Creative Class

Over at his always interesting, Notes from the Lounge, Julian Sanchez, notes Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and futurist Alvin Toffler concern that the current “factory model” of education is broken beyond repair. Here’s Toffler:

You’ve been writing about our educational system for decades. What’s the most pressing need in public education right now? “Shut down the public education system.”

That’s pretty radical. “I’m roughly quoting (Microsoft chairman) Bill Gates, who said, “We
don’t need to reform the system; we need to replace the system.”

Read the whole Toffler interview here or download here. And read the comments by high-school students here (pointer: Angela Stevens). Trust me it’s worth it.

Ignore the stuff in Julian’s post about Steve Jobs bashing teachers.  Unionization and tenure are symptoms not the cause.  Gallup’s latest studies show that teachers perform extraordinarily well when they are engaged. The problem lies deep in this structure.

Our backs and forth this week on various education issues, plus my
doctoral seminar  Monday evening got me thinking, (always dangerous).
The school system we have now will not survive the transition to the
Creative Age. Peter Drucker said essentially the same thing about the
research university. That does not mean people will cease to learn, do
research and invent. Here’s why.

The Industrial Age because of its underlying logic (Marx) gave rise to
large-scale vertical bureaucracy (Weber). It also suppressed human
self-expression and initiative in favor of control (Freud). Our school
systems, like our factories, large scale organizations, and governments
are in effect structures (“prisons?)” for bureaucratic control.

The Creative Age logic requires something very different – self-expression, flexibility, and individual initiative. Most people understand that  advances in technology and communication allow
for complex coordination without  having to be in the same building, factory or
office.  What they forget is what Robert Lucas taught us about external
economies, Jane Jacobs taught us about diversity and  cities, and most
of all what modern psychology says about self-expression and creativity
(the latter depends on the former).

Put that all together and you can see the need for a very different
system for learning, one that optimizes flexibility over control,
intrinsic reward over extrinsic (grading), lets talent thrive instead
of squelching it, allows self-expression to flourish, challenges
students, and lets them learn asynchronously, on their own time-scale
and work flexibly.    The excuse is that schools are a place for
“socialization” is just that – an excuse.  Most people can socialize in
much more effective ways than pep rallies, ball games, the prom committee, or yearbook planning
(but I digress). The community, broadly defined, can do that much better anyway ala Jane Jacobs.  It already does, as parents seek to supplement what their kids aren’t getting from schools with all sorts of extra-curricular interactions from play-dates and tutors to rock school. Most of the good stuff already happens at the margins.  Gates and Dell both dropped out of college to build their companies in their dorm rooms.  Wonder why.

Our schools are the opposite of what is needed:  hierarchical, mind-numbing,
creativity-squelching machines.  So the need for transformation: But, what
exactly comes next? Toffler is right.  We need to shut the whole thing down.
Let’s no longer confuse real estate, our current education
factories/warehouses with learning.

It’s hard to sketch the system out in advance, but the core principles to build around are readily apparent: a shared curriculum on a technology platform that enables flexible and asynchronous learning anywhere, anyplace, anytime;  challenge and intrinsic reward over grades (and ridiculous standardized tests); community based engagement and socialization;  and a wide range of ala carte instructional offerings. This kind of system is one that simultaneously empowers and enriches students, parents and teachers.

And here’s the kicker, people,  whatever place gets this right has enormous first-mover
advantage. They will.  The underlying economic logic of the Creative Age demands it.  It’s only a matter of time.

Care to weigh in?

This detailed report on the location of artists, musicians, dancers, designers and the like in 1970 shows the dominance of NYC, LA, San Francisco among other city-regions and points to the role growing role of  Nashville as a musical center.  These locations have been pretty “sticky” since 1970. Talk about “path dependence.”  Especially interesting since the real spark for for the creative economy dates from around 1980. Between 1980 and 2005, some 25 million new jobs in creative occupations are created, and the share of creative occupations jumps from less than 20 to more than 30 percent. The artistic centers of 1970  read like a who’s who of today’s creative city-regions.  What might be going on here? Perhaps these artistically creative locations sparked earlier seedbed and incubation conditions (openness to new ideas, low barriers to entry, high tolerance for self-expression) which helped shape ecosystems that could attract and harness creative economic energy in the form of commercial innovation and the formation of new entrepreneurial firms. Or, perhaps there is something deeper, more structural going on in these locations which produced both.

