Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around
one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more;
you should try harder … A city speaks to you mostly by accident—in things you see through windows, in conversations you overhear. It’s not something you have to seek out, but
something you can’t turn off.
This and much, much more in this fascinating new essay by Paul Graham (h/t: Ben Casnocha).
May 29th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Richard,
This was a fascinating essay – thanks for the pointer. I’m curious – what message do you think Pittsburgh sends, if any?
Scott McWilliams
May 29th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Dr. Florida,
This was a fantastic essay! It was dead on!
I wonder what message Toronto sends? If I had to guess, I would have to say “youth, growth, future, intellect, possibilities, anything goes, room for eveyone”.
May 29th, 2008 at 11:15 am
What is beginning to depress me is how little this site seems to be saying for the vast majority of people.
Yes, rooms full of books and an intellectual milieu would make a great place to live for about 0.01% of the world, but the vast majority of people simply aren’t interested. Does that make them worthless? Should we ignore their needs because they don’t fit in with our privileged tastes?
By all means Richard Florida’s ideas seem to me to be genuinely about attracting economic drivers to regions. This is fine, and should be a starting point for framing regeneration efforts. But doesn’t that base itself on the assumption that wealth trickles down? I’m British, I lived under Thatcher, and I can conclude that it does not. Even almost 20 years since Thatcher, the gap between rich and poor in the UK has continued to grow, despite 11 years of a nominally left-wing government.
In short, I’m over this appeal to “wealth generators” as a way of focusing regeneration efforts. I live in a very deprived area of the UK called the Black Country. It was one of the birthplaces on the industrial revolution, and has suffered considerably from the ravages of industry, braindrain, provincial infighting and a reputation perpetuated by negative stereotypes in the media. I’m fed up of reading regeneration proposals that say the Black Country needs to attract professionals and managers in order to achieve a more mixed community.
As we say in England, “bollocks”. The Black Country needs to improve life for the people who live here now. I’m fed up of being treated like a little cretin who couldn’t help myself if I tried, and who needs good (white), well-educated ambitious types to drag me by my dirty collar into the world of SUVs, theatre-attendance and worrying about children’s educational performance.
Because a) SUVs are inefficient, b) who goes to the theatre anymore and c) insisting your child does well in exams may actually be counterproductive…
I’m being facetious – the point I’m making is that morally, the behaviour of the celebrated “creative class” may be just as abysmal as the blue collar, downtrodden and disenfranchised that we’re forever told are the reason why places don’t “perform” economically.
Maybe we need a middle ground – where we can encourage the creative class, nurture and support the kind of economic activity that goes hand in hand with them, and then harness that drive to redistribute wealth, re-connect with those left behind by “the knowledge economy” and, more importantly, re-engange ethically and politically with that creative class who are, in my eyes, rapidly abandoning altruism, compassion and philanthropy in favour of spiky hair, matching dining furniture and all the trappings of the bourgeoisie.
May 29th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Bravo!! I totally agree with Gobstar. I am an information professional with a graduate degree from a working class background. I also happen to be African American. Having lived in all along the WEst Coast, I have come to think that Florida’s true definition of the so-called creative class is just a euphamism for yuppies, bobos and the leisure class– people who have inherited wealth. i have lived throughout the Paicfic northwest and did my post-graduate studies in Vancouver, BC– a fine, but very expensive city, by the way. compared to the american pnw cities vancouvers still feels, well, cosmopolitan. by comparison cities like seattle and sortland have truly just become the suburbs inside the city limits: at their cores they are homogenized, gentrified and devoid of the sometimes messy energy, diversity, curiousity and spirit most of us think of when we imagine truly cosmopolitan cities. true, having a thoroughly well-to-do populace is very good for a city’s coffers which means nice parks and things. who could argue with that! it can also be argued that this homogenity makes for smoother city planning. but dang, it is unsettling to feel that you can no longer take an evening stroll your neigborhood because your new neighbors seem intriniscally afraid of difference despite moving nto the heart of a city. to my mind city people are more open, confident and usually culturally (relatively) sophisticated because they accept, even embrace, living within a diverse space. the surburbs used to be were fearful homogenity dwelled. this has been turned upside down because now many american cities have become filled with mostly white, passive-aggressively xenophobic (when it comes to people of colour or different classes) upper-middle class people. although much of what florida is saying is observantly true (city cores are attractive once again to the children of the white-flight generation) the outcomes have not ultimately good for those of us who see cities greatest power and mystique coming from their mosiac qualities. it is this quality that has always had the most transformative potential and been the most truly creative aspect– it is were the true magic of greatest cities has alway lived. perhaps the immigrants, working class folks and minorites who have been banished to outskirts will reinvent those places into something good and vibrate. maybe not. but in reading this blog and others on the topic of cities. i have come to suspect that not only has the meaning of the word city evolved into something new, less vibrate and more quantified but so has the word creative. you claim to be a fan of jane jacobs but when she wrote about greats cities this is, sadly, not what she meant. still, i think what you doing is quite thought provoking. thanks for providing a forum for people who care about this issues to respectfully discuss them. forgive mispellings– i am in a hurry. cheers!
May 29th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Florida has said – in numerous forums – that we need to figure out how to foster and put to work the creativity of those in the service class. I thoroughly agree, for moral reasons and many more. However, I find this blog has not been discussing the topic in more than high theoretical mode. I guess none of us work in that field.
We now have a roster of strategies and success stories about how to attract the creative 30+ % to your town. Who has had comparative success in empowering the service class in the 21st millenium – in a way that prepares them for the future rather than frames class conflict in terms that may better fit a previous generation?
Offhand, I can think of 2 places to start looking for ideas. First, Robert Putnam’s book Better Together presents several case histories that show how today’s corporations might empower their service-class workers. For example, the office workers at Harvard University had to figure out a new model of union organization in order to better their lot. Their solution set aside the usual confrontation-between-classes mode that worked well for miners and factory workers in mid-20th century America.
Second, I think that TIAA-CREF might be a model for pension management that takes advantage of large numbers and professional expertise but keeps the employer from raiding the fund for its own purposes. Like your standard pension model, the employer (typically, a college or university) contributes to an employee’s retirement savings. However, the fund is neither owned nor controlled by the employer. A professor can move from one school to another with no loss of pension coverage. Unlike the 401 K model, TIAA-CREF can take advantage of economies of scale It does not expect every contributor to become expert in investing, nor to personally hire such an expert. TIAA-CREF has accrued a fine reputation in part because SOME of its contributory members ARE experts in finance, investing, economics, real estate…. Out of self interest these folks watch and judge TIAA-CREF performance; thus also protecting the English teachers and engineers who may know nothing about money. And the schools do not own the pension funds, so they are unable to raid them.
The tools needed to empower the service class (and preserve the middle class) surely go beyond unionizing and pensions. What examples are out there, and how can anyone build on them? Anyone want to talk about that?
May 29th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
The points raised by Gobstar and Seattle are interesting and I would like to question and discuss them.
Gobstar says: “It [the Black Country] was one of the birthplaces on the industrial revolution, and has suffered considerably from the ravages of industry, braindrain, provincial infighting and a reputation perpetuated by negative stereotypes in the media. I’m fed up of reading regeneration proposals that say the Black Country needs to attract professionals and managers in order to achieve a more mixed community.”
Seattle says: “I totally agree with Gobstar. I am an information professional with a graduate degree from a working class background. I also happen to be African American. Having lived in all along the West Coast, I have come to think that Florida’s true definition of the so-called creative class is just a euphamism for yuppies, bobos and the leisure class– people who have inherited wealth.”
Gobstar, does the Black Country really need to be regenerated? If the current proposals to improve the Black Country don’t make sense, or you are sick about hearing them, what do you propose?
Seattle, you are a member of the creative class. The creative class is cut and sharpened in universities. You have a graduate degree and have had the experience of living in creative centers on the West Coast. If anyone would know the advantages of being able to participate in the creative economy, it would be you. Do you really feel unsettled when you go for a walk in your neighboorhood in the evening after work? It doesn’t make sense that you can feel out of place in the same places that you have been able to be successful in.
