Where Is the Rural Creative Class? A Systematic Literature Review About Creative Industries in Low-Density Areas

Research in creative industries is mostly focused on urban and metropolitan areas. However, various authors have approached the creative industries from a regional, rural, or remote point of view. The objective of this study is to map and analyze research on creative industries in low-density areas and to identify the main theories and current and future trends within this theme. For data collection, only articles published in the Web of Science and SCOPUS databases were used, from which a set of 152 documents was obtained. For this study, we used R Bibliometrix software to assist in result analysis and VOSViewer software, to create a reference co-citation’s map, which allowed us to identify three clusters, whose themes we analyzed in detail. The results allowed to show (i) an increase in investigations into creative industries in low-density areas in recent years, (ii) the main journals and authors that have contributed the most to this theme, (iii) the identification of the theories most used in these studies, and (iv) finally, the identification of three clusters: remoteness and place relations with the creative industries (cluster 1), critical perspectives and the spatial distribution of talent (cluster 2), and cultural policies and the genesis of the creative class (cluster 3). This study contributes to mapping and critically summarizing the existing literature linking the creative industries and low-density areas. In addition, the study made it possible to identify current and future trends in order to enhance new lines of investigation.