The geographical clustering of creative and cultural industries is a topic that has gone from being relatively obscure to mainstream in the academic literature over the past twenty years. Despite the abundance of literature, there have been few systematic attempts to survey the breadth and depth of the papers that have been published on this topic. This paper attempts to fill that gap by conducting a systematic literature review, including a much broader range of papers than previously reported. We review 355 papers on the topic of creative clusters and identify historical trends in geography, sector and journal, drawing upon bibliometric analysis. Moreover, we use a variety of computer-aided text analysis (CATA) techniques – including co-word, cluster, and correspondence analyses – to examine and systematise the thematic content of the academic discussion on creative clusters. We conclude that while the creative cluster literature has to date been very impactful, there are substantial gaps for policyengaged, robust and comparative analysis that need to be addressed in order to drive the topic forward.
The geographical clustering of creative and cultural industries is a topic that has gone from being relatively obscure to mainstream in the academic literature over the past twenty years. Despite the abundance of literature, there have been few systematic attempts to survey the breadth and depth of the papers that have been published on this topic. This paper attempts to fill that gap by conducting a systematic literature review, including a much broader range of papers than previously reported. We review 355 papers on the topic of creative clusters and identify historical trends in geography, sector and journal, drawing upon bibliometric analysis. Moreover, we use a variety of computer-aided text analysis (CATA) techniques – including co-word, cluster, and correspondence analyses – to examine and systematise the thematic content of the academic discussion on creative clusters. We conclude that while the creative cluster literature has to date been very impactful, there are substantial gaps for policyengaged, robust and comparative analysis that need to be addressed in order to drive the topic forward.