And Zoe, I would love to talk about the service class. The service class is really a pretty successful bunch. Plus, the service class will be growing by the millions in the coming decade or two. The tools that work to empower one group may not work as well for another group, in other words, the service class might have to firgure it out on their own, and that might be best. It will be interesting to keep an eye on the service class, and it will be good overall if creative/service/working class theories and jobs will contribute to the wealth generation of the traditional middle class.
May 29th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Uh, Whitney, I don’t think you get to tell Peerless whether or not he/she feels out of place. Having also worked in high-tech in Seattle, I think I know what Peerless means. Overall, Seattle has a more-or-less typical racial mix for the Pacific Northwest, but among tech workers the mix is markedly different: more east/southeast Asian backgrounds, and less African American and Hispanic representation. A simple “percent visible minority” can’t capture this. I knew African Americans who were professionally successful, but I wouldn’t be surprised if (given the money they were making) they found themselves living in neighbourhoods where they stood out. (I was successful there too but as a foreigner never felt entirely welcome. After five years, I left.)
As for the larger discussion, I wonder if the first step should be to drop the term “class”. It tends to be divisive and almost sounds “Brave New World”-ish (i.e. don’t worry, Peerless, you’re an Alpha).
To add another idea to Zoe’s: there’s a book called First, Break All the Rules that’s mostly a management book but has some interesting studies on talent in a variety of jobs. The basic premise is that every job can be done to excellence — they use the example of how great hotel maids approach their jobs in a completely different way from maids who are merely good. That requires more effort to match people to the right jobs, and more trust in allowing individual initiative, but the results (and the longer tenure of someone in a job that suits them) should justify higher pay and better benefits. I think a big part of improving service jobs is to get employers to recognize the short-sightedness of the lowest common denominator approach, but I don’t see much progress on that front.
May 29th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
The question remains for Seattle. How can you feel out of place in the creative class and still enjoy the success of the creative class? It’s an honest question that deserves an honest answer. Bringing up personal characteristics; like race, gender, age, sexuality, etc. don’t count, because true members of the creative class are tolerant and don’t judge people based on personal characteristics.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Thank you both Whitney and Matt for you comments. It is actually refreshing to know that there intelligent people out there who are discussing these ideas. I believe that Matt really paraphased my experience quite well. I don’t mean to over-generalize or make mountains out of molehills. We all feel slighted from time to time: It is a part of being human and it is our civic obligation to have thick skin. That said, when things happen enough they feel like more than coincidence, they become patterns. What I noticed was that after returning from Vancouver to be closer to family, I had been more comfortable there because although were not many people of African descent there was a worldliness that seemed to create a generally more socially sophisticated populace. By this, I don’t mean that everyone ate caviar, but rather that people’s exposure to such a variety of cultures, experiences and perspectives made them (generally) more willing to deal with others as an individual. I am not painting the place as utopia because there were certain manyy social issues there just like any place. It seems that the U.S. is still turning out highly skilled professionals at a good clip but many of us suffer myopia even as the globe becomes smaller. If you are parto of the majority this is no problem. If you aren’t then you must seek for progressive, diverse, cosmopolitan communities, colleagues and cities. My point is that, ironically, the whole creative class movement has manifested itself (in the US, at least) in the form of the already well-to-do majority moving from well-to-do enclaves in the burbs and converting once unique areas (the mission, brooklyn, harlem, central district) into not more diverse places but less diverse places. places more about private property and less about community. for me diversity (of class, culture, etc.) is not novel, it’s a matter of survival. since i don’t fit neatly into the box many information professionals in the US. I look for neighborhoods in the city where there is a mixture of people because that is where I find I am most welcome, most likely to not get treated suspiciously, despite my degrees and general overall good taste (just kidding). I find these areas a more and more hard to find inside American cities. Besides even if I were part of the majority I wouldn’t want to live around only people who are all just like me. I happen to know wht I’d be missing. I hate to see cities becomes monolithic enclaves of the already well-off. And yes, even my European Canadian friends in Vancouver and Toronto lament the fact that their hometowns are becoming boutique cities that they can no longer afford. Is this really “creativity” or simply wealth doing what wealth always does. I know that will I likely move from the PNW which will be difficult because of loved ones. But my question is, when I get to Oakland or Chicago or Harlem will there anymore neighborhoods where puerto rican and blacks and filipinos and some thoughtful truly deal with one another? Or will it be like I said: wealthier (mostly White Americans) live in the cities now and everyone else lives in the suburbs? Will there be any cities where my neighbor might include a funny software engineer as well as a painting plumber? Because, you know, software enigneers are people too.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Some of the above comments are just shocking. First of all, does anyone want to admit to knowing what the difference between “east/southeast Asian backgrounds” is? Second of all, after all this talk of living in a post-racial society, here we are back talking about how whites live in cities and everyone else lives in suburbs. Everything I’ve seen says the sort process is based on educational levels, not race. Get an education, make money. It’s alarming to hear people say they see a sort process based on race, because the research says the opposite. Third of all, there are still race issues in this country, but let’s not make them worse by ID-ing races similarly to a DNA background search that goes back 400 years.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
that’s the point: for all the talk of it. what don’t live in a post-racial world. changing you economic status and making more money does not yet change this, unfortunately. hate to break to you but this is a fact that some of us live with every hour of every day. regarding your concerns about “knowing what the difference between “east/southeast Asian backgrounds” is?” i am not really sure what you are referring to, i just picked random examples of people from various ethnic groups.
May 29th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Hey Seattle. Matt says: “Overall, Seattle has a more-or-less typical racial mix for the Pacific Northwest, but among tech workers the mix is markedly different: more east/southeast Asian backgrounds, and less African American and Hispanic representation.”
You said your Seattle experience was similar to what Matt described. So I asked if anyone wanted to admit to knowing what the difference between east/southeast Asian backgrounds is. So far no one has copped.
You say: “changing you economic status and making more money does not yet change this, unfortunately. hate to break to you but this is a fact that some of us live with every hour of every day.”
That’s not really a response to my comment that we should try to move beyond talking about race – and that true members of the creative class don’t make judgements about other people based on personal characteristics.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
East Asia and Southeast Asia are both listed in Wikipedia. East Asia is Japan, China, and Korea. (This used to be called the “Far East”, but “far” from where?) Turns out I used Southeast Asia incorrectly — I actually wanted to include India and Pakistan.
How can you assess the diversity of a population if you’re not allowed to measure it? I’m not making judgements about individuals or groups (e.g. “Indians are great at database work” would be a useless and offensive stereotype). I’m not trying to guess why certain groups are better or worse represented, though I’ll happily rule out genetics. I’m not suggesting affirmative action-type hiring. And I’m not digging back through 400 years of DNA — because we’re talking about companies that hire around the world, many of the people I worked with were born in those areas. Yet I can’t restrict my comments to national origin because I rarely asked, “So, where were you born?”
It’s nice to imagine that creative companies would be perfectly balanced, but they aren’t. My point was that Seattle is diverse, and Seattle high-tech companies are diverse, but they’re diverse in different proportions, and that those differences can be important.
The most obvious example in high-tech is women. (Surely I’m allowed to notice this difference.) In highly technical jobs, the percentage of women is typically in the single digits. One development team I worked with had one woman in a team of 28! It was not a sexist environment; as far as I know she never filed (or even thought about filing) a harrassment claim, and would not say she faced intolerance or a pattern of discrimination at work. But wouldn’t you allow her to say that she stood out? That being the only woman in almost every meeting she attended was, at times, tiring? That she wished her work environment was a little more gender balanced? That, in spite of being treated with “tolerance” and respect, it is up to her to decide whether that is the best workplace for her? Because I’ve heard all those things from women in high tech, but I didn’t dismiss their comments sexist or anti-male. I know from company statistics that women tend to have shorter careers — they enjoy the work and put up with the environment for a while, but leave voluntarily at a faster rate than their male counterparts. (These are merely trends — there are some men who grow weary of the work environment for the same reasons as many women, but of course there’s no easy way to capture that in statistics.)
