Creative Class

Jamin Warren has a really interesting piece in today’s WSJ (sub required) which highlights the role of live music venues and performances by new artists in the turnaround of a gritty London neighborhood — Shoreditch.

Full of tales of adaptive reuse of older structures and entrepreneurs and patrons looking for something more authentic — which they claim the can no longer get in tonier neighborhoods such as Notting Hill.

From the article,

“Two years ago, Ben Heath had an epiphany. The more live music he hosted at his pub Catch, in Shoreditch, the more people came. Formerly an old boxing studio complete with a tattered ring upstairs, the venue “really feels like a New York bar now,” says Mr. Heath, who put on a fresh coat of paint this past fall and invested $13,000 on a new sound system.

He also hired a former lead singer from a popular indie rock band to book live talent. Now, Catch is one of the area’s hottest venues and business hit a new peak last year with 10% growth…

These days, the buzz is shifting eastward, to the gritty neighborhood of Shoreditch. In doing so, it’s transforming this former industrial center located 15 minutes by cab from the City of London into a cultural destination in its own right. Trendy restaurants are opening, as are boutiques carrying cutting-edge designers. New galleries feature the work of reknown artists like Damien Hirst…

The rise of Shoreditch has as much to do with its cheap rents and large loft apartments as its proximity to central London, where many of its young visitors live and work. But perhaps more than anything, it’s benefited from the gentrification of other once-fringe neighborhoods like Camden, where the opening of a Virgin Megastore in 2001 and the arrival of expensive apartments has tarnished its cutting-edge image. Similar stories have played out in major U.S. urban centers, too; as New York City’s SoHo morphed into a shopping hub and tourist draw, the artists’ scene shifted over to Brooklyn neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Dumbo.”

So next time you are in London, check out a live show in Shoreditch and watch as a neighborhood responds to the desires of citizens, entrepreneurs, and artists looking for places to do their things. But don’t wait too long, I am sure Virgin, Starbucks, and a host of others are already sniffing out the neighborhood.

posted by David

That’s the title of an intriguing new book by Phillippe Legrain. Here’s an excerpt from
Martin Wolf’s review in the Financial Times.

In a thought-provoking new book, Philippe
Legrain, the British author of Open World,
a splendid work on globalisation, takes a bold position: let them all
in.  More precisely he says: “It would be best if our borders were
completely open. But if that is deemed impossible for now, let them at
least be more open. And if even that is not acceptable, let them at
least be better regulated.”

Mr. Legrain performs an invaluable
service: he makes a good case for the unpopular cause of free flows of
people. The book is a superb combination of direct reportage with
detailed analysis of the evidence…

We must also recognise that, as Mr. Legrain
argues, migration does bring large benefits. The biggest aggregate
global gains come from moving people out of bad environments into good
ones. But the biggest gains to recipient countries, I suggest, come
from greater diversity itself.

Mr. Legrain quotes Richard Florida
of George Mason University: “Regional economic growth is powered by
creative people, who prefer places that are diverse, tolerant and open
to new ideas.” A quarter of the people now working in London were born
abroad. It would be nothing like as prosperous or as exciting a place
without them.

Toleration of the
intolerant must cease where the latter threatens the sustainability of
the diverse society itself. Whether it will be possible to achieve this
in today’s circumstances is unclear. But there is no doubt about the
importance of trying.

In addition to maintaining the very
qualities that made it a magnet in the first place, a society must
decide how to control the inflow. Mr. Legrain makes a compelling case
against the inflexibility of “picking winners” in immigration. My own
view has long been that work permits should be auctioned, with the
price giving guidance on how many people should be let in. When people
are let in, it is also right to help them obtain what is needed to
participate in a liberal democracy: above all, the dominant language
and some understanding of its institutions and history.

Mr.
Legrain is right on two big points: migration cannot be stopped; and it
can indeed bring benefits to almost everyone. But it also poses a
bigger challenge than he admits. The answer, I believe, is twofold:
controlling the borders, however imperfectly; and, still more,
insisting on the core values of the host society. The results will be
imperfect. But the alternatives of either complete freedom of movement
or a fortress are both impossible. What we are left with is the ancient
art of compromise.

