with only 0.4 percent growth. The Austrian capital made good use of its strategic location after the end of communism in Eastern Europe. International companies like Coca-Cola, Hewlett-Packard and Alcatel opened their Eastern European headquarters here, creating a boom and freshening up a city that once felt more like an open-air history museum. As far as talent, technology and tolerance goes, Vienna is surprisingly equal to Amsterdam. Around 42 percent of the workforce is part of the creative classes.

There’s no magic formula to make a city cool for the creative class. Each city has to make do with its own history, its own buzz, and its political and cultural possibilities. In order to find out just how well these urban experiments are thriving in reality, SPIEGEL is profiling the protagonists of the creative class in the form of five European cities. Four make an appearance in the Berger survey. The Estonian capital Tallinn -- having become exemplary of the efforts and potential of the dynamic Baltic States, which are racing towards the future -- takes the place of Vienna.

The GDP might be relatively low in Tallinn, but the city already accounts for more than half of Estonia’s national income and few cities around the world are so Internet savvy. Access to the Internet costs almost nothing for Tallinn’s population, they pay parking meters with their mobile phones and can apply for parental leave benefits online.

Something is emerging in Europe -- the continent’s cities aren’t nearly as lethargic and sclerotic as is frequently portrayed in America. Many are well on the way into the knowledge era just like Vancouver in Canada, Austin in Texas, or Sydney in Australia.

It’s the second cities that will -- if all goes well -- ensure both progress and a bright future.

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