This article examines the intraurban geography of craft breweries in ten cities across the United States. First, through an exhaustive literature review, we outline both supply- and demand-side factors that might cause craft breweries to cluster. Second, we empirically test whether these establishments tend to cluster within cities using spatial statistical techniques. Many communities are attempting to support the establishment of more craft breweries as a way to boost tourism and economic development. The findings from this article aid in this discussion by providing insights into how craft brewers locate and the factors that could influence their location decision behavior. Our findings suggest that craft brewers do in fact cluster. There are both supply and demand factors responsible. On the supply side, the collaborative environment within the industry and the artisan nature of the industry's products allows for benefits of clustering to outweigh the costs associated with this behavior. On the demand side, the emergence of “brewery districts” allows individual brewers to enjoy the reputation benefits associated with the district in terms of increased foot traffic from locals and visitors looking to sample a variety of beers.

The phenomenon of cities facing dramatic population loss, the so-called ‘shrinking city’, offers new challenges for urban scholars. After decades of focusing on growth, geographers, planners, politicians, and others are now confronted with cities and regions that are not just losing people, but often also facing economic and social transformation. As an area of study, we are in the beginning stages of theorizing new urban futures for these cities, as well as developing local planning responses to them.

To better understand the non-economic drivers of growth in emerging industries, this paper examines the craft beer industry. Specifically, the paper will review two examples—the Black Cloister Brewing Company in Toledo, OH and 3rd Turn Brewery, Louisville, KY—to understand how the values of entrepreneurs and local firms that are situated at the nexus of work, place, and creativity promote growth. Further, the paper will consider the socio-cultural meaning of creativity relative to the craft beer industry and the many ways in which the concept of innovation traditionally used by economic geographers to understand growth can be better understood within the context of creativity in some industries. In doing so, the paper represents a conceptual shift away from innovation towards creativity, as well as community.

Hop production has expanded dramatically in recent years along with the number of local craft breweries, but to date the relationship between these two phenomena has not been explored systematically. Using a state-level pooled count data model with observations from 2007, 2012, and 2017, we examine the independent lagged effects of breweries on the number of hop farms and acres grown, holding constant fixed effects and key economic and geographic factors. Our results confirm that the number of breweries is associated with more hop production (farms and acres) five years later, while warmer temperatures and higher land prices discourage it. (JEL Classifications: L66, Q11, R30)