# Mapping the creative soul of US cities

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2016-09-21

chicago, creative, creativity, detroit, kickstarter, los-angeles, nashville, new-york, polygraph, uncategorized

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Polygraph (visually-driven essays) has a great piece called, [The Entire History of Kickstarter Projects, Broken Down by City](http://polygraph.cool/kickstarter/). What they did was look at 88,475 Kickstarter projects to map the various creative communities across the US.

Here’s a snapshot (you may need to zoom in):

![image](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/9254a8cc3a6f38805a821525638e2f67.png)

In general, Kickstarter in the US sees a high concentration of music projects (24%) and film & video projects (19%). But where it gets interesting is to see which cities over-represent in certain categories.

New York = film & video, theater, and dance

Los Angeles = film & video (not surprisingly 45% of all projects)

San Francisco = design and tech

Chicago = theater

Detroit = music

Nashville = music (76% of all projects!)

They also measured the size of each project (number of backers) and created these neat bubble diagrams:

![image](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/3ac5ce5f129d226119f7d495f438f4c5.png)

Above is New York. Red is music. Orange is film. And yellow is theater.

I also like their explanation for why they did this project:

> _Pretty much all_ [_existing_](http://college.usatoday.com/2015/06/13/top-cities-young-artists-art-majors/) [_attempts_](http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/geography-creativity-uk?utm_source=Nesta+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=bc271da360-Geography_of_Creativity_Nesta_weekly_new7_25_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d17364114d-bc271da360-180882389) [_to_](https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-top-ten-cities-for-creatives) _map creative communities use census and jobs data. But creative efforts are often side-hustles. They’re garage/basement/cottage industries that will not appear in a census._

It’s true. This data should be a much better capture of each city’s creative soul.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/mapping-the-creative-soul-of-us-cities)*