ABSTRACT
Interest in the residential preferences of those who are qualified for and economically active in creative industries and knowledge-intensive industries has recently been increasing. The human capital of these workers is seen as an important economic asset for cities and urban regions. Knowledge of their households’ locational preferences may enable the development of policy instruments by means of which a labour force with the right skills for today’s urban economies can be attracted to or retained in specific places. Since qualified labour is, next to capital and land, one of the key conditions for establishing economic activity, knowledge about locational preferences seems to open up new possibilities for place-based economic policies. However, what looks like a simple logic in reality turns out to be much more complicated and causing much debate in which polarized ideas are competing for attention. A key issue in that debate is the ‘order of things’. One idea is that it is essential to attract qualified labour in the first place, the logic being that when a city succeeds in doing that, economic activity will follow. Here the key question is: how can qualified labour be attracted? A second idea is that it is essential to attract and develop firms that will subsequently offer job opportunities, leading to the attraction of employees. The question then is: how can these firms be attracted?