Click here for the report (hat tip: Scott Jackson).  Any thoughts?

Rob Horning over at Pop Matters weighs in.

“A week ago Joel Kotkin wrote an article for the WSJ
about fading American “supercities” (New York, San Francisco) and the
B-list cities (Las Vegas, Phoenix, Charlotte) that are gaining
population at their expense by providing better value (mainly via
cheaper real estate) and catering to a more family-oriented
middle-class lifestyle. … What makes them
most suburban-like is how one’s insulation from the lives of others is
upheld pretty well—traveling in cars assures that …What drives Kotkin’s piece is instead a chance to heap scorn on “trustafarians”… This has obvious middle-class populist appeal … Kotkin’s article brandishes its antielitism…stopping just short of championing mediocrity. Middle-class existence is not incompatible with intellectual pursuit; I wonder why
commentators like Kotkin imply that it is.”

Ryan Avant does too:

“Kotkin … is apparently under the extremely misguided impression
that the growth of cities like Charlotte and Raleigh, Houston and
Phoenix has come at the hands of some mass of middle class blue-collar
heroes (although he presents evidence to the contrary in the very same
article). It’s difficult to describe this belief as anything other than
unbridled ignorance. The success of the cities mentioned above is
directly traceable to their ability to attract educated, skilled
professionals. These new banking and research centers are brimming with
post-graduate degrees; you simply cannot find a booming city without a
well-educated workforce.”

And CEOs for Cities:

“I had to reflect again on the puzzling op-ed piece on “The Myth of Superstar Cities”…To our knowledge, no source of data that would tell you with any
accuracy the number of college-educated 25 to 34 year-olds in any city
since 2000, even though the piece insists that “over the past decade
college-educated workers…now appear to be tilting to more affordable,
family-friendly places.” It goes on to assert the following: “Since
2000, Riverside, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Dallas all have been among the
big net gainers. In contrast New York, Boston, L.A. and even the Bay
Area, a big winner in the 1990s, appear to have become among the
highest net losers.” If the author has any facts to support these claims, we wish he
would share it with us. In fact, we wish his editors would have
insisted on including them in the article so we could all be
enlightened … What is most puzzling of all is that Las Vegas actually ranks last
among the top 50 metro areas in the percentage of college grads, and
Riverside and Phoenix are not far behind. The notion that big cities in so-called blue states are filled with evil chablis and brie elites sure feels like trumped up class warfare.”

I’ve argued for a long time now that part of what’s going on in cities is smaller families – 1 or 2
people – taking over spaces that once housed much larger families or even groups of families. You can see this everywhere from Brooklyn’s Park Slope to Chicago’s Lincoln Park, Boston’s South End, and lot’s of other places.
So I was  delighted to see the folks over at  Zillow have  crunched the requisite numbers.

American families have shrunk dramatically and consistently over the past century. In 1900, the average American family was 4.6 people. By 1940 it declined to less than 4. In 1980 it slipped below 3, and  hovers around 2.5 people today. Over the same time, our houses have gotten much, much bigger.  In 1900, the average new home was about 700 square feet and most families lived in much smaller quarters than than. By 1940, the average new home was 1500 square feet where it hovered through the 60s and 70s. Before climbing to more than 2000 square feet in 1990 and around 2500 square feet today.

Or think of it this way. In 1900 the average American family in a new home was using up about 152 square feet per person.  By 1940, each of them was consuming more than 400 square feet.  By 1990, the figure was roughly 750 square feet. And today it’s about 1000 square feet each. We don’t need all that space. In many ways, big houses have become a status good. And a costly one at that. The environmental costs and impacts of our super-sized housing are a no-brainer. But there’s also the tremendous opportunity costs that come from channeling a large share of national investment and savings into real estate as opposed to say new technologies, new innovative industries, or improved health care?