Whitney, you also asked “How can you feel out of place in the creative class and still enjoy the success of the creative class?” Other than the problem of under-representation, it’s impossible (and, I’d say, highly undesirable) to isolate creative jobs from the community around them. I don’t want to live in a neighbourhood with people whose education and values are just like mine; that would be dull. Yet I also don’t want to live in a city where my values are rare. Even if I’m perfectly blind to all distinctions of race, gender, etc., if others aren’t it will affect me. Broader institutions may make me feel unwelcome. And to go back to the overheard convesations in the original article, can you really feel at home if those conversations are often completely opposite to your values?
Just because a location has the “creative class” stamp of approval doesn’t mean it’s ideal or even acceptable for everyone working in the creative economy. Much of this theory is predicated on the idea that people in these jobs have flexibility in where they live and work, and so if they can find a better location they’ll move. I moved to a city that makes me feel much more at home, but also one I believe is more inclusive overall. Obviously, not everyone feels that way, and so Seattle remains able to attract talent in the creative economy. But are some of the issues Peerless raises cracks in the foundation that could affect the attractiveness of Seattle and similar cities long-term? I say yes.
May 29th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Whitney, I agree that the service class are a great bunch who are doing their best to improve their own situations, and that we can’t necessarily do it for them. But we CAN notice new successful strategies, help to spread good ideas around, and find systemic ways to encourage (or stop discouraging) service class empowerment. Matt has offered a good resource to further the discussion. Thank you, Matt.
May 30th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Exciting – it looks like there’s a discussion going on that doesn’t involve hurling insults.
To address the queries – yes, the Black Country is in dire need of “regeneration”. In the 2001 census (the most recent) the area had the lowest number of people with qualifications gained after compulsory education in the entire country. It came 16th in the UK index of deprivation in 2007, out of around 400 Local Authorities. The number of business start ups (as measured by VAT registrations) is also the lowest in the region (the West Midlands, 5m population).
Yet one figure constantly shown to be an indicator that the area needs investment is the fact that manufacturing makes up a very large portion of its economy. This to me is an opportunity, not a curse – given rising oil prices, demand for renewable energy, waste treatment, recycling, more flexible production, regeneration attempts should be on promoting re-skilling and enterprise of the existing population; instead the area’s leaders are busy promoting housebuilding on land left behind by closed-down factories – and it’s the “aspirational classes” they are after by building 1 or 2 bed “apartments” (there’s a class distinction here in the UK – they’re called “apartments” when they’re marketed at young professionals, and they’re called flats when they were built for the public sector) or houses so large they’re well beyond the affordability of most of the wages in the area.
Is this the Creative Class? I don’t think so. The Black Country doesn’t have city centres in the traditional sense (it was a largely rural area with plenty of disparate mining and metalworking villages that gradually amalgamated into a vast conurbation) so it probably will never attract the 30% that we’re talking about.
Those “aspirational houses” will be full of people who just get in their cars and commute into financial and legal sector jobs in the neighbouring city of Birmingham (incidentally creating more congestion, noise and air pollution and community severance for the Black Country towns that they drive through).
So if you want my take on strategies for reinvigorating the economies of areas left behind (I imagine we’re talking about the Detroits and Clevelands of the USA, but I don’t know for sure), rather than compete for the same talent of insipid, bland and conservative style seekers (who can all stay in Austin, Texas as far as I care. They wouldn’t last a second in Smethwick or Bilston: try asking for a latte in Dudley and I’d love to be there to watch. If you can find a café, that is.), promote grass-roots enterprise, social enterprise, cash-free trading systems, co-operatives, not-for-profit credit unions to fund them, public investment in growth areas for manufacturing (green technology, renewables, biomass, food production, recycling) and the skills necessary to develop them. Devolve governance to the street and let people come up with their own solutions to problems rather than relying on paternalism.
This constant talk of “we need to attract creative people” is frequently unerpinned (at least I get the impression people are itching to say it) by a sub-text of “the existing population needs to be gassed”. I’m not for a second suggesting that this is what Richard Florida is saying, and of course I acknowledge parts of his work that addresses how to “deal with” those areas left behind; however, the message is easily mistranslated and misconstrued by those who haven’t understood.
At least as far as the UK situation goes, certain sections of society will never ever be dragged to university, to the theatre, even to a bookshop, let alone eat a vegetable other than a fried potato. This does not make them bad people. There is already a wealth of untapped creativity here: in the realms of criminality and on its boundaries, in the ties and roots of heritage, family and community, and in tackling adversity, that simply has nothing in common with “creative culture”, with science parks, with café society or with extreme sports. Trying to mould them into in-line skaters, or encourage them to take up engineering is going to fail every time.
As the saying here goes, where there’s muck there’s brass: it’s just that we (urbanists, planners, regeneration professioanls)’re too focused on making brass without muck. It might not look good (or be safe) to someone seeking art, culture or coffee, but that’s down to taste and your own socialisation. Just embrace the muck.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Regarding the new generation who will never be dragged to a university, our university town has a peculiar institution that might useful elsewhere. My town has a single high school that serves townies as well as folks in rural areas of some townships that have not yet been fully suburbanized. It is common for the rural kids to come from families who have been here since the Civil War (small beans for England, but a big deal around here). Our single high school has both a top-notch college prep program (satisfying all those pushy faculty parents) and a career technologies program that now offers training in a wide range of fields. I think it’s wonderful. The preps and the vo-techs play on (or cheer for) the same football teams. The kids who are interested in engineering can take both physics and car repair – using two paths through the brain to teach the same concepts. The car-repair kids get exposed to more science and liberal arts than they might in a separate special facility. And the split between prep and vo-tech does not consistently correlate with the geographic origin of the individual student. My neighbor is a computer professional with a PhD. His daughter is a pastry chef. Some of the farming kids get really excited about the sciences, then go home and do natural experiments in their own fields.
With all of these curriculum options you could guess that there are over 500 pupils per grade. Kids who don’t know who they are or what they want often try to be invisible, and a smaller school might notice them more. I have a friend – a 12th-grade English teacher – who devotes himself to the ‘middle 40%’. He is a maverick, and there’s not enough of him to go around. But there are a lot of creative ways to work on this problem.
As in any high school, the kids sort themselves into cliques. But they do grow up in as diverse a world as a college town can provide them. That is an education in itself.
May 30th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
It still strikes me as being odd that there is such a willingness, or sort of an untapped conversation, to elaborate on how personal characteristics differentiate people. It doesn’t make sense to me to spend time and energy dwelling on personal characteristics that can’t be changed, especially when our differences make the world a pretty interesting place. The differences, or the diversity, we are obsessed with in other people, are what allow us to accept ourself, to find our niche and to be successful. How we view the world as different than us, or percieve other people as viewing the world as different than them, is an individual-only point of view, there seems to be a over-driven demand to over-simplify and over-apply that point of view.
May 31st, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Peerless in Seattle, I applaud you for raising these issues. I Am also an African American, with a background in architecture, who has lived in Seattle and Vancouver. I currently divide my time between San Francisco, and B.C. …There is a sorting, based on race, that occurs to a greater extent in U.S., even in the creative class and that is unfortunate. Those that are not part of a racial minority find this difficult to recognize because their perspective is from the inside rather than from the outside… Cities like San Francisco,and Seattle are become less diverse, and perhaps even less creative as all of the “energy” is displaced by gentrification. In the S.F. Bay Area, the real creative activity takes place in not in the city, but in the surrounding areas, and even these areas are under the pressure of homogization, and gentrification.
May 31st, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Here are demographics from San Francisco County, California and King County, Washington from Census 2000 compared to Census Estimate 2006.
