The Creative Class clearly brings its own ethos to work, leisure, cities, and consumption. From the San Jose Mercury News (hat tip: ValleyWag), The Prius is the number #1 selling car in Silicon Valley. Thats right, the large US metro with the greatest % of CC in its workforce has made the Prius its car of choice by buying more Prii in June than any other model. "That puts the Prius ahead of Toyota’s Camry and Corolla and Honda’s Accord and Civic, all cars that outsell the high-mileage, gas-electric sedan nationwide."
"Are we ahead of the curve, or what?" asked Rod Diridon, executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University, and a Prius owner.
The Prius’ newfound status reflects the continued greening of Silicon Valley. Diridon listed sustained higher gas prices, the availability of carpool-lane stickers for solo Prius drivers – no more are being issued – and the intelligence of local residents as factors in the Prius’ popularity."
My old friend and true urban innovator, Kip Bergstrom of the Rhode Island Policy Council on metros, megas, place, and design (pointer via CEOs for Cities). Click here to download.
[T]he number of U.S. science and engineering (S&E) articles in major peer-reviewed journals flattened in the 1990s, after more than two decades of growth, but U.S. influence in world science and technology remains strong. The report, Changing U.S. Output of Scientific Articles: 1988 – 2003, finds changes occurred despite continued increases in funding and personnel for research and development. Flattening occurred in nearly all U.S. research disciplines and types of institutions. In contrast, emerging Asian nations had large increases in publication numbers, reflecting their growing expertise in science and technology. European Union totals also went up.
So, the U.S. is basically spending more to achieve exactly the same thing?
For this week’s By the Numbers, we examined the regions with the highest density of creative talent. Pulling data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Census, we calculated the number of creative class members per sq. mile.
We ranked the top ten metros for each classification: large, medium, mid-sized and small.
The results were surprising!
Here’s a quick look at the top three for each metro size: Large Metro: Million-Plus
1. Los Angeles, CA (281 Creative class per sq. mile) 2. New York, NY (269) 3. Washington, DC (226)
Here’s the back story of last night’s appearance on The Colbert Report. It’s funny because about two months ago I said to my wife, there’s one show I would be really, really nervous to be on, The Colbert Report. Not only is he quick and funny, he stays in character and really grills people – it can be embarrassing. So when the call came right before their 4th of July break, I was nervous. But Rana and our entire team prevailed on me, so I said, what the heck, give it a go.
Here’s a picture of me, Rana, and David behind Stephen’s desk.
I have done ton of public speaking and a ton of media interviews, so I’m used to this sort of thing and it doesn’t get me nervous. Usually that is. I was plenty nervous to be on Colbert. I had virtually no background on the show. Rana talked very briefly to the segment producer in early July, when she said that the subject matter would be “Flight of the Creative Class.” I talked briefly with her while boarding the Acela in DC, where she basically said they were overwhelmed by the first day back, and she’d tell me more when we got to the studio.
David, Rana and I had a nice ride on the Acela. That is until the electrical connection between the train and the rail went out and they had to switch to a new power source in another car. We got to NY, I changed and we went over to the studio around 5:45PM.
That’s when I learned we’d be the first segment, because Stephen is trying to do more interactive stuff to liven the show straight-away (replacing his usual first-up feature, “The Word.”) I was in a second tiny green room and we had about six people squeezed in. Rana, David, David’s wife Emily, our friend, Chris “Benny” Benfield, and various people from the Report. It got so boisterous when Bobby the intern came to visit – as it turns out he grew up in the same Detroit area suburb as Rana and Benny and goes to the University of Michigan where David, Emily and Benny went to school – that they actually closed the door on us. The producer laughed and said I was lucky to have such a hip and attractive, high-energy group of friends.
I was nervous, pacing the dressing room and the hall. They were running late – it was their first day back after all. About 6:35, an assistant producer came over to brief me a little on the segment. She just started going through Stephen’s questions, and I was literally and figuratively clueless and speechless. They must have thought I was the worst possible guest. Stephen came in quickly to say hello and let me know he would stay in character and I should just play it straight, stay focussed and get my ideas across.
