No one has done more to promote the return of educated professionals to cities than Richard Florida. In his 2002 classic The Rise of the Creative Class, Florida argued that “creative class” professionals like engineers, artists, architects, and college professors held the key to revitalizing America’s cities. He encouraged cities to cater to the tastes of these creative professionals by developing walkable urban neighborhoods well-served by transit and with ample amenities.
Ten years ago, author Richard Florida coined the term “creative class” to refer to the young, talented and affluent people who he believed would revive North American cities and lead them to grow and prosper.
In today’s San Francisco there is hardly any room for the middle class. Soon-to-be tech millionaires leave the city each morning on the Google Bus, headed to company headquarters in Silicon Valley, while the homeless and the permanently poor watch them pass. The Bay Area is home to more than 71 billionaires (second in the world only to the New York metro area) while about 14,000
“Today’s urban rentiers have more to gain from increasing the scarcity of usable land than from maximizing its productive and economically beneficial uses,” writes Florida, also noting that over a 50-year period, over half of New York City’s economic output was consumed by artificially high housing costs, to the benefit of what Adam Smith might have called “indolent” landlords (themselves often corporations, REITs and other wealth funds).
There has been a buzz in the past few weeks regarding a new book by the urban-studies theorist Richard Florida, the “New Urban Crisis.” Remember, Mr. Florida? He’s the one who extolled places such as Boston and Austin as the hope for America’s economy. In his previous seminal work, “The Rise of the Creative Class,” Florida had this to say about Boulder: “Boulder has reached this beautiful sweet spot, where it has many advantages of a university town — tech and talent and openness — but without many of the costs and traffic and congestion that may disadvantage incumbent centers of innovation.”
When I was in college and first became politically aware, so to speak, was in the ’80s when Ronald Reagan was president. Many people from that era remember that perhaps the principal economic theory driving his election in 1980 was the theory of supply side economcs, or that lower barriers on
Lesson #2: Superstar cities
Toronto is tied with Stockholm for 10th on the list of superstar cities compiled by the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute, where Florida is Director of Cities (New York, London and Tokyo are the top three). These cities benefit from the clustering effect of individual talent, firms and industries (especially tech).
When Richard Florida coined the term “creative class” in 2002, he painted a very clear picture for urban revitalization. His book The Rise Of The Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community And Everyday Life, almost reads like a textbook for mayors. All cities had to do was lure a few artists into live-work lofts in an old warehouse district, maybe convince a startup—they weren’t even called startups then, were they?—to set up shop in a post-industrial neighborhood. Voila! Florida’s prescription for city success.
Lesson #1: What is the “new urban crisis”?
The University of Toronto’s urban theorist Richard Florida is best known to many for his 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, which predicted future economic growth as the result of creativity and innovation rather than raw materials and industrial models of the past.