The Dynamist’s V’irgina Postrel weighs in  over at  Cities on the Hill:

“If Joel is so concerned about the high price of real estate in L.A., why
doesn’t he take Ed Glaeser’s research to heart and, say, advocate a
zoning change to allow the single-family zoning on the westside or in
the San Fernando Valley to become multifamily? Even at townhouse
densities, that could significantly increase supply and lower prices.
L.A. prices aren’t high because bad attitudes will them to be high.
Supply and demand operate even in California.”

Amen!  Same is true for New York (which added 250,000 new college graduates between 2000 and 2005) and other superstar cities as well.  And, no,  I’m not saying I “like” the growing real estate gap between superstar cities and other places.  I’m not making a normative argument, just reporting the facts.  But today, way too many many people want to  confuse – and in some cases say purposefully contaminate – facts with values.  This kind of thing only  makes it harder to get to the bottom of what is really going on.  But maybe that’s their point.

The facts are abundantly clear across a whole host of indicators.
Our country and the world are becoming increasingly spiky. And despite
what some like to believe, the best indicators of “development”  aren’t
where overall population or job growth is occurring -  case in point,
the populations of places like Mexico City or Jakarta are exploding.
What’s happening is a large-scale migration and growing concentration
of highly skilled people in a relatively small number of regions.
Economic activity  and wealth are becoming more concentrated
geographically – invention even more so.  All of this, not
surprisingly,  is reflected in housing prices which remain the best
available  indicator of the real demand for location. New York City is
not just a playground for the super-wealthy, but a center of finance,
creativity and innovation. The San Francisco Bay area isn’t a mere
center for bohemianism and lifestyle but the world’s foremost center
for innovation.

The Nobel prize winning economist Robert Lucas put his
finger on this some two decades ago. It’s the productivity-producing
external economies created by co-location of people that enable cities
to grow larger, more inventive and more productive. “If we postulate
only the usual list of economic forces, cities should fly apart.” This
is because land, as Lucas reminds us, “is always far cheaper outside
cities
than inside.” With a penchant for common sense that seems to
distinguish the
greatest thinkers he sums it up with the question: “What can people be
paying Manhattan or
downtown Chicago rents for, if not to be around other people?” The
underlying logic of economic development is producing an increasingly
spiky world and the  real estate prices that reflect it.

It’s pretty clear to me that lots of otherwise smart people would
like to brush this brutal logic  under the proverbial rug and retreat
to happy mythologies about a level playing field, one big flat world,
or a population uptick in this or that Sunbelt city.  But, if we want
to begin to address this situation, and I think we must – not just for
economic reasons but for the political and cultural turmoil it augers -
we need to understand the mechanisms that shape the spiky world and the
superstar cities that, for better and worse, form its leading-edge.

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

“Across the country, a small but growing number of parents … are dramatically altering their families’ lives to pursue the perfect private school for their children. …  The phenomenon is driven by rapid changes in technology, which give many parents geographic latitude with their jobs. The Internet has created a national marketplace for schools, with troves of information on most any school in the country, and even particular administrators, available within a few clicks.”

Click here to read the whole thing (hat tip and shout out: Rob)

Makes sense to me: Families moving to schools to give their kids the best opportunities. But we’ve always done that, really -  choosing this suburb or that to be near better schools or in districts close to private schools. You should see how the housing prices escalate in Northwest DC  where we live, as you to get to the blocks which are closest to the  premier schools.

But there is another response as well. The simultaneous rise in home schooling among these same types of  families.  My own take on this is that the very same technology that enables the parents-move-to- schools trend is also beginning to transform education as we know it.

The creative age requires flexibility and is rapidly eroding
bureaucracies of all sorts. If the corporation no longer controls my
life telling me when to punch in, when to go home, what to wear, and
where to live, why should a school?

What’s more these sort of family-to-school moves are extremely
expensive. Not just in terms of tuition but entail substantial
transaction and opportunity costs.  So consider this: What if families
can get state-of-the-art curriculum on-line and then use those
resources to educate and engage their kids in all sorts of activities?
A typical response is: “That’s well and fine but how will kids get
socialization?”  Well,  I for one never much cared for the ”
socialization” I saw in schools, and have trouble finding others who
did.  High school horror stories in particular abound.

