Events

Ann Arbor SPARK will host Richard Florida, one of the world’s leading public intellectuals on economic competitiveness, demographic trends, and cultural and technological innovation, as the keynote speaker at its annual meeting. Ann Arbor SPARK’s annual meeting, the region’s premier gathering of business and community leaders, will be held on April 24, 2017, at the Eastern Michigan University Student Center in Ypsilanti, Mich.

Kansas City, with its much improved downtown and still evolving suburbs, is a logical conversation starter on urban and suburban issues.Richard Florida and Joel Kotkin hold a discussion at the Kansas City Area Development Council’s annual meeting to discuss.

Far from being a war zone as Donald Trump recently described it, Harrisburg has a substantial creative class and the resources to overcome years of deindustrialization, nationally renowned urban studies expert Richard Florida said.

Noted urbanist and author Richard Florida opened the recent 2016 ULI Florida Summit in Miami by reminding the audience that the creative class and the industries in which it works are the single most important economic drivers in the 21st-century economy. Economic development at the local and state levels can no longer be about enticing companies through special tax breaks or incentives, but about being irresistible to creative, talented people and building neighborhoods where they can simultaneously live, work, dine, drink, play, and experience a high level of interaction with each other. The creative types will be the ones to lure the companies in—or, better yet, start companies of their own, in Florida’s view.

Florida and his Creative Class Group have authored a study on the current state of the economy with Florida International University, which will be released during Thursday’s morning session of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce 2016 Goals Conference, the organization’s annual two-day planning retreat being held at the Hilton Downtown Miami.

FIU and the Creative Class Group (CCG) founded by Richard Florida have joined forces to launch the FIU-Miami Creative City Initiative a project to harness creative and entrepreneurial forces that can help accelerate greater Miami’s transformation into a creative economy. The FIU-Miami Creative City Initiative will engage political business and cultural leaders faculty students alumni and the greater community in a dialogue on how creativity culture and design can drive a regional economy.