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The New Boomtown? Creative City to Tech City in East London

This paper contributes to the growing literature on the role of creative industry clusters in metropolitan centres. It presents an original analysis of the creative digital cluster which emerged in east London in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

By drawing on spatial (GIS) analysis of sector and firm level data, the eastward trajectory of a new wave of digital creative activity, and its particular mix of co-located sectors, is placed within the wider context of the geography of London’s creative and digital economies.

A unique finding of this work is that the particular dynamics of this cluster are creating a localised spike of economic vitality. The strength of this is contrasted with the faltering position of longstanding local craft and arts based creative industries.

Analysis of 261 firms suggests that the vitality of this cluster emerges from risky experimentation across co-located sectors in which hitherto unrelated knowledges and activities are combined. A core role for creative digital agencies is suggested. These firms show many of the characteristics already identified for creative SMEs, including their tendency to agglomerate in and benefit from specialised clusters within urban economies. However, they also appear to have internalised the sector and skill diversity commonly identified as the primary positive externalities of urban economies. It is noted that this self-organising creative digital cluster is producing spatially embedded ‘noisy’ networks with a multitude of weak ties. This arrangement appears to be a mechanism for mediating the high degrees of uncertainty and risk in London’s creative digital sector, currently exacerbated by the recessionary conditions of London’s post 2008 economy.

This work has been cited in policy papers and is part of a growing critical discourse on east London’s new economy. Policy citations: Centre for London/Demos (2012) on Tech City; Growth Intellegience/NIESR 2012 on Measuring the Digital Economy - also cited in presentations to the Digital Shoreditch Festivals in 2012 and 2013.