SF County Population 2000-2006 Est. Change
American Indian or Alaska Native
2000: 3,458
2006: 3,067
Change: -391, -11.3%
Asian
2000: 239,565
2006: 236,497
Change: -3,068, -1.3%
Black or African American
2000: 60,515
2006: 50,012
Change: -10,503, -17.4%
Hispanic
2000: 109,504
2006: 104,575
Change: -4,929, -4.5%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific
2000: 3,844
2006: 3,407
Change: -437, -11.4%
Other Race
2000: 50,368
2006: 35,151
Change: -15,217, -30.2%
White
2000: 385,728
2006: 394,265
Change: +8,537, +2.2%
Total Population
2000: 776,733
2006: 744,041
Change: -32,692, -4.2%
Age 25+ with Bachelor’s Degree
2000: 267,992
2006: 291,564
Change: +23,572, +8.8%
King County Population 2000-2006 Est. Change
American Indian or Alaska Native
2000: 15,922
2006: 14,291
Change: -1,631, -10.2%
Asian
2000: 187,745
2006: 239,191
Change: +51,446, +27.4%
Black or African American
2000: 93,875
2006: 105,182
Change: +11,307, +12.0%
Hispanic
2000: 95,242
2006: 131,277
Change: +36,035, +37.8%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific
2000: 9,013
2006: 10,827
Change: +1,814, +20.1%
Other Race
2000: 44,473
2006: 61,556
Change: +17,083, +38.4%
White
2000: 1,315,507
2006: 1,329,487
Change: +13,980, +1.0%
Total Population
2000: 1,737,034
2006: 1,826,732
Change: +89,698, +5.2%
Age 25+ with Bachelor’s Degree
2000: 474,948
2006: 568,188
Change: +93,240, +19.6%
The sorting process occuring in the San Francisco region and the Seattle region is affecting minority groups differently. The population of most minority groups decreased in the San Francisco region, while the population of most minority groups increased in the Seattle region over the same time period.
In San Francisco County, total population decreased slightly, the population of minority groups decreased significantly, while the white population increased slightly from 2000 to 2006.
In King County, total population increased, the population of most minority groups increased significantly, and the rate of white population increase was less than the rate of total population increase.
The population of minority groups is decreasing in San Francisco County, along with the total population. The population of minority groups is increasing in King County, along with total population. To say the sorting process is based on race is not supported by this data, although the sorting process is affecting white and minority groups differently in San Francisco and King Counties. A slight homogenization effect is present in San Francisco County, but nearly half the population remains a minority race. King County is becoming more diverse.
May 31st, 2008 at 11:06 pm
One point to clarify; King County consists of several cities in addition to Seattle. Some of those cities, such as Renton ,are very diverse and becoming more so. When I first visited Seattle in my early twenties in 1973, every third person was blond, so things have changed a lot. San Francisco county consists of the city of S.F. – a relatively small area. Your observation about S.F. seems accurate, middle class people in general, along with African Americans are leaving at a high rate.
June 1st, 2008 at 3:11 pm
The main thing though is that the “sort” isn’t race based. Santa Clara County, in San Francisco Bay Area; includes the cities of Cupertino, San José and Sunnyvale, experienced a slight population increase of most races, including African Americans from 2000 to 2006.
The city of Charlotte, North Carolina, an up and coming creative place, had a population increase of over 100,000 people, an increase of nearly 20%, from 2000 to 2006. African Americans were responsible for over 43% of that population increase; 46,280 more African Americans lived in Charlotte in 2006 than in 2000. The number of people 25 years or older in Charlotte with a bachelor’s degree is over 10% more than the U.S. average, and from 2000 to 2006, increased from 36.4% to 37.4%.
Saying that the creative class is a “euphamism for yuppies, bobos and the leisure class,” or that the “Hispanic representation” in Seattle is decreasing, or that “cities are becoming monolithic enclaves of the already well-off,” or that “there is a sorting, based on race, that occurs to a greater extent in U.S., even in the creative class” or that “those that are not part of a racial minority find this difficult to recognize because their perspective is from the inside rather than from the outside” or that “cities like San Francisco and Seattle are becoming less diverse” or that “middle class people in general, along with African Americans are leaving the Bay Area at a high rate” is wrong.
June 1st, 2008 at 4:31 pm
In terms of data from the Census you need to look at racial composition at the neighborhood level. According to what I have read there are few neighborhoods outside of military bases or near military bases that are really racially integrated. In the South a city can be 50% black and 50% white and from the city view look very integrated but from the neighborhood view where it actually counts it is very segregated.
I challenge anyone to name a city in America where neighborhoods are racially integrated in a large scale way. The reason I believe that Canadian cities are more racially integrated and welcoming is that in order to immigrate to Canada you basically need to already be successful, with at least $10,000 in cash to be “used” for your relocation. Basically you need alot of money to settle in Canada in the first place and the bottom line is that immigrants are welcomed because they are literally bringing in money to the Anglo Saxons and French people in Canada. That is why the treatment of immigrants is better than the United States.
June 1st, 2008 at 5:45 pm
From King County’s annual growth report (http://www.metrokc.gov/budget/agr/agr07/07AGRCh1all.pdf) :
“In recent years, Seattle has become somewhat more diverse, but the dispersion of persons of color outside Seattle was the significant trend. At 22 percent Asian, Bellevue has the highest Asian percentage. South King County experienced the most dramatic increase in diversity, with minority populations doubling and tripling in several communities. Tukwila has the largest percentage of minorities, 46%. Burien, SeaTac and Federal Way have large Pacific Island communities as well as black, Latino and Asian populations.”
The growing diversity is not uniformly distributed within the region; similar trends are seen in cities across North America. And creative economy jobs (and homes for those who fill those jobs) aren’t uniformly distributed either. (The creative economy is not alone in the Seattle area: many jobs are in manufacturing (Boeing) and the military.) Do the two trends have the same distribution, opposite distributions, or is it a more complex story?
There are plenty more statistics we could dig up (e.g. the City of Medina, where Bill Gates and a bunch of other high-tech execs live, is home to exactly five African Americans, or 0.17% of its population, according to http://www.metrokc.gov/budget/agr/agr07/07AGRCh6c.pdf), but what’s the point? Posting statistics here will not bring about a large-scale change, either way, in perceptions of the “creative class”.
I take away two things from all the comments above:
(1) Tolerance may be a requirement for a creative place, but that isn’t a guarantee of all kinds of diversity. (Notice that Richard Florida’s Global Creativity Index ranks Sweden, Japan, and Finland in the top three spots; none of these countries are known for their racial diversity.)
(2) People’s reactions aren’t just based on theory but also the real-life examples they’ve been exposed to. There are shortcomings in today’s creative places that the theory doesn’t predict. If those shortcomings are seen in many creative places, they could point to a problem with the theory, or they could just be a reflection of external trends. In either case, it seems best to try to address those shortcomings by applying the theory, with tweaks if necessary, rather than arguing that they don’t exist.
June 1st, 2008 at 7:39 pm
I know the Bay area and Seattle very well, I have designed projects throughout both of those metropolitan areas for years. It is difficult to argue about what has happened there with someone who may only have visited as a tourist…If you could have taken a walk in any residential working class/bohemian neighbourhood in San Francisco twenty years ago and then along those same streets now you could really understand why many are concerned about gentrification. Most of the artists, and bohemians (except the well heeled) have been squeezed out of the city! The beat poets couldn’t dream of living in a North beach as it is now. Do you really think that middle class people, or young emerging artists, are going to pay seven or eight hundred thousand for a two bedroom apartment ? No, of course not, so they are leaving. …This is not an issue with the creative class, it’s really looking at the social problems in the U.S. that are like another category of issues that affects the creative class, along with everyone else. I want to avoid elitism when it comes to nurturing, and supporting the development of the creative class, and the referenced article for this thread had a bit of that attitude.
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:13 pm
There was a challenge from my friend Robert to name a city in “America where neighborhoods are racially integrated in a large scale way.” In the past, Robert has claimed that there is no future for America and that China is better than America because they have economic empowerment zones. I brought up that China was essentially a communist country with pockets of experimental doses of capitalism and Robert didn’t respond. Officially, China is a Socialist country. But who’s keeping score anyway?
