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Friday, Jul 3, 2009
A new study says cities must attract the new "creative class" with hip neighborhoods, an arts scene and a gay-friendly atmosphere -- or they'll go the way of Detroit.
Jun 6, 2002 | Although the idea of a professor of regional development being a celebrity seems a contradiction in terms -- an absurdity to file away with "corporate integrity" and "military intelligence" -- Richard Florida, the H. John Heinz III professor of regional economic development at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is managing that feat. His new book, "The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life," is attracting the type of attention usually garnered by salacious fiction or celebrity tell-alls, from packed readings to a rapid ascent up Amazon's bestseller list. And it hasn't even hit its official publish date yet.
Public policy and regional development books are often considered best as a cure for insomnia, but Florida's work is challenging many of the verities of the field. He claims that the world has moved away from the old "organizational" era of corporations and homogeneity and into the "creative" era, which is spearheaded by 38 million workers -- from scientists to IT workers to artists and writers -- with a variety of lifestyles and needs.
The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life
By Richard Florida
Basic Books
416 pages
Nonfiction
What that means for cities is that instead of "underwriting big-box retailers, subsidizing downtown malls, recruiting call centers, and squandering precious taxpayer dollars on extravagant stadium complexes," the leadership should instead develop an environment attractive to the creative class by cultivating the arts, music, night life and quaint historic districts -- in short, develop places that are fun and interesting rather than corporate and mall-like. It's advice that city and regional leaders can take or leave, but Florida contends that his focus groups and indices -- reporting the important factors needed for economic growth in the creative age, from concentrations of bohemians to patents to a lively gay community -- are more accurately predicting the success and failure of metropolitan areas.
By Florida's estimation, the top cities when it comes to attracting the creative class are San Francisco at No. 1, followed by Austin, Boston and San Diego, with New York coming in at No. 9. Decaying industrial centers like Detroit, Buffalo and Grand Rapids, and Southern cities like Memphis, Tenn., and Norfolk, Va., bring up the rear. However, the book isn't an ode to the survivors of the new economy or a utopian vision of the future. Some of the widening rifts between the creative and other classes are somewhat troubling, forecasting growing economic and regional differences. In the end, Florida writes, this will be another challenge the new creative class must face.
How does your definition of the creative class -- which includes 30 percent of the working population, a large class -- differ from the findings of others who have noted the emergence of new types of knowledge and technological workers?
The fundamental thing that's different from many people before me -- such as Daniel Bell talking about the rise of the postindustrial society in the information age and the service class, or Peter Drucker talking about knowledge workers, or others talking about the professional-technical class -- what I'm talking about is the fact that it isn't just knowledge workers, it isn't just scientists and engineers, it isn't just technology people. It's that creativity is multidimensional. Certainly there are scientists and engineers and professional-technical people, but there are people in other fields and other walks of life who use their creativity -- in particular, artists, entertainers, musicians and cultural producers.
My argument is that in order to harness creativity for economic ends, you need to harness creativity in all its forms. You can't just generate a tech economy or information economy or knowledge economy; you have to harness the multidimensional aspects of creativity. So the book says that there are three types of creativity: technological creativity, which is innovation, new products and ideas and technologies; economic creativity, which includes entrepreneurship, turning those things into new businesses and new industries; and cultural and artistic creativity, the ability to invent new ways of thinking about things, new art forms, new designs, new photos, new concepts. Those three things have to come together to spur economic growth.
I think I actually define the classes pretty narrowly. The creative class is composed of two dimensions. There is the supercreative core, which are scientists, engineers, tech people, artists, entertainers, musicians -- so-called bohemians that are about 12 percent of the workforce, up from well less than 5 percent at the turn of the century. And subsequent analysis by Robert Cushing suggests that the supercreative core is really the driving force in economic growth. In addition to the supercreative core, I include creative professionals and managers, lawyers, financial people, healthcare people, technicians, who also use their ideas and knowledge and creativity in their work. I don't include people in service or manufacturing industries who use creativity in their work.
My sense is that this creative class will grow and grow and grow over time.
What prompted you to write the book? Was it an outgrowth of some of your former research or was it some sort of breakthrough?
In a way it was both. All my life I've been interested in creativity. My dad used to take me to the factory where he worked and tell me, "Richard, it's the intelligence, knowledge and experience of these men who make the factory, not the machines." I watched Newark and my father's factory decline. In that sense, I was always interested in manufacturing and making things and places and communities.
