danmelton.net

From 2003 to 2007, I studied Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. During that time, I stepped out of my normal programmer, coder, general geek, and delved into urban economic development after reading Richard Florida’s work on the Creative Class. The outcome? A couple hundred pages on social movements, spatial indexes, gays, foreign-born immigrants, and artists. This represents one of the most challenging things I have ever done, but also one of the most fulfilling. Have fun reading, and feel free to leave comments.

Gays as Canaries: An Exploration of Tolerance in the Creative Class Thesis

Abstract:

As canaries or early indicators, gays and lesbians have been linked to a number of urban trends including development, amenity growth, culture and tolerance. This dissertation examines the growing body of scholarship on the connection between gays and lesbians and a region’s level of tolerance. In the first article, I examine the rise of Austin as a tolerant metropolis. Using a model of social movements, I present a case-study of how Austin became politically and socially tolerant of gays and lesbians. In the second article, I test this four-stage model (emergence, consolidation, expansion and assimilation) by clustering across central cities on four variables measuring political and social tolerance, concentration and location quotients. Initial results suggest that across United States central cities, urban gay and lesbian social movements can be classified using an outcome (political and social tolerance and residential dispersion) methodology.

Just over half can be categorized as pre-emergence or emergence; a third as consolidated; and roughly 15% in the final two categories. The final article examines the spatial mismatch between the Creative Class and diversity as measured by gay households, bohemians, and foreign-born immigrants. Using a series of spatial measures, including the standardized spatial gini index, I show that the Creative Class may consume diversity, but in general, they tend to live in suburbs. Furthermore, concentration indices reveal that the Creative Class does not live in tracts considered diverse. Ideally, this research will inform development policy by providing a clearer understanding of how tolerance manifests and the relationship between ‘diversity’ and the Creative Class.

My committee:

Robyne Turner, Peter Eaton, Michael Frisch, Bob Herman and Shannon Jackson

Thank you to:

Thank you to Robyne Turner, Michael Frisch, Peter Eaton, Shannon Jackson, Robert Hermann, Stephen DeLurgio, Abigail York, Casey Dawkins and attendees at the Urban Affairs Association 36th annual meeting for comments and resources.

Thank you to the Austin History Center and the Center for American History at the University of Texas for archival records and research support.

This research is funded in part by the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Student Council, the University of Missouri system Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship and Preparing Future Faculty Fellowship programs.

Dedication:

To Helen Cohen, Thank you for your inspiration