So what if we move socialization activities out of the schools, as
is already occurring. Say for example, some enterprising educational
provider were to come along  develop and market not just a curriculum
- and this is the important part – but also an la carte menu of
pre-screened and certified experts, teachers, coaches, advisors and
activities that parents could expose their kids to – an expanded take
on the old music lesson, after school tutor, or sports league.  It
would give families a whole lot more flexibility and might even make
the educational experience both less costly and more tailored to
individual needs and exciting for kids.

Care to weigh in?

Pier Giorgiho Di Cicco, the Poet Laureate of the City of Toronto, on the future of cities (hat tip: Amanda Styron).  It captures the essence of  the creative community, its great potential, its contradictions, and the challenges we all face. Read it and share your thoughts.

The creative city is more than just innovative. It manufactures an
appetite for life. It respects the random, not just as new information
for design, but as the currency of civic allowance. People will not
volunteer their ideas if they live in the regulated environment of
gentrified enclaves, free only to exercise imagination in front of
computer screens.

All this to say, that a knowledge economy depends on knowing the roots of creativity.

Innovation falls under the banner of creativity, and creativity does
not occur where there trust is lacking in social capital.

The job of
generating civic trust is in the hands of governance, innovators,
entrepreneurs all those who understand that civic spirit is the engine
of a good economy,

In the future all cities will be distinguished by one thing only.
The nature of their enthusiasm. IT, virtuality, globalization, consumer
isotropy will make all cities equally enticing to tourists and
investors. Though it will appear that a city is attractive because of
certain types of technology, the city wants to attract people who not
only specialize in those technologies, but who see that city as a
livable place with a strong creative ethic.

An aesthetic of the city is more than its expertise in innovation.
Besides which, innovation begins on the street in the casual genius of
civic encounter. A city that is not creative in all sectors cannot hope
to be creative in some sectors.

Wealth generation is limited when wealth is not seen as a product of civic allegiance. The
very word allegiance sounds archaic. Does it still have a place on the
competitive stage? People need to belong, to a work place, a community,
a way of life. Out of that emerges love and loyalty. A city with these
qualities is a perpetual motion machine. It is prosperous because it
has city spirit. This spirit is seductive to investors and visitors. It
makes for a livable town.

Collaboration is not how a city is made Collaboration exists by converging alliances and partnerships, often
provisional. It is a transactional model. The job of making a city
cohere in spirit is about loyalty, is about joining together.

When business is the interest, the most intelligent thing is to
re-invest in the spirit that made invention possible– the city. And
that spirit in turn, becomes the engine to economy.

The creative city is more than just innovative. It manufactures an
appetite for life. It respects the random, not just as new information
for design, but as the currency of civic allowance. People will not
volunteer their ideas if they live in the regulated environment of
gentrified enclaves, free only to exercise imagination in front of
computer screens.

All this to say, that a knowledge economy depends on knowing the roots of creativity.

A
knowledge economy is more than information. It  isn’t seduced into the
quick harvest. It doesn’t barge on insight before insight has had a
chance to flower. A knowledge economy understands that the outsourcing
of design is at an end, if the design of the architecture between
citizens isn’t attended to.

And the architecture between citizens is very vulnerable in the
future city. It is negotiated space that we live in. It is not
adventure, but security that has become the municipal zeitgeist.
Surveillance, excessive protocol and proceduralism are  becoming the
ambience of urban life. In such an environment, it won’t belong before
innovation is demoted to merely new-level growth.

The factors accomplishing this are many. I would suggest to you
that the lack of civic and national commonality accounts for colonies
of life styles, ideologies and extremist positions that bewilder the
field of policy. The industry of appeasement is replacing the industry
of civic care. The ethic of entitlement replaces the ethic of
sufficiency, and though this may appear good for capitalism, it spells
bad news for sustainability.

Many are the dangers for the future of cities, But the worst thing
that can afflict a city, even in its apparent prosperity, is the
deterioration of city-soul, that which inspires citizens to
self-identity and mutual recognition. Its recovery depends on (1)
seeing another citizen as a resource of sacrifice and not just as a
resource.  (2) using the concept of innovation as a forum of shared
wonder and delight.  (3) seeing the city not just as opportunities of
networks, but as a gracious forum of encounter and unexpected
intimacies, with gratitude for what that city has yielded.

