The Amsterdam region - A home for creative knowledge workers and graduates? Understanding the attractiveness of the metropolitan region for creative knowledge workers

The report brings together the results of a survey of creative knowledge workers in the Amsterdam region. How do creative knowledge workers judge the living situation and what
activities do they pursue in the different parts of the region? How satisfied are creative
knowledge workers with their living, working environment and their neighbourhood? What
role do hard and soft factor play in their assessment of the region?
164 creative knowledge workers and 71 UvA-graduates were asked in an online-survey to
assess the Amsterdam region as a living and working environment. We used the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, a group of 38 municipalities cooperating in various dimensions of metropolitan governance, as our regional entity of analysis. The survey was conducted in autumn 2007.
Creative knowledge workers and graduates have often lived in the Amsterdam region for
more than 10 years, which shows that the regional population has strong social ties to the
region. These social ties and job related reasons were seen as pivotal reasons for their
settlement in the Amsterdam region. Soft factors such as diversity of the cultural offers or
openness of the society played only a secondary role.
The survey shows that large differences exist amongst various subgroups of the creative
knowledge workers. E.g. the income of creative workers and knowledge workers as well as of women and men varies significantly. Spatial differences appear in the social structure.
Whereas families and high income households are more likely to be found in the suburban
part of the region, low income households, female and non-Dutch creative knowledge
workers and recently graduated persons tend to settle in the inner city of Amsterdam.
Differences between inner city dwellers and suburban inhabitants come also to the fore, if
their activity patterns are investigated. The cultural amenities are more commonly part of the weekly routines of inner city dwellers than for the surveyed suburban population. Both
findings underline the importance of an in-depth understanding of the social texture of the
different subparts of the region for a effective economic and planning policy for the
Amsterdam region.
The report investigates the attractiveness of the Amsterdam region through three perspectives: satisfaction with the living environment of the whole region, job satisfaction and satisfaction with the neighbourhood. It relates those three fields to the overall score of the satisfaction level. The general level of satisfaction with the living and working environment as well as with the neighbourhood is high. On a scale from 1 (very satisfactory) and 10 (unsatisfactory) around 60% of the creative knowledge workers and graduates give a score of 5 and better.
This overall satisfaction cannot be explained easily. Neither the judgment of the living
environment, nor the judgment of the working environment, nor the assessment of the
housing environment gives clear insights on which factors determine the overall level of satisfaction. Also the analysis of soft and hard factors shows that not a single set of factors is able to explain different levels of overall satisfaction.