They brought my posse into the studio and Stephen went in, the music cranked up and I could hear loud applause and laughing. They wheeled me into makeup and out into the studio. The energy was incredible. I could see the end of Stephen’s question and answer session with the audience. The whole place was electric. Then the music cranked up to another level. And as luck would have it, they played one of my all time favorite songs, the Sex Pistol’s “God Save the Queen.” I remember the very day I heard that song as an undergraduate at Rutgers – and I told the folks around me – it literally changed the way I heard music.
My energy level was high – really high. The only thing I could compare it to was being on stage (a long time ago) with my band. I figured it’s now or never, I better get centered. I put my feet apart, took several deep breaths, and with the music pumping found the zone. I said to myself you have to do two things (in addition to getting my ideas across), have fun and make sure I let Stephen and the audience know I was in on the joke. I was literally busting a gut during his introduction to the segment. They pulled my chair up and I followed the producer onto the set. The audience applause was unbelievable – very different than anything I was used to as a speaker. I locked onto Stephen and wooosh it was a great ride. I knew it was OK when he broke a smile and could see that our interaction was cracking him up.
Stephen is an incredibly smart and kind person. His staff – his entire staff – is phenomenal – the producers, assistants, technical people, makeup artists – every single one of them – conveys the most incredible positive energy.
I may have been nervous to begin with, but now I am certain that what Stephen is doing to disarm mindless punditry is not just smart and edgy, but incredibly important.
Heck, it was fun. I’d recommend it. And hope I get a chance to do it again sometime.
This story in Business Week “The High Costs of Wooing Google” shows (yet again) the inanity of incentives.
Business-development incentives, while hardly new, are proliferating as never before, and the dollar values are soaring. Lenoir’s courting of Google offers a case study of how elaborate the inducement ritual can get. Today it’s not just carmakers promising thousands of jobs apiece that are getting rich deals. From New York to Washington State, IT, biotech, and financial-services companies have incited frenzied bidding for their business and the spirit-elevating buzz they bring. States and localities bruised by globalization view these knowledge-based fields as the foundation for economic rebuilding. Reliable current estimates of the number of deals don’t exist, but those who study the field all agree that the total is rising. Peter S. Fisher, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Iowa, pegs the aggregate value of incentives at about $50 billion a year.
A total waste of money. Just think what the town could have used it’s $200 million for (that’s the endowment of a good small university) or what that $50 billion total might be used for?
To judge by the interminable queue outside Boogaloos restaurant in the Mission District, San Francisco is thriving again. …Yet this boom is unlike the one that began ten years ago. For one thing, it has produced many fewer jobs. Although slowly rising, the number of workers in San Francisco is still 12% lower than during the dotcom era. Since 2000, indeed, the city has shed more jobs than Detroit. …
More than biotechnology or Web 2.0, San Francisco’s economy these days is built on leisure. That industry is in fine fettle: bucking the trend, hotels and restaurants employ more people now than they did seven years ago. … [M]any expensive flats have been bought by people in their late fifties who have grown tired of the suburbs and no longer need worry about schools. Although lured by the city’s bright lights, they may not see much of them. [A]another trend is towards pieds-à-terre that are empty most of the time. …
Younger workers often have a similarly detached relationship with the city. Google shuttles 1,200 people a day, many of them from the Mission and other trendy parts of San Francisco, to its headquarters in suburban Mountain View. Such reverse commuting helps to explain why property prices in the city barely wobbled during the dotcom crash. …Those prices pose the greatest threat to the city’s future as a crucible of new ideas.
For this week’s "By the Numbers," we examine regions with the highest percentage of movers (from last year) who spent the previous year abroad.
Pulling the data from the U.S. American Community Survey, 2005, we rank the top 10 metros for each metro classification: large, medium, mid-size, and small.
Here’s the top three for each:
Total Movers who spent the last year Abroad & % of Total Movers who were from Abroad.
Large Metros (Over a Million)
1. New York – 150,913 movers from Abroad (7.8% of all total movers to the region) 2. Washington, DC – 58,900 (7.1%) 3. Miami, FL – 62,813 (7.0%) Medium Metros (500K- Million)
1. El Paso, TX – 8,154 (8.4%) 2. Honolulu, HI – 10,229 (8.1%) 3. Bridgeport, CT – 7,616 (7.5%)
