Urban Amenities and the Development of Creative Clusters: The Case of Brazil

Abstract

This paper describes the creative potential of Brazilian territories, including aspects pointed as cities’ comparative advantages in terms of creativity: cultural facilities, labor market and public expenditures in culture. The paper uses clustering analysis, applied to secondary data from the Brazilian Demographic Census (IBGE), Survey of Basic Municipal Information (MUNIC/IBGE) and municipal expenditures in culture from National Treasury (FINBRA). Among the six clusters which were created, three are well defined and the others are quite mixed. Cluster 1 includes the two largest and most developed cities in Brazil, S?o Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Cluster 2 is composed of capitals of important states in Brazil and cities where large universities are located. We named this cluster as creative university centers. Cluster 3 comprises 99 municipalities and can be named as centers of cultural and ecological tourism.