The top ten creative cities, and their surrounding areas are all racially integrated…. maybe not in the way that everybody thinks is perfect, but they are racially integrated and tolerant. New York City has been integrating, note the increasing number of people moving to Brooklyn. Other examples of racial integration in the U.S. include Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Hispanics are majority in number, and whites who move in from the north are the ones who have to integrate – and usually enjoy doing so. Also, San Antonio, Texas and its creative class neighbor to the north, Austin, are admirably racially integrated. Remember though, integration is not tolerance. Furthermore, I don’t think many people stay home in their neighborhood all day, they go out and explore the city. Just because a neighborhood isn’t racially diverse, or integrated, does not mean that the city is not diverse. When residents aren’t being tourists, they go grocery shopping, they go out to eat at the weird restaurant across town or at the regular one across the street and they go to work.
I know that posting statistics isn’t going to change perceptions of the creative class. I hate statistics. But if the sort process that is currently going on was based on race, it would show in the census and census estimates. You can’t say the sort is race based and then just expect everyone to agree. The more I look at census data, the more I think the sort is not raced based and the more I think that the sort provides tremendous motivation for all people to get an education.
San Francisco is too expensive for hippies and struggling artists. That doesn’t mean San Francisco is becoming a less diverse city. It means people who live and work there are getting rich, and what’s wrong with that? The hippies and struggling artists will reappear in places like Dayton, Ohio, where the industrial economy is tanked and the only way back to the top is through the creative class.
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:34 pm
It sounds like the question is; what does diversity mean? I don’t think it means upper class people eating in ethnic restaurants, to me it means neighbourhoods with a range of people, incomes, and lifestyles. When most of the people around me are from similar backgrounds, and everyone else moves away, I am in a ghetto of some sort….I don’t like to see a situation where there is no room for artists in a city, and it does not seem to be a case of them not being willing to “work and get rich”…There was an interesting book published years ago titled “How To Lie With Statistics”, worth reading…And I agree that “the way to the top is via the creative class” economy.
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:42 pm
China is definitely the superior country right now when compared to America based on superior management by the Communist Party and a superior culture that values hard work, education for education’s sake, and engineering and technology. In China the Chinese Communist Party sits atop the food chain, it manages the society , the economy, and the media. The guiding ideology is communism/socialism but the actual leadership is pragmatic that is why there are low taxes on companies as well as market based special economic zones. In China the people know who is in charge and thus who to blame and punish when things go wrong. Thus, there is accountability that Chinese leaders cannot deny if their leadership fails.
Most of China’s top leaders are Engineers that have a proven record in solving actual real world problems.
In America the wealthy sit atop the food chain controlling the big media that influences the majority of people, controls the politicians through campaign contributions, and they manipulate the financial markets, all of this is done for the benefit of a small number of wealthy individuals. American does not value education for education’s sake but for the social status. Engineering and science are not valued and respected by the majority of Americans. Professions like lawyers, sports heroes, movie stars, and the Paris Hiltons are valued, celebrated, and have a high social status among the masses in America. All you have to do is take a look at the idiot in the White House now. Bush went to Harvard which is very prestigious university not for the education but for the high social status associated with a Harvard degree. Bush majored in drinking, partying, and having a good time. American politicians make decisions based on ideology and party affiliation instead of doing what is best for America as a whole. When a crisis arises instead of working together to solve the problem American politicians tend to blame the other party for the problem while the main concern is trying to limit the political damage to themselves.
Jim Rogers the famous American investor has sold his home in America and moved to Asia and his daughter is being tutored in Mandarin to “prepare her for the future he says.”
June 2nd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
But I’m not lying with statistics! If the sort was based on race in cities or the creative class, a specific race would be affected in the same way in several places; overall, one race is not affected consistently. Seattle and King County are interesting, because the perception has been voiced that the city of Seattle is becoming less diverse (in terms of what?), but minority populations are quickly growing in King County. What accounts for the gap between the perception and the data? Statistics regrettably can take the common sense out of perception, but I don’t think that’s the case here. Limiting the definition of diversity to a range of lifestyles in a specific neighborhood allows diversity to be measured by perception, but applying the definition of diversity to the demographics of a city or a county allows a broader perspective, even if the lifestyle of one group; artists, musicians, Hispanics, Asians, gays, etc. tend to be homogenous in a local neighborhood.
In other words, a neighborhood full of artists can be homogenous, but the city and region the neighborhood is in is probably diverse. Plus, as the city grows more diverse, perhaps neighboorhoods grow more homogenous?
June 2nd, 2008 at 3:54 pm
“The top ten creative cities, and their surrounding areas are all racially integrated…. maybe not in the way that everybody thinks is perfect,”
By racial integration in a large way I meant name me a city with most neighborhoods with a racial composition that roughly reflects America’s overall racial composition and/or the percentage of racial minorities in that neighborhood above the “tipping point” needed that would trigger “white flight” from that neighborhood with also a stable population where people are not in the process of “fleeing” . The tipping point is key.
Can anyone name one????
“Remember though, integration is not tolerance.”
Actually integration at a neighborhood level is a sign of a HIGH level of tolerance. Diversity or integration at a CITY level may be a sign of a moderate level of integration. The key here is the LEVEL of tolerance. If we take it further then at a NATIONAL level America as a whole is tolerant. However, if that is the case then most Southern cities during legalized segregation were diverse and tolerant cities. During legalized segregation blacks and whites rode the same buses but the bus was segregated. Blacks and whites ate at the same restaurants but the building was divided into different sections for blacks and whites.
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I tried to name cities but they weren’t good enough for you, Robert, so let’s flip this around. You name one city that isn’t racially integrated in America with the typical racial composition of the U.S. and the state the city is located in. And you can’t say the whole country. Furthermore, is China a racially diverse country? And you have to prove that the people in your selected city are intolerant, which is pretty impossible, because the United States is one of the most tolerant countries in the world. It’s not perfect, but it’s not bad.
I just came up with a pretty interesting thought with the help of the other people on this blog: That as cities grow more diverse, individual neighborhoods become more homogenous. What do you think about that? Is that good, bad or indifferent?
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Intolerant American Cities/Regions include:
1. Ruby Ridge, Idaho the site of the violent standoff between white separatist Randy Weaver and the American government.
2. Sand Point , Idaho – Major area of Nazi activity
3. Idaho in general
4. Hillsboro, WV , home of the National Alliance a American Neo Nazi Group
5. West Virginia in general
I was wondering if anyone else could add to this list??
Thanks…
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Also in term of tolerant/intolerant American cities I think we need to think of it not as an absolute but more of a range. For example, a Sandpoint , Idaho would probably be near a 1 or 2 on the tolerance scale but a San Francisco Bay area might be a 8 on the scale of 1-10, 10 being extremely tolerant and 1 being extremely intolerant.
And actually in terms of tolerance I think it is blacks that are the “canaries in the coal mine” that indicate how much tolerance there is in a city not gays because many gays are white and could pass for a heterosexual white males. A good example is Larry Craig the homosexual senator from Idaho that successfully fooled the Idaho voters that he was heterosexual in order to get elected. Blacks are the most disadvantaged racial minority in America as well as physically the most different from the white majority so tolerance of them should be a better indicator than tolerance towards gays.
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Also, Cities like the top ten creative class cities are probably the most tolerant but when I meant “integrated in a large scale way” I was thinking of integration levels at a neighborhood level of a 9 or 10 not a 7 or 8 so maybe that is what this dispute is about.
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Intolerant American Cities List Addition:
1. Muncie , Indiana – City Tolerance rating of perhaps 2 out of 10.
See reference to Washington Post Article Below
=====================================================
Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause
The Washington Post – Washington, D.C.
