Creative industries, flexibility, and travel to work

School of something FACULTY OF OTHER Institute for Transport Studies Faculty of Environment Creative Industries, Flexibility, and Travel to Work Julian Burkinshaw ITS Summer Seminar

School of something

FACULTY OF OTHER

Institute for Transport Studies

Faculty of Environment

Creative Industries, Flexibility, and Travel to Work

Julian Burkinshaw

ITS Summer Seminar Series

16th June 2015

Introduction

My background and interests:

• Graduate from the University of Salford

• Undergraduate dissertation focussed upon a Workplace Travel Plan

• Interests in commuting, travel to work, working practices, flexibility

Introduction

• The story so far…

• Creativity and Creative Industries

• Fixity and Flexibility

• Theory and conceptualisation

• Questions and hypotheses

• Approach

The story so far…

• Workplace travel planning

• The Commute

• Backcasting/future of commuting

• Global Perspectives

• My approach…

Creativity and Creative Industries

‘The key to economic growth lies not just in the ability to attract the ‘creative

class’, but to translate that underlying advantage into creative economic outcomes in the form of new ideas, new high-tech businesses and regional growth’

(Florida, 2002 p.2)

‘…it seems as if human capital, especially the ability to handle large amounts of

information and to come up with bright ideas, has surpassed financial capital, raw materials, and labour in general as the key resources for economic progress’

(Bontje and Musterd, 2009 p.843)

Creativity and Creative Industries

‘Creative work facilitates autonomy and flexibility, with informality and diversity

seemingly regarded as key characteristics of the creative workforce’

(Henry, 2009 p.149)

The concept of creative industries emerged in the late 1990s primarily as a

policy discourse, …its origins can be traced to the decision of the then newly

elected British Labour government of Tony Blair to establish a Creative

Industries Task Force (CITF), as a central activity of its new Department of

Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)

(Flew and Cunningham, 2010 p.113)

Working practices

Flexible working practices have become an increasingly popular initiative within many organisations, with the merits and disadvantages associated discussed at length within the literature:

• Work-life balance discussions

• in women participating in labour market

• Intensification of work

• Blurred boundaries between home and work

• Job satisfaction and quality

Fixity and Flexibility

There is a lack of consensus over what flexible working actually is!

For instance, these concepts are visible in the literature:

• Schedule Control

• Flexible work practices

• Flexible work arrangements

• Job Control

• Job Autonomy

‘transportation geographers commonly denote activities as fixed or flexible on the

basis of their purpose or type Roughly speaking, paid employment, education, sleep, and transporting children or other persons are considered fixed, and shopping and leisure are regarded as flexible’

(Schwanen, Kwan and Ren, 2008 p.2110)

The Role of Responsibility

Responsibilities, mainly those associated to the household, have interesting effects

on the way people travel to work For example:

• Residential location

Amongst which, residential environment often prevails over travel mode preference (Schwanen and Mokhtarian, 2005)

• The presence of children in the household

Findings were associated to gendered differences in commuting times (McQuaid and Chen, 2012)

Theory and conceptualisation

Social practice:

Social practice theory pertains that people (as practitioners) when doing things like walking, driving or cooking, and in the case of this research; working, they actively combine elements from which the practices are made (Shove et al., 2012)

These elements are Materials, Competences and Meanings

It is anticipated that through discussions of participants’ ‘everyday practices’

regarding work, travel and responsibilities, insight into how and why these are

produced will be explored Hopefully this approach will identify avenues for travel demand reduction through practice reconfiguration

Theory and conceptualisation

Creative industries/occupations = ↑ opportunities in flexibility

↑ opportunities in flexibility = ↓ travel demand / ↑ lower carbon

Questions and hypotheses

How work is structured has an important impact on how people travel to work

Those with greater flexibility in determining their own working practices have greater potential to be flexible with how they travel to work

Where there is greater possibility for flexibility, reducing overall travel demand and/or choosing lower carbon options are contingent on a

multitude of factors, namely (household) responsibilities and activities

Questions and hypotheses

schedules?

decisions, and for whom are these decisions most impacting?

to an increase use in lower carbon options?

Approach

‘The experience of these SMEs showed that a greater degree of genuine

flexibility is possible in the small-scale context where relationships are

understood and working conditions are clear and visible’ (Dex and Scheibl, 2001

p.411)

Design

• Comparative Case-study

• Purposive Sampling

• Architects vs Accountants

• SMEs

Methodology

• Two semi-structured interviews

Questions and hypotheses

Thank you for you attention

Any Questions?

Approach

References:

BONTJE, M & MUSTERD, S 2009 Creative industries, creative class and competitiveness: Expert opinions critically

appraised Geoforum, 40, 843-852

DEX, S & SCHEIBL, F 2001 Flexible and family-friendly working arrangements in UK-based SMEs: business cases

British Journal of Industrial Relations, 39, 411-431

FLEW, T & CUNNINGHAM, S 2010 Creative industries after the first decade of debate The information society, 26,

113-123

FLORIDA, R 2002 The Rise of the Creative Class Cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic

development race Washington Monthly, 34, 15-26

HENRY, C 2009 Women and the creative industries: exploring the popular appeal Creative Industries Journal, 2, 143

MCQUAID, R W & CHEN, T 2012 Commuting times – The role of gender, children and part-time work Research in

Transportation Economics, 34, 66-73

SCHWANEN, T., KWAN, M.-P & REN, F 2008 How fixed is fixed? Gendered rigidity of space–time constraints and

geographies of everyday activities Geoforum, 39, 2109-2121

SCHWANEN, T & MOKHTARIAN, P L 2005 What affects commute mode choice: neighborhood physical structure or

preferences toward neighborhoods? Journal of Transport Geography, 13, 83-99

SHOVE, E., PANTZAR, M & WATSON, M 2012 The dynamics of social practice: everyday life and how it changes,

Sage