… to be jolly, right. No wonder my thoughts turn to happiness. Well sort of.  Actually,  it’s been on my mind for a while now. Who’s Your City has a long section on place and happiness. The short of it that the place you live has a substantial role in your happiness, and what makes you happy with your place and also how your place makes you happy in your life is different than what most people think. 

Have a look at these great sites/ blogs on the subject.

Authentic Happiness (Martin Seligman)

Happiness Policy and the Fly Bottle (Will Wilkinson).

The Happiness Project (Gretchen Rubin).

Does your place make you happy?  Do tell.

Robert Toll, the so-called “king of suburban mini-mansions,”  and just about the biggest residential builder in the history of the world, talks to the Wall Street Journal about cities and why he is betting his company’s future on them.

“We are following our people. We have been a
builder to the baby boom since we began. First that took us into the move-up
luxury-home business, then into golf-course resort communities. It has also
taken us into the active-adult communities. The city is a combination resort community, but the resort is New York City — or Chicago or L.A. or Miami.”

WSJ: What does this shift say about baby boomers?

Mr. Toll: It says we are not as our parents were. The
baby boomer always wanted more. We are more hip-hop and happening than our
parents. We want the sophistication and joy of culture and music that comes with
city dwelling — and doesn’t come with sitting in the big home in the burbs
watching the day go by while puttering, painting, reading, writing, making flies
for fishing, customizing your own golf clubs, stringing your own tennis racket,
tending your tropical fish.

It was a rarity 20 years ago to find hedge-fund Johnny making a
decision to stay in the city. Home buyers went up to Westchester and out to New
Jersey — back to wherever they came from. It was a rarity to see kids in the
city. Now it’s not.

What do kids do in the burbs? You ride your bike until you can
get your car. You’ve done the three movies at the plex. Now what? Having had
five kids, I’m not sure that it’s not more dangerous in the burbs than it is in
the city because you are riding your bike in traffic. Or you are driving your
car, which is even worse. You go down to the [convenience store] and smoke
cigarettes, and the parents sit up with their arms wrapped around their knees,
hoping that you come home.

WSJ: Just 10 or 15 years ago, everyone thought cities
were dying, and no one wanted to live in them.

Mr. Toll: Absolutely right. But [affluent home buyers]
weren’t there. We hadn’t demanded the services, and we weren’t there with the
willingness to pay for the services that make that city what it is today. People
have come in and insisted, ‘I don’t want the bum on the sidewalk.’ Now, there is
no committee meeting. The cops go out and chase him off.

WSJ: Is it easier to build in the suburbs versus the
city?

Mr. Toll: It’s easier in the city. The approval process
is more professional in the city. The experts that you deal with are pretty much
doing the assigned job, as opposed to the secret unassigned job to stop the
growth, stop sprawl [in the suburbs].

WSJ: Is the amount of time people have to spend
commuting from the suburbs pushing people into cities?

Mr. Toll: No, it’s such a different lifestyle that I
don’t think people who are in burbs get up and say I can’t stand the drive time,
let’s move back into the city. I think they’ve got to want to go into the city.

WSJ: Do you have criteria you use before you plunge
into a city.

Mr. Toll: Is there excitement in the city? Will people
want to come? And has someone else succeeded? We are not going first, I will
tell you that. It also has to be a great land price. We are not going into this
on a ‘let’s try it’ basis. High-rise development is much more dangerous, much
riskier than suburban development because you’ve got to build the whole damn
thing. You can’t knock part of it off. But first the demand has got to be there.
We can create destinations in mountains and valleys. But I don’t think we create
destinations in cities.

WSJ: Do you see other cities coming back?

Mr. Toll: It’s going to happen in such strange places as
Newark [N.J.]. Newark is going to slowly gather its excitement.

WSJ: Detroit?

Mr. Toll: I don’t see it because the economy is so
ripped. There is a downtown, but you wouldn’t go there.