With these elements recovered, we are guaranteed creative cities
and competitive cities, because we will have cities that will have
stayed human.

The task of business and governance is to enact a psychology of
creativity with a credible benevolence, beyond the machinery of
excitement, acquisition and entertainment. For just as there is an
ecology of environment that demands more than the short term solution,
there is an ecology of the human heart that demands a faith witnessed
in and by the most talented members of our society.

The Council on Competitiveness has just released a new report on entrepreneurship in the United States. The study finds that while U.S. entrepreneurial performance continues to lead the world by almost any measure, other nations are starting to catch up. Click here for the report (hat tip: Sandy Maxey).

Lot’s of people talk about how important it is for regions to be good places for families and children. But few, if any, studies have provided detailed empirical evidence to compare cities and regions.  A new study by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Center for Health Advancement has developed detailed rankings for the largest 100 metropolitan regions based upon measures of housing, neighborhood conditions, residential integration, education and health.

The best and worst lists after the jump. The full report is here (hat tip: Shari Young Kuchenbecker).

Best Metros for Children

White

Ann Arbor, MI; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Denver, CO; Middlesex-Somerset-Hunterdon, NJ;
Milwaukee-Waukesha, WI; Minneapolis-St. Paul, MI-WI; Nassau-Suffolk, NY; Newark,
NJ; San Francisco, CA; San Jose, CA; Washington, DC-MD-VA-WV.

Black

Colorado Spring, CO; Denver, CO; Middlesex-Somerset-Hunterdon, NJ; Nassau-Suffolk, NY;
Portland-Vancouver, OR-WA; Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC; San Antonio, TX; San
Jose, CA; Tucson, AZ; Vallejo-Fairfield-Napa, CA;

Asian

Austin-San Marcos, TX; Baltimore, MD; Monmouth-Ocean, NJ; Nassau-Suffolk, NY; Newark, NJ; Washington, DC-MD-VA-WV

Hispanic
Ann Arbor, MI; Cincinnati, OH; Colorado Springs, CO; Fort Lauderdale, FL; Jacksonville, FL;
Monmouth-Ocean, NJ; Nassau-Suffolk, NY; Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA; Washington, DC-MD-VA-WV.

Worst Metros for Children

White

Bakersfield, CA; El Paso, TX; Fresno, CA; Jersey City, NJ; Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA; Miami, FL;
Mobile, AL; Modesto, CA; New York, NY; Riverside-San Bernardino, CA; Stockton-Lodi, CA.

Black

Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY; Chicago, IL;
Cleveland-Lorain-Elyria, OH; Fresno, CA; Jersey City, NJ; Louisville,
KY; Miami, FL; Milwaukee-Waukesha, WI; Mobile, AL; New Orleans, LA; New
York, NY; Rochester, NY.

Asian

Bakersfield, CA; Fresno, CA; Jersey City, NJ; Jersey City, NJ;
Los Angeles- Long Beach, CA; Miami, FL; Milwaukee-Waukesha, WI;
Modesto, CA; New Orleans, LA; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA-NJ;
Providence-Fall River-Warwick, RI-MA; Sacramento, CA; Stockton-Lodi,
CA; Tacoma, WA.

Hispanic

Bakersfield, CA; Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY; El Paso, TX; Fresno, CA; Hartford, CT; Los
Angeles-Long Beach, CA; Milwaukee-Waukesha, WI; New York, NY; Providence-Fall
River-Warwick, RI-MA; Rochester, NY; Springfield, MA; Syracuse, NY.

This figure via 2Blowhards: “After I sketched this out, it dawned on me that
there were a number of professions that were way off the general curve.
Doctors, lawyers, and accountants, for example, made a lot of money but
did not have to put much money at risk to earn it … Yep, those risk-averse New Classers definitely know something the rest of us do not. But what is it? How do they so successfully defy the risk-reward curve? How do they float above the rest of us earth-bound types?” Read the whole, insightful thing here.