Should Raleigh, Durham be chasing ‘creative class’?

“[A] test has been done by Mel Gray, who teaches eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­sity of St. Thomas, and the results cast doubt on the idea that a flour­ish­ing artis­tic envi­ron­ment will cause eco­nomic growth….

“Gray told me, ‘I spent a sab­bat­i­cal in North Car­olina, and both Raleigh and Durham have estab­lished these Offices of Cre­ativ­ity, and they’re all doing this with­out a huge amount [of], if any, evi­dence that it makes that big a dif­fer­ence.’ ”

— From “The Fall of the Creative Class” by Frank Bures in Thirty Two Magazine