Author: Kevin Merida – Washington Post Staff Writer
Date: May 13, 2008
Start Page: A.1
Section: A SECTION
Text Word Count: 2171
In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into “a horrible response,” as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Intolerant American Cities List Addition:
1. Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania – Tolerance Rating 1/10
=========================================================
From Washington Post
Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause
Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: “It wasn’t pretty.” She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn’t possibly vote for Obama and concluded: “Hang that darky from a tree!”
Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across “a lot of racism” when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: “White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people.”
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Intolerant American Cities List Addition:
1. Kokomo, Indiana – Tolerance Rating 1/10
========================================================
From Washington Post
Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause
On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.
Frederick Murrell, a black Kokomo High School senior, was not there but heard what happened. He was more disappointed than surprised. During his own canvassing for Obama, Murrell said, he had “a lot of doors slammed” in his face. But taunting teenagers on a busy commercial strip in broad daylight? “I was very shocked at first,” Murrell said. “Then again, I wasn’t, because we have a lot of racism here.”
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Intolerant American Cities List Addition:
1. Vincennes, Indiana – Tolerance Rating 3.5/10 – This gets a higher tolerance rating because some of the intolerance might have been provoked by Obama’s pastor’s controversial statements instead of inherent intolerance.
==========================================================
From Washington Post
Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause
The bigotry has gone beyond words. In Vincennes, the Obama campaign office was vandalized at 2 a.m. on the eve of the primary, according to police. A large plate-glass window was smashed, an American flag stolen. Other windows were spray-painted with references to Obama’s controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other political messages: “Hamas votes BHO” and “We don’t cling to guns or religion. Goddamn Wright.”
Ray McCormick was notified of the incident at about 2:45 a.m. A farmer and conservationist, McCormick had erected a giant billboard on a major highway on behalf of Farmers for Obama. He also was housing the Obama campaign worker manning the office. When McCormick arrived at the office, about two hours before he was due out of bed to plant corn, he grabbed his camera and wanted to alert the media. “I thought, this is a big deal.” But he was told Obama campaign officials didn’t want to make a big deal of the incident. McCormick took photos anyway and distributed some.
“The pictures represent what we are breaking through and overcoming,” he said. As McCormick, who is white, sees it, Obama is succeeding despite these incidents. Later, there would be bomb threats to three Obama campaign offices in Indiana, including the one in Vincennes, according to campaign sources.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Intolerant American Cities List Addition:
1. Lackawanna County, Pa. – Tolerance Rating 2/10
==========================================================
From Washington Post
Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause
Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. “I trust him,” Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama’s face on Seifert’s T-shirt and said: “He’s a half-breed and he’s a Muslim. How can you trust that?”
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Whitney, I like your tenacity, and your concern with analysis and detail. I also like your desire to be inclusive….. I did not intend to imply that you are lying but that sometimes statistics can mislead if they are not interpreted correctly…One thing that I have learned when doing projects in other countries is that it is important to take the perspective of the native as being “expert” when it comes to understanding a successful solution. For example. a design solution that works for a person in Japan may be intolerable for an American, and vice versa.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:40 pm
CHINA AND TOLERANCE
Actually based on this article from the Washington Post China is a very tolerant country
========================================================
Chasing the Chinese Dream
A Growing Number of the World’s Emigrants Are Heading East, Rather Than West, in Search of Safety, Tolerance and Opportunity
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 21, 2007; A16
YIWU, China — For more than three years, Khaled Rasheed and his family spent the nights huddled in fear as bombs exploded near their home in Baghdad. Like generations of would-be emigrants before him, he dreamed of a better life elsewhere. But where?
Finding a place that was safe was Rasheed’s top priority, but openness to Islam and bright business prospects were also important.
It wasn’t long before he settled on a place that had everything he was looking for: China.
For a growing number of the world’s emigrants, China — not the United States — is the land where opportunities are endless, individual enterprise is rewarded and tolerance is universal.
“In China, life is good for us. For the first time in a long time, my whole family is very happy,” said Rasheed, 50, who in February moved with his wife and five children to Yiwu, a trading city about four hours south of Shanghai.
While China doesn’t officially encourage immigration, it has made it increasingly easy — especially for businesspeople or those with entrepreneurial dreams and the cash to back them up — to get long-term visas. Usually, all it takes is getting an invitation letter from a local company or paying a broker $500 to write one for you.
There are now more than 450,000 people in China with one- to five-year renewable residence permits, almost double the 230,000 who had such permits in 2003. An additional 700 foreigners carry the highly coveted green cards introduced under a system that went into effect in 2004.
China’s openness to foreigners is evident in the reemergence of ethnic enclaves, a phenomenon that hasn’t been seen since the Communist Party came to power in 1949. Larger and more permanent than those frequented by expatriate businessmen on temporary assignment, the new enclaves evoke pre-revolutionary China, where cities such as Shanghai bustled with concessions dominated by French, British and Japanese.
The Wangjing area of northern Beijing is a massive Koreatown, complete with groceries, schools, churches, karaoke bars and its own daily newspapers. A few miles away, in the city’s Ritan Park, signs in Cyrillic script and vendors speaking Russian welcome people from the former Soviet republics. In Yiwu, a city in the eastern province of Zhejiang that is the home of the world’s largest wholesale market, “Exotic Street” lights up at night with stands filled with smoking kebabs, colorful hookahs and strong sugared tea for the almost exclusively Arab clientele.
Communist China’s first attempt to make friends with outsiders and encourage cultural exchange came during the 1960s and ’70s, as part of a campaign for ideological leadership in the developing world. China sought to spread socialism and unite the farmers of the world.
Today, its efforts to woo developing countries are driven by more calculated, strategic goals, most notably its need to secure long-term contracts for oil, gas and minerals to fuel its booming economy.
As part of this campaign, China has sought to portray itself as more open to Islam than other non-Muslim nations.
Over the past 20 years, the government has gradually allowed its own Muslim minority to rebuild institutions that were devastated by state-sponsored attacks on Islam during the Cultural Revolution. Islamic schools have opened, and scholars of Islam are being encouraged to go abroad to pursue their studies. Unlike Christians, China’s estimated 20 million Muslims are considered an ethnic minority, a status that confers certain protections and privileges.
“In America, for people with my religion there can be a lot of problems,” said Adamou Salissou, 25, from Niger. “The image they have of Muslims is that they are terrorists. Chinese don’t have a problem with religion. They think, ‘It’s your religion and it’s okay.’ ”
With funds from a Chinese government scholarship, Salissou is pursuing a master’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology at Xiamen University in Fujian province, where a community of Arab traders thrived in the 7th and 8th centuries. Salissou’s brother Nour Mahamane, 23, joined him this fall and is studying for a master’s degree in petrochemistry in Shanghai.
Mosques in areas such as Yiwu, where foreigners are concentrated, have been given more freedom than some others, which are under strict state control. Officials at the mosque here estimate that more than 20,000 Muslim immigrants, about 1,000 of them from Iraq, have settled in the area over the past five years.
“The main feeling is that they are free here,” said Ma Chunzhen, the imam. “People are buying apartments and cars. They want to live here for good.”
When he first arrived in Yiwu from Beijing in 2001, Ma said, there were just over 100 people in his congregation. Services were held in a rented space in a hotel room. These days, up to 8,000 people attend the Friday prayer service in the shiny new mosque that was converted from a silk factory’s warehouse with money from foreigners who had settled in the city.
One prong of China’s efforts to strengthen ties with the developing world is scholarships, a program that began in 1949 when the People’s Republic was founded but that has been ramped up aggressively in recent years. In 1996, China offered about 4,200 scholarships. Last year, the number was 8,500.
Among the recipients are children of the elites in countries where China hopes to forge friendships. Salissou’s father, for instance, works in Niger’s presidential protocol office; Niger is rich in uranium, which China needs for its nuclear plants.
Benjamim Amade, 21, who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in public administration at Xiamen University, heard about the scholarships through his uncle, an ambassador for Mozambique, where China buys timber it needs for construction.
The students’ interest in China is fueled by the rags-to-riches stories of self-made entrepreneurs.
