An innovative creative class drives creative cities, urban areas in which diverse cultures are integrated into social and economic functions. The creative city of Chiang Mai, Thailand is renowned for its vibrant Lan Na culture and traditions, and draws new migrants from other areas in Thailand seeking to become part of the creative class. This study aims to classify a local integration model for the migrant creative class, and to suggest a set of indicators that could be used to measure the level of successful integration of a migrant creative class when building creative cities. This study selected twelve creative class sample cases who are well known in Chiang Mai and separated the sample into three groups; educator, researcher, and innovator. The study’s agenda consisted of open-ended questions with a semi-structured format for the in-depth interview, and follows a local integration ontology model.

The study found that the local integration model consisted of four key domains: means and work, social connection, facilities, and foundations domains. Significant factors are included in each domain, and all four domains are important for the local integration of the creative class in creative cities. Annotation Ontology was used for determining the critical factors for success for migrants in creative cities: namely job, training, social bridge, and language and cultural knowledge.

This study presents a new model, the Lan Na Local Integration Metric, which can be applied to understand the successful integration of migrants into the Lan Na region of Chiang Mai.