Creative Class

Wednesday morning I went to visit Toronto City Hall to address the city’s economic development committee on how to best position in light of the economic crisis. I didn’t think it would be a newsworthy event, but guess what…

The National Post opens with my favorite headline in a a long while: “Richard Florida goes to City Hall quotes Karl Marx.” Here’s the story:

Quoting Karl Marx, cab drivers and his factory-worker father, celebrity intellectual Richard Florida went to Toronto city hall today to tell councillors that improving the lot of service-sector workers is key to the city’s prosperity.

Toronto’s economic development committee invited Prof. Florida, an American academic and author now at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, to enlighten on the way out of the current global financial crisis.

Although Prof. Florida’s emphasis on the creative class – workers in intellectually driven fields like the arts, technology, film, communications, engineering, science and research – have drawn criticism for being elitist, today he focused on a different class of worker. He compared the situation of workers from the hotel, restaurant, retail and customer service sectors to the lot of exploited factory workers at the turn of the 20th century.

Because of their outsized presence in Toronto’s workforce, he posited that improving their incomes, work conditions and happiness could be the key to Toronto’s future prosperity – just as the rise of the unionized labourer became the foundation of the middle class in post-war North America. “Those jobs are local and hard to outsource offshore,” he said. “We really, really, really have to think about how to upgrade that work.”

After his presentation, the committee decided to request a report from city staff on a possible creative stimulus package – to nurture the growth of creative industries – and to hold a summit with service workers in the fall…

Prof. Florida noted he doesn’t like the words “crisis” or  “depression” or even “recession” to describe the current downturn. He prefers the term “great reset” – which he coined and will appear in a forthcoming book…

Prof. Florida encouraged the metropolis to think even further afield. The axis of Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto Waterloo and Chicago is what he called a “mega-region” that has the potential to be a world powerhouse. Toronto and Waterloo – a hotbed of technological and scientific discovery – are natural partners in particular, Prof. Florida said.  Waterloo has the ideas that lead to upstart industries with the help of venture capital, he said, while Toronto is the kind of place those knowledge industry professors want to locate.

The Toronto Star picks up on the “creativity stimulus.”

Stimulus plans for building roads and sewers are fine recession projects, but Toronto could use a “creativity stimulus” package, too, says urban guru Richard Florida. Florida, who has argued that attracting and nurturing a “creative class” is a key component to building successful cities, appeared before Toronto’s economic development committee today.

“Why not consider us the first city that does a creativity stimulus?” Florida asked councillors …  “Why not think about a creativity stimulus, and not just for advantaged people, but for all people?” he asked. “What about giving all those young people who want to use their creative energy and talent a way to do it?  “That is as important as physical infrastructure building, and maybe over time more important – especially for young kids; especially for kids who may be getting dis-attached from school.”

Toronto has paid a lot of attention recently to big institutions such as the art gallery and museum, he said, but creative people need support, just as the institutions do.  Toronto should be thinking about “creativity incubators,” as it does about business incubators, he said. Business incubators generally provide start-up businesses with cheap space and expert advice, often giving them a boost before they’re turning a profit.

Councillor Kyle Rae (Ward 27, Toronto-Rosedale) hailed Florida’s idea, and asked staff to research the idea. He said the city might consider giving a boost to creative residents in Toronto’s priority neighbourhoods – areas of low income and high unemployment.

UPDATE: The always insightful John Barber of the Globe and Mail provides intriguing perspective.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 6:39 pm and is filed under Creative Class. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.