Creative Class

The new Canadian version of Who’s Your City? is now in print. Media starts this week. Here’s the first review – a nice one – by Canadian urbanist Michael Dudley in the Winnipeg Free Press.

[P]lace matters so much to Florida that, upon his arrival in Toronto (to assume his post as professor of business and creativity at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto), he decided to revise for a Canadian audience his most recent book, Who’s Your City?, released a year ago.

This is no quickie “Canadian edition” with token references to Toronto thrown in: it is extensively rewritten, so much so that it almost constitutes a new book.

To be sure, Florida’s principal ideas remain much the same. We are still dealing with a “spiky” world of concentrated talent and economic clustering, not Thomas Friedman’s “flat” world in which location is of little consequence.

Florida describes how the “clustering force” tends to draw people and economic activity into certain key regions rather than to others. As a result, we are becoming segregated according to economic class and chosen urban lifestyles.

To demonstrate how talent, opportunity and quality of life criteria are distributed (and concentrated) north of the 49th parallel, Florida and his team of collaborators generated (or took advantage of) new data, new maps and new analysis. These are augmented by more than 40 life histories by Canadians describing their own place-finding experiences.

Unsurprisingly, Canada’s main mega-regions of Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa-Gatineau, and Montreal are most frequently cited as the best places to live. In fact, Florida’s new home of Toronto appears in the index no fewer than 57 times. Montreal follows with 31 page references, and Vancouver with 28.

Winnipeg, alas, is mentioned a mere three times, though two of these references emphasize our city’s creativity (did you know we boast 12 per cent of the country’s musicians with only 2.25 per cent of its population?).

More here.

Conor Dougherty over at the WSJ highlights the slowdown in movement of people in the U.S. The article makes use of data being released today and covers the one-year period up until July 2008 – so the most severe/recent parts of this recession are not included. There are some interesting migration numbers from areas as diverse as Cleveland and Phoenix. From the piece:

Older metro areas such as New York and San Francisco, which have seen residents move to faster-growing areas, are now losing fewer people. Cities in the formerly hot housing markets such as Nevada and Florida are seeing fewer arrivals and, in some cases, more people moving out than in.

At the local level, more people are staying in the city and postponing their move to the suburbs. In 2005-06, metropolitan areas with one million or more people saw a net 688,000 people leave their core counties. In 2007-08, a net 336,000 left, according to an analysis of Census data by Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute.

“Fewer people are leaving the urban cores to go to the suburbs,” said Mr. Johnson.

Decisions like his help explain why a net 15,000 people left the Cleveland area for somewhere else in the U.S. in 2007-2008, compared with a net of 21,000 between 2005 and 2006. Sarasota, meanwhile, saw a net increase of 2,500 residents from inside the U.S., compared with as many as 20,000 during the boom years.

Interesting stuff. What is clear is that, like everything else in our modern economy, changes can be sharp; from major capital positions (Madoff’s billions) to human capital movement.

Btw, part of me wonders if less people are leaving the cities because they are trapped under high priced urban real estate? That concept has been discussed here. Any thoughts on any of the new data?

In the New York Times, Alex Kotlowitz visits my home town of Cleveland, Ohio to find that it is all boarded up. I grew up in Cleveland right in the middle of it just a few miles from the famous Cuyahoga River. Cleveland was a modest town with lots of blue collar workers in scores of industries. The city had a very large and very substantial housing stock. Over the years, as industry declines, the creative class fled, and as technology evolved the city declines. When a city like Cleveland declines it leaves behind something, and that something is an abandoned housing stock. Cleveland now has between 10,000 and 15,000 abandoned and boarded up houses. Of course this is not new. When I was growing up in Cleveland, the whole east side of the city was abandoned, houses were torn down, and the Cleveland Clinic expanded in much of the space, the rest was left abandoned like my old neighborhood.

This is in part a legacy of industrial restructuring, the sub prime mortgage problem, and the long term subsidy to housing dating back to the great depression. Whatever the cause it seems to be well picked up by Richard in his article in the Atlantic. Cities come and go. In an article by Phil McCann and I we show that this has been the case for over 1,000 years and is nothing new. Baghdad 1,000 years ago was the most important city in the world.

The question is how do we deal with the housing abandonment in this country. For a large part of the problem is that we have an overstock of housing that no one will ever use. Should we start the write off of the trillions of dollars worth of old abandoned, or nearly abandoned housing, wipe the slate clean and just move on? Perhaps as Richard suggests we should just abandon the support for home ownership, eliminate the tax subsidy, and use the savings to clean up and abandoned housing mess.

Whether they favor cities, suburbs or the countryside, almost half wish they lived somewhere else, the report found. Denver, San Diego and Seattle are the top picks of the 30 largest metropolitan areas. Denver is the favorite city among Republicans, and it also rates well with Democrats and independents … In addition to Denver, favorite cities among Republicans are Phoenix, Orlando and San Antonio. Half of all liberals would like to live in San Francisco, more than double the share of conservatives. San Diego, once a bastion of conservatism, appeals to Democrats, liberals and moderates.

46% would prefer to live in a different type of community from the one they now reside. Adults 50 to 64 who live in cities are the least likely to say they live in the ideal place; two-thirds of those in that age group who live in the country say they couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

Young people are the opposite: 57% of urban dwellers younger than 30 say the city is where they want to live. … “Fewer than half of all city residents say there is no better place to live than in a city.” … A smaller proportion of women express the desire to live in the nation’s largest cities  … Wanting to live outside cities doesn’t necessarily mean people reject urban lifestyles, however. The appeal of developments with an urban flair — ones that combine housing, stores and offices in a neighborhood setting — is growing.