“Try hitching your wagon to a movement that will use your nice rhetoric about environmental and labor standards as a fig leaf for raw xenophobia.”  Julian Sanchez at Notes from the Lounge on the new populism – from his excellent post updating the debate (read: mostly partisan hackery) over Brink Lindsay’s super-insightful “Liberaltarianism” essay.

I know it’s Brad DeLong’s tag-line but I could not resist this little gem.  Mike Madison over at the always intriguing Pittsblog has been gently spoofing my theories with his own “Rise of the Cupcake Class.” I’ve always been fond of some all-in-good fun satire.  The amazing thing is that the Pittsburgh Tribune Review must have come across this on-line and then decided to “”report” on it. The picture is the actual one that accompanies that story. This one takes the proverbial cake.

“The childhood cupcake’s hip city cousin probably got its start about 10 years ago at the Magnolia Bakery, in New York City, which gained national acclaim after appearing in “Sex and the City” on HBO…  Now, there’s Cupcake Royale, in Seattle, Citizen Cupcake, in San Francisco, and dozens of other cupcake bakeries opening all over the country…”

“Getting a cupcake shop can say a lot about your city, according to law professor Mike Madison and economist Chris Briem, who write about the local economy at Pittsblog. They’ve speculated, semi-seriously, about “the rise of The Cupcake Class.”  “Cities that want to compete economically in the 21st century need to attract ‘The Cupcake Class’: people with the time, money and taste to consume small amounts of upscale baked goods,” writes Madison.”

Read the whole hilarious thing here. Click on their names (above) for Madison and Briem’s good natured takes on the whole hilarious episode.

Jim Frey sent along this story:

For many years a factory in Auckland, New Zealand made transmissions for automobiles built in New Zealand by Ford. In the late 1990s, Ford switched suppliers. The transmission factory then managed to get a contract with Toyota. When the factory managers met with the Toyota managers, they were told that Toyota wanted them to make the transmissions for a new car Toyota would build in New Zealand. The Toyota representatives described the car: weight, wheel base, size of engine, number of passengers, etc. When they finished, the Ford representatives said, “We can do that. What are the specifications?”  The Toyota representatives replied, “We just gave them to you.” When Ford ordered 1,000 transmissions, the factory always delivered 1,100. They knew they had a 10% failure rate – they just didn’t know which 10%.  When Toyota ordered 1,000  transmissions, they refused to accept more than 1,000. They expected every transmission to fit and work properly.

Last week we attended the Mayor’s Institute on City Design’s 20th Anniversary celebration here in DC. Though larger in scope than most of the initiatives we cover in this section, it was so cool we couldn’t resist.

Here’s how it works: 8 mayors, each with their own community’s city design dilemma – think waterfront redevelopment, downtown revitalization or transportation planning – meet together with 8 expert designers for 2.5 days to hash out specific strategies and overarching planning principals for the mayors’ cities.

The mayors learn what to look for in city plans and work towards in an overall city design, becoming, as the Institute had hoped, the chief urban designers of their cities. Without this sort of training, ‘we don’t know,’ as Trenton, NJ’s mayor Doug Palmer put it, highlighting an interesting dynamic: Mayors and other civic leaders often come from lives in business or law and are faced with far-reaching decisions on planning, architecture, economics and more. To lead and administer productively, our officials need some instruction– specialized, specific and expert training like that provided by the Institute.

We think there are many parts of civic leadership that would be well served by this model of training. And we think city design is a great place to start. Time and money spent to create well-designed cities is a long-term investment in property values and residents. As the Institute’s founder Mayor Joseph Riley, Jr. of Charleston told us, investing in good city design is one thing mayors can do for every citizen and guest of the community.

The Institute is a powerful partnership program of the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Architectural Foundation, and the United States Conference of Mayors. Check them out here.

Tell us about creative strategies working in your community. Use the comment section below or send Amanda and email at Amanda@CreativeClass.org.

Jane Fishman offers great ideas on how to harness the human element (Toyota-style)  to
transform government service delivery.

Savannah Morning News on the music scene.

Jim Morekis on the 3Ts.

That’s Mayor Otis Johnson giving me a digital key to the city!