Working paper presented as part of the New York Creative Economy Project's 2006 meeting, "Opportunities and Challanges Facing the rural Creative Economy." Partial Abstract: Our analysis of recent rural development in rural U.S. counties, which focuses on natural amenities as quality of life indicators, supports the creative class thesis. A repetition for urban counties also shows a strong relationship between creative class presence and growth, although natural amenities play a smaller role. However, our results depend on a recast creative class measure, which excludes from the original Florida measure many occupations with low creativity requirements and those involved primarily in economic reproduction. Our measure conforms more closely to the concept of creative class and proves to be more highly associated with regional development than the original Florida measure.

Working paper presented as part of the New York Creative Economy Project's 2006 meeting, "Opportunities and Challanges Facing the rural Creative Economy."