Creative Class

My system does not imply anything about the style of the music.
There are plenty of places where screeching, screaming, thumping,
pounding music is entirely appropriate and welcome, and which can
therefore play this music with complete integrity for the delight of
its customers. A dance club playing dance music seems like an excellent
marriage of music and place.

The same music, however, played at the corner café, where people
gather to talk, to read, and to write blogs, and where screeching,
screaming, thumping, pounding music is played primarily to keep the
staff from falling asleep over their cappuccino machines — this would
be an example, in my opinion, of irreconcilable differences between
music and place. The music prevents you from enjoying the place.

My rating system, therefore, describes the relationship between
music and place in terms of the emotional communication between the
two. It has the following gradations, from best to worst:

1. Intuitive. (“You always know how I’m feeling!”)

2. Friendly. (“Um, okay. I can see your point.”)

3. Neutral. (“I’m sorry, did you say something?”)

4. Obnoxious. (“You don’t care how I feel!”)

It’s a very personal kind of rating system, I admit. But I believe
that if enough people subscribe to it, the demand for sensitive musical
choices in public locations everywhere will increase, and life will
improve for everyone.

One more category needs to be mentioned. If we understand the
relationship between music and place in emotional terms, then this
final category has many qualities of the best: it recognizes the moods
and functions of a place, while seeking to delight and please the
customers. But these qualities are passive-aggressive: they are used
with ulterior motives, most often to sell you something. This final
category, therefore, is:

5. Manipulative. (“You say you care, but I don’t trust you!”)

Two kinds of location define this category for me. Chain bookstores,
especially during December (is there a limit to the number of times one
can hear “Winter Wonderland” before suffering permanent damage?) and a
certain ubiquitous “café.”

How do your favorite places rate?

Thomas Chapman, Jonathan I. Leib, and Gerald R. Webster have a article in the latest edition of Southeastern Geographer (link here sub to MUSE reqd) titled "Race, the Creative Class, and Political Geographies of Same Sex Marriage in Georgia" (abstract below).

The intense debate over same sex marriage is replete with competing visions of ‘moral’ and cultural landscapes. We examine this issue in an electoral context as it played out in the state of Georgia in 2004, first in the state legislature and then in a statewide referendum. In analyzing the socio-spatial patterns within the state, we direct attention to two issues and their impact on the voting outcome. The first is African American discourse in supporting or opposing the amendment, in terms of same sex marriage as a civil rights issue or as a conservative religious ‘moral’ issue. Secondly, we look at how Richard Florida’s thesis of the ‘creative class’ has influenced the spatial outcome of the vote in terms of intersections of the political-economy and local culture. Both discourses are linked with the so-called ‘culture wars’ raging across American society as a whole, and they help illustrate some unique geographies that play out within a local context.

Among their findings, they found a very strong and significant negative correlation between the Creative Class in a region and the percentage of the population who voted in favor of Georgia’s anti-same sex marriage constitutional amendment.   (The larger the Creative Class population, the larger the number of people voting against the amendment.)

It seems that once again actual results point to Creative Class populations living hand-in-glove with regional tolerance…

posted by Kevin Stolarick

The map compares gross state product to similar nations.  Original is here via Tyler Cowen.

Teens in America are in touch with their peers on average 65 hours a
week, compared to about four hours a week in preindustrial cultures.

Read more here via Tyler Cowen via Two Blowhards from an interview with Robert Epstein in Psychology Today, here: His new book is The Case Against Adolescence. Tyler writes:

The problem, of course, is that a contemporary wise and moderate 33 year
old is looking to climb the career ladder, find a mate, or raise his
babies.  He doesn’t have a great desire to educate unruly fifteen year
olds and indeed he can insulate himself from them almost completely.
He doesn’t need a teenager to carry his net on the elephant hunt.
Efficient capitalist production and rising wage rates lead to an
increased sorting by age and the moral education of teens takes a hit. 