Moatasem Anwar’s is typical. The youngest of 12 children, Anwar grew up in Iraq’s Kurdish-populated north during Saddam Hussein’s rule. His family made a meager living selling socks at a bazaar in Irbil.
After the U.S.-led invasion, one of his older brothers had the idea of trying to start a business by importing goods from China to Iraq. Anwar came to China in October 2003 to help out. When he arrived at the packed airport with its strange smells and sights, his immediate reaction was, “I think one week — quickly I go back.”
But doing business with China turned out to be better than anyone had imagined. With their first batch of profits, the family traded their stand at the market in Irbil for a store. Soon they expanded to 10 stores. Then they built a factory and five warehouses. “Now we have a building — six floors. We rent to other people,” Anwar said. The family not only had a business but a company, al-Sabeel General Trading.
Anwar, 29, had enough money to move himself and his wife, Bala Barzam, 27, formerly a junior high school teacher, to China. He’s planning to send his two children, 2-year-old Sava and 8-month-old Ahmad, to a Chinese school. His older brother, two cousins and their families have also joined him in Yiwu.
Rasheed, the former Baghdad resident, has had similar good fortune in China.
When he told his children they were moving to China, he said, everyone cried. They didn’t want to leave their home. But in the past eight months, he said, life has become comfortable.
“I like the peace,” Rasheed said. “I don’t want to hear the bombs and the hatred.”
But there are limits to China’s welcome.
It’s nearly impossible for foreigners who don’t have Chinese ancestry to obtain citizenship, and like anywhere else, China has had its share of racial misunderstandings and clashes with foreigners.
The most infamous took place in the city of Nanjing in 1988, when a dispute between a campus security guard and two African students degenerated into a fistfight and ended with African students seeking refuge at their embassies after fleeing a mob that was shouting “Kill the black devils!”
Tensions within China’s black community rose again recently after police arrested about 30 African and Caribbean men in an anti-drug operation in Beijing on Sept. 22. Some witnesses accused China of racial profiling and claimed that some men were beaten. Beijing’s Public Security Bureau has denied race was a factor in the operation.
In Yiwu, there was anger in the Iraqi community after an Iraqi man, Mostafa Ahmed Alazawi, was found dead in his rented home on March 30. His family wanted him to be buried in China and applied to the city for a piece of land. The city ruled that foreigners could not be buried in China, forcing the family to ship the body back to Iraq. The decision fueled outrage among the Iraqis. Through a friend, the family declined to be interviewed.
Anwar said that despite the tensions he’s happier to be in China than elsewhere in the world.
“My brother lived in the Netherlands for nine years,” he said. “There, if you are a foreigner, you are below them. When he came to China, everything was different. Here, if you are a foreigner, you are treated better than Chinese.”
Researcher Yang Weina contributed to this report.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Hey Wil. Since you want to be the expert, you should tell me what you think about what I am writing for a pet project of mine. Read below.
Another interesting point about the creative class mantra and spirit in cities and regions is that it allows for and accepts a wide range of all types of different people to live and thrive within the same place. In other words, the diversity level of creative cities is extremely high. As the value of living in a creative place increases, housing values increase radically as well, and reflect how well a city and region is able to harness the creative, tolerant mantra. The top three creative cities, San Francisco, Boston and Austin each had housing values climb at an almost unbelievable rate since 2000. From 2000 to 2006, the median value of an owner-occupied single family home increased from $396,400 to $806,700 in San Francisco, from $190,600 to $432,800 in Boston and from $124,700 to $173,000 in Austin. Although the recent wave of home foreclosures in the United States has put more homes on the real estate market in these three cities, asking prices for housing have not decreased. As housing values continue to increase in creative cities and regions, or do not decline, specific neighborhoods within creative cities and within regions undergo significant homogenization pressure. In other words, people unwittingly find themselves clustering in living spaces and neighborhoods with other people who share remarkably similar demographics. This leads to the perception that the creative class and the substance of creative cities is becoming more homogenous, intolerant and less diverse, when in fact the opposite is occurring in the creative city and region when the entire city and region are looked at as a whole. People who make up the heart of the creative class and live in the middle of a creative city see what is going on in their neighborhood; they see property values go up, and minorities and those with alternative lifestyles move out. They say “that’s gentrification” and most of the time, it is. But often within the region, minorities and those with alternative lifestyles are clustering outside of the immediate city limits of the creative city. In the city of Seattle, the median value of an owner-occupied single family home rose from $259,600 in 2000 to $447,800 in 2006, while racial diversity increased only slightly or remained the same. The county the city of Seattle is in, King County, experienced a similar increase in housing values; the median value of an owner-occupied single family home rose from $236,900 in 2000 to $394,100 in 2006. At the same time, the population of most minority races increased dramatically in King County; the Asian population increased approximately 27%, the African-American population increased approximately 12% and the Hispanic population increased approximately 38%, while the white population increased approximately 1%. Furthermore, those 25 years or older with Bachelor’s degrees increased 19.6% simultaneously in King County. Even though there may be homogenization and gentrification occurring at the core of creative cities like Seattle, in most cases the region the city is located in is becoming more diverse, educated and tolerant, even if fellow members of the creative class don’t have the perception that the demographics point out. The dichotomy between the perception of tolerance and diversity within a city and a region, the overall tolerance level of a city and a region and the aesthetic value and beauty premium a place provides for its residents could turn out to be one of the most interesting areas for economists, sociologists, community researchers and psychologists to focus their future attention on.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:25 pm
I have been in a number of the places posted by Robert as intolerant of African-Americans. I have relatives who lived many years in Idaho and western Washington State. Idaho actually had a long-standing tradition of live-and-let-live that attracted a lot of hippies in the ’60s and ’70s. It was that tolerant attitude that attracted the Nazi crowd – they could do what they wanted on their own land and no one would bug them. Eventually they gave the whole area a bad name.
The Idaho case illustrates the downside of tolerance: some behaviors should not be tolerated. A lot of Germans in the 1930s tolerated those crackpot Nazis, leading to a lot more than the mess at Ruby Ridge a couple of generations later.
There aren’t a lot of African Americans living in Idaho or adjacent Washington, but there are TONS of Hispanic migrant farm workers. I have a relative who is fluent in Spanish, married to a woman from South America, who has spent his entire career in one capacity or another assisting the interface between the Spanish-speaking and English-speaking communities of central Washington state. He lives in a small town in a highly rural part of the state, and is a deeply respected member of the community.
The area does still have a racial problem regarding the Native Americans who live there, typical of many areas of the west.
West Virginia is a case unto itself. Even today, many West Virginians (and other Appalachians) are descendants of Scots-Irish mountain people who had a long history of harassment by the lowland English. They crossed the Atlantic generations ago and headed for the isolated mountains. Their centuries-long history of distrusting outsiders was reaffirmed by their experience of invasive outsiders on this side of the Atlantic: federal “Revenuers” who tried to destroy the local production of alcohol without understanding that you need to convert grain (cheap, bulky) into alcohol (much less bulky, and higher value per pound) in order to get it into a form that can be transported out of the mountains to be sold/traded for things they could not produce for themselves; and of course the coal companies who treated them with such respect. West Virginia still is the most isolated, probably because the mountains there are the most convoluted, with small inaccessible valleys. A (white, female) family friend of ours once had a college friend from West Virginia. In about 1970 he took her home to meet his family. He needed to accompany her wherever she went, because someone might have killed her just because she was a stranger. Regarding racism, we should honor the fact that West Virginia once was part of Virginia. It split off from Virginia during the Civil War because its people had no desire to perpetuate slavery.
P.S.: If China is a highly tolerant place, they should have no trouble allowing the Tibetans to retain their own culture.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Well for places like Idaho that perhaps were very tolerant in the 70’s right now here in 2008 it would seem that those who are very intolerant have taken over a huge amount of the region. As for West Virginia it would seem that things are worse than the negative stereotypes we see on TV.
