Every Kickstarter project is depicted as a small circle, sized by its number of backers.

Let’s go deeper on each city. While a breakdown of film vs. music projects is helpful, what is the nature of these projects? Were they large (in number of backers)? Or were they small and localized to the city’s community?

What makes unique? We broke down Kickstarter into 15 categories (e.g., games, fashion, film). One category that’s more popular in versus the rest of the US: – about % of its are projects (nationally, represents % of all projects).

These bubble charts give us a powerful sense of a city’s creative center of gravity. Nashville is 80% music projects (red in color). Among 150 cities, it has the most concentrated number of projects in one category: music.

Conversely, more colors = more diversity. Among 150 US cities, the most creatively diverse are Boise, Idaho and Las Vegas, Nevada. Both cities’ projects are, relative to other locations, spread out evenly among Kickstater’s 15 categories. In Las Vegas, we see some of the highest representation of photography projects, which are 8% of the city’s total (photography is 2% of all projects, nationally).

Other interesting observations:

ATL and Gaming: we were surprised by the number of gaming projects in Atlanta. There are 8 gaming projects with at least 9,000 backers, which is on par with major tech hubs such as LA and Austin.

Black Rock City: did you notice the city depicted by all blue dots? That’s the location of Burning Man, which is represented by 85% art projects.

Provo, UT reps its Creators: Provo, Utah has only 100,000 people. But in terms of number of projects with over 1,000 backers, it looks like it should be the population of Indianapolis or Miami. The city’s community is engaged with every sort of project that its creators launch. It’s also home to Brigham Young University, which leads to our last point...

College Towns: cities with large student populations over-index in Kickstarter projects. This may explain why Pittsburgh is a top 20 city for Kickstarter projects, but ranks 85th in population (it’s home to Carnegie Mellon and Pitt). Similarly, cities such as Ann Arbor (Michigan), Savannah (SCAD), and Providence (Brown, RISD) are notable hotbeds for Kickstarter projects.

Next, let’s go deeper on individual categories, starting with music. How does each city’s music projects compare to one another?