I agree. It is worth pointing out, though, that adolescence is a relatively new life stage, invented by
the American psychiatrist G. Stanley Hall who originally announced that adolescents
were a distinct social group in a 1904 study. Of course through the course of the 20th century teenage became a demographic phenomenon first with Sinatra and the bobby-soxers, then of course around Elvis Presley and James Dean and the Beatles and the baby-boom. The construct of a
separate age of retirement is equally a product of  industrial society’s increased affluence and extended
life spans through advances in medical science. Over the course of
the twentieth and twenty-first century as our society has evolved and become
more affluent and our healthy years have been dramatically extended, our lives
have come to be seen as unfolding in a series of discrete stages. Consider two fairly recent ones – young adulthood – the period of being single and living between one’s parents house and one’s own nuclear family and that of empty-nester, when the kids are gone bur before retirement.

In Who’s Your City, I argue that each of these stages comes with an additional set of locational decisions – and a broader set of options and choices than ever before.

Your two cents?

The Economist has a short but insightful article about what other companies should be learning from Apple.

Their top four lessons include:

1. "Not Invented Here"  is very welcome.
2. Design around user needs and not the technology.
3. (Sometimes) you have to lead rather than listen to customers.
4. Fail wisely — almost every Apple success follows a failure.

Full story here.

posted by Kevin Stolarick

SAP CEO Henning Kagermann has a global talent strategy for the spiky world. Have a look at this interview in the New York Times.

A decade or so ago, we did nearly 100
percent in Germany. Now, it’s two-thirds in Germany and one-third
outside. Palo Alto was the first, and we now have about 1,400 engineers
in Silicon Valley. Today, we have about 3,000 engineers in India, about
1,000 in China and 900 in Israel. There are other engineering centers
around the world, but those are the big four.

More after the jump.

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The Washington Post writes:

New York is among a faction of  U.S. cities from Boston to Portland, Ore.,
that are racing ahead of the federal government in setting carbon
emission targets and developing concrete strategies to deal with
climate change. Their solutions are already beginning to alter the
fabric of life for millions of urban dwellers.

It is a direct
consequence, municipal officials and analysts say, of the growing
perception inside city halls that the Bush administration has largely
ignored an issue that has reached a tipping point in American culture.

More after the jump.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Mayors around the country, Democrat and Republican, and around the world so get it. The folks in the White House and Capitol Hill are completely clueless. It’s time to re-jigger our federalist system, massively shrinking the outmoded, over-bloated, industrial age federal  government and shifting real power and resource allocation down the chain.

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That is until I read this post by Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape, pointer via Tyler Cowen.

Let’s start with a bang: don’t keep a schedule.

He’s crazy, you say!

I’m totally serious. If you pull it off – and in many structured jobs, you simply can’t – this simple tip alone can make a huge difference in productivity.

By not keeping a schedule, I mean: refuse to commit to meetings, appointments, or activities at any set time in any future day.

As a result, you can always work on whatever is most important or most interesting, at any time.

Amen! Read the whole thing here.

Tacoma, WA, one our first pilot Creative Class Communities, is easy to love – it’s in the heart of the northwest, right on the port, and its authenticity and beauty just envelope you. That said, members of the community have faced challenges meeting others, finding the cool things to do and making connections with others of similar mind and hearts. This is a real problem for creative communities; connections are key – they’re the source of idea sparks and innovation. Enter Love Tacoma, one of our Creative Tacoma Catalyst teams building up the  creative ecosystem in the region.   

Love Tacoma is connecting people with each other and creative events and opportunities around town. In their own words:

Love Tacoma offers what you want to know about
the hottest spots in our urban playground. From chill happy hours to
next week’s most anticipated show, you’ll find what you need to be out
on the town alongside people like you in Tacoma’s urban crowd.

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Great video of Google’s VP for People Operations Laszlo Bock — a Romanian immigrant — testifying on Capitol Hill regarding the practical benefits of immigration to Google and the US. It is a great testimony and confirms much of what we know on immigration and talent. People need to see this.

posted by David