As for China the issue with Tibet as I understand it is that the Dali Lama wants control over more of the land than just the Tibet province but land adjacent to Tibet that might lead to an erosion of Chinese sovereignty. That is the main reason the Dali Lama and his teachings are surpressed.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Whitney, you might find this article to be of interest:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/10/28/internet/index.html
Regarding what you have written, I agree that tolerance and diversity are completely different, and that cities and regions need to be analysed separately to really understand what is happening …. West Virginia sounds like an awful place….Oddly enough, some progressive people are moving from Seattle into Idaho because of costs, so perhaps change is coming to Idaho.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Living in the suburbs to be close to the inner city??
Normally most large metropolitan areas are divided between inner core cities and outlying suburbs. Most people leave the core cities because they want to get away from the core city not because they want to be near it. That is for most people.
If Whitney is saying what I think she is saying then for “creative class cities” that have large number of creative class people this way of thinking is different. The core of Seattle that is being gentrified by rich whites does not represent real racial segregation but is a sign of tolerance because it is near other outlying areas of racial diversity which they desire to be near.
The best way to test this hypothesis is to take a survey of the rich whites living in the gentrified core area of Seattle and ask them how many contacts per month they have with people in the outlying areas of Seattle that are showing great increases in minority population. For example, if nearly every single white person in the gentrified area goes to a church, hindu temple, or buddist temple located in the outlying areas every week and worships with racial minorities then yes that would be a great case for this theory. In fact, I think Richard Florida made a similar assertion in his book “Rise”. However, I don’t recall seeing the detailed data or even a summary indicating the number or nature of the interactions. If the data is in there some where please enlighten me since I did buy his book.
However, if there are few if any interactions between the rich whites in the gentrified area and the outlying areas that are increasingly minority then this new theory is wrong.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:09 am
West Virginia is not for people who want to live in Austin. But it deserves respect. In Cincinnati when I grew up there the Appalachians were a large minority. Many would work in the factories during the week, then drive up to 12 hours each way every weekend in order to go home. Many of them were highly intelligent, though poorly educated. Their traditional music is an essential source of the Austin music scene so valued by people who have had a lot of choices in life. Their beautiful hills now are being strip-mined to flat plains of rubble by coal companies who have found it cheaper than paying men to go underground. My point regarding West Virginia was that one should not just label the place as intolerant or racist. Its people have distrusted outsiders, regardless of race. With good reason.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:28 pm
It’s easy to bash places like San Francisco and West Virginia, but I like hearing what people think of them. If people not familiar with San Francisco and West Virginia visit them, their perceptions could change. People in San Francisco are not as entitled as the article Wil sent me purports them to be, and people in West Virginia aren’t stupid or bad.
As for Robert’s idea that a survey should be conducted in the Seattle area to test my hypothesis that people don’t stay in their houses day and night…. that sounds like a good project for Robert.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Well of course people don’t spend all their time in their houses day and night but in order to prove this idea that people living in the gentrified areas actually are living their for the diversity in other cities surrounding them then you need to prove some kind of connection. This new theory is unproven whereas the concept of “white flight” where people move away from core cities to the outer suburbs because they don’t want to deal with people from the core cities has been proven time and again.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
The survey is your project Robert. You don’t need to prove a connection that people interact in cities with people that are different from them because diversity, tolerance and the creative result are the main cannons for a city’s existance. Now, take a breath and relax.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Well I guess I’ll move to Beverly Hills so I can be closer to the greater diversity in South Central Los Angeles where all those riots happened after the Rodney King beating. I am just sure most of the people living in Beverly Hills want to interact with people from South Central Los Angeles. Yep I am 100% sure of this.
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Whitney, Watch and see what happens to Georgetown in ten years time, it is a perfect test case for your ideas. See today’s NYT for a writeup on this neighbourhood;
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/travel/01Surfacing.html?8dpc
I think that you will see it become much less diverse.
Congratulations to Obama for finally becoming the nominee!
June 4th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Robert. Have you ever thought about why the U.S. was predominately settled from east to west? And why the European Christopher Columbus gets credit for “discovering America?” The “west,” or undiscovered America, existed between two large civilizations, in Europe and China, before America was colonized in the 16th century. China is not credited with discovering America because, before the 16th century, there were two factions in China. One group wanted to build ships and sail the oceans and the other group thought building ships and sailing the oceans was foolish. The group that didn’t want to build ships and sail the oceans won out, and China was destined to remain a large, isolated, eastern country…. one that was not able to settle the new found American lands from west to east. My point is that China and the United States are two very different countries, and it’s hard to compare the ingenuity of Europe and America to the isolation and mindset of China. To say one is better than the other is nonsense. You have stated that you might move to China, but now you threatened to move to Beverly Hills or whatever. It makes me curious. You have stated that you think the United States is not a tolerant country, and have presented a challenge to give examples of tolerance in America, but have not stated what community you currently live in, and have not discussed what makes you live there or what makes it good or bad. Even if you don’t respond, your comments have proven fanatical, and certainly don’t factor into the optimistic thinking that served to settle America and to make it the success story that it is.
Wil. You have implied that I am lying with statistics (well, maybe, you should read “How to Lie With Statistics). You have also implied that I have somehow offended you (well, maybe, you should consider me the expert in this area because I consider other people to be the expert in the business that I am in). You have also implied that you are not tolerant (West Virginia sounds like a terrible place). You have also said, before I called you on it, that first, Seattle is becoming less diverse, but then after I called you on it, that second, Seattle areas like Renton are becoming more diverse. Then to prove your point, which you discounted yourself, you posted links to articles that imply cities like San Francisco and Seattle are becoming profanely gentrified, even though articles posted on this blog, such as “Cities and Growth: In Situ Versus Migratory Human Capital Growth,” declare the benefits that cities offer for people to grow and contribute to society. I reasoned that perhaps neighborhoods in cities are becoming more homogenous, while at the same time, the regions that the cities and neighborhoods occupy are becoming more tolerant and diverse. Conveniently, you haven’t really acknowledged that this could be a possibility, so I would like to pose this question to you. Have you ever thought about how non-smoking policies are making cities less tolerant and diverse? I mean come on, right, having a non-smoking policy in one place or the other reduces tolerance (non-smokers don’t tolerant smokers) and diversity (smokers might not go to places where they can’t smoke). While this may be partly true, the overall argument is ludicrous. Non-smoking policies don’t reduce diversity and tolerance in a palatable way, and actually, can serve to improve public health. You are using the smoking policy argument when you post links to articles that say neighborhoods are changing, becoming more expensive and less accessible, when the real story should be that overall regions are becoming more tolerant, diverse and educated. You are saying that since one place in one city is gentrified, the entire region is following suit. That’s like saying that since people can’t smoke anywhere they want to, tolerance and diversity are threatened. That’s a laugh.
For me, bells always go off when I read a post that vents about unfairness, or another one of society’s slights at justice, that’s written by someone who doesn’t use their real name or just uses their first name. If the person really thought what they were writing, why don’t they back-up their remarks with their name? After some of the comments I have read in this blog post, I can see why both Robert and Wil want to disassociate themselves from their comments. If I lived in the same community, or had a professional relationship with them, the comments from both of these people would make me think twice before continuing the relationship. And somehow, in today’s emotionally super-charged culture, I am the one who looks bad for calling people like Robert and Wil on senseless statements. But, I’m OK with that.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Whitney, Yes, regions are becoming more diverse, but hip neighbourhoods are becoming less diverse. Less diverse, like the examples I gave of North Beach, in San Francisco, and Georgetown in Seattle. Yes, cities offer tremendous benefits, opportunities for personal growth and contributions to society. I simply confirmed the experiences of others as being what I personally know accurately describes reality……Again, I am not saying that you are lying with statistics, that is, unfortunately, the name of the book. I dislike ad hominum comments in general, and have never characterized your statements as senseless, or said anything negative about your professionalism. In fact, I found elements of your posts about which I could make positive comments. From my perspective, I am too relaxed to be emotionally super-charged about this. I don’t think you look bad to anyone, so don’t worry about it.
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