My main take away: America’s two great dreams – the dream of unlimited economic opportunity and to own a single family home – are running head on into one another. Home ownership means less economic mobility when you can’t sell your home. The big cost of the housing crisis may not be what’s happening in the financial markets, it may be the long-run competitive damage caused by sagging labor mobility and the inability to flexibly match the location of workers to the location of jobs.

Steven Heller checks in with designer Stefan Sagmeister in Print Magazine about his second, self-imposed “year without clients” in Bali. Ever since his first sabbatical in 2001 (spent at home in New York City), Sagmeister now structures his business to allow for this period of experimentation once every seven years. And while he may have had the fortunate foresight to schedule this time away before the current economic downturn, recessionary times often lead to advances and innovation in design and the arts. With today’s uncertainly of not knowing if one will even be able to retire, why not make use of some of that time now and put it to work? What else might we learn from Sagmeister and his time away? “When attacked by hollow-eyed Balinese dogs, I can make them scatter by pretending to pick up a stone.”

Writer and award-winning graduate architect Andrée Iffrig is an architecture feature writer and blogger at Suite101.com. Take a moment to check out her trio of writings about Who’s Your City?, including a book review, an article about urban planning for mega-regions, and a blog post about life in a spiky world.

What do you think the sweetest thing is about Who’s Your City?

The Authors@Google program welcomed Richard Florida in March 2008 at their Google New York City office where he discussed the methodology behind, and evolution of, his latest book Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.

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Who moves, and who stays put? A new study by the Pew Research Center takes a close look. The study finds that fewer Americans are moving now than previously. Some 13 percent of Americans moved from 2006 to 2007, down from a high of 21 percent in 1951; the Census predicts a further decline to 11.9 percent by 2009. That said, America remains a highly mobile society. Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of adults said they have moved to a new community at least once in their lives; 15 percent say they have lived in four or more states.

Highly educated people are much more likely to be mobile: more than three-quarters (77 percent) of college graduates have moved at least once compared to 56 percent of those with a high school diploma. Younger Americans, unmarried people, and those who are foreign-born are among the most likely to move. The Midwest is the most rooted region; the West the most mobile. The main reasons stayers stay: family ties, a desire to stay in their home town.

Would a ban on fast food restaurants in our cities and towns help lower the rate of heart disease? Would a program to collect Dog DNA from poop left on our streets and sidewalks help us target negligent owners? Could we harness our own bio-mechanical energy to charge our cell phones, even our cars? Does ‘redshirting’ children, holding them back so that they can enter grade school at an older age, wreak havoc on social security programs? Would local stock markets for regions no larger than Barrie, or Muskoka, help citizens allocate capital more efficiently to businesses that need financing? Could we switch our dietary habits from cow to kangaroo to help save the planet?

If you think I’ve just stolen and plagiarized part of the manuscript for the yet unpublished Freakanomics 2.0, you’d be wrong. These are the hypotheses and real life programs that earn brilliant and bizarre minds recognition in The New York Times’ “Year in Ideas.” If these few examples tickle your fancy, try “spray on condoms” on for size (not literally- these bespoke coital solutions are not yet widely available). Human ingenuity never ceases to amaze, eh?

One thing that stood out for me while reading these stories was how many of these truly remarkable ideas came from Canadians – three from Toronto academics and scientists alone. For The New York Times, where Canada’s parliamentary crisis earlier this month barely registered a blip on their radar, that is a pretty impressive showing from the Great White North, and I believe it speaks to the creative incubator that Toronto has become. Read the article and take notice of where many of these ideas began. There is perhaps no better indication of a “creative city” than the brilliant ideas it fosters and develops, and some of my favorite creative cities – San Francisco, Montreal, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, and Boston, as well as my hometown, the T-Dot, get plenty of love.

I’m a member of the Net-Generation, people born between 1978 and 1997. At first glance, my cohort seems tailor-made for a decentralized and “flat world,” so we shouldn’t care so much about the place where we work. After all, the internet, like no other technology, has lowered geographical and temporal barriers for communication and collaboration, and N-Geners, like no other generation, are the most comfortable and capable working, learning, and communicating online. Case in point: I recently found myself collaborating on a project with two college pals on Skype (the free online video phone application): one in Palo Alto, California, the other in Alaska, while also chatting and sharing photos with a friend who was in an internet café in rural Vietnam.

However, while technology has lowered barriers and allowed people all over the world to participate in the global economy, it’s a mistake to suggest now that ‘place’ is no longer important for today’s emerging creative workers. Indeed where one works matters now more than ever.

Whether interested in finance, law, politics, computer programming, consulting, or medicine, young friends and colleagues of mine are drawn inexorably to the epicenters and major nodes of their respective fields; in cities, suburbs, and exurbs that also happen to score very high on the creative class index. This is certainly true for my friend in Palo Alto, a city straddling the area between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. He is a talented computer programmer working for an internet start-up. But what about my friends in Vietnam and Alaska, you ask? Did Google just open a server farm in Juno? Is rural Vietnam the new Silicon Valley? Why do your friends want to live there? Truth is they don’t.

My Alaska friend was working for Mark Begich, a Democrat, who defeated the incumbent Senator (and convicted felon) Ted Stevens. If ever there was an appropriate time to say “got out of there like a bat out of hell,” Jeff’s escape from Alaska after the big victory was it. Jeff is passionate about politics, and he is now in Washington, D.C. looking for full time work. Truth is he would rather struggle for a little while in D.C. than be instantly employed anywhere else. After all, every politically engaged young person he and I know wants to be in the U.S. Capitol and, as a result, a burgeoning social scene of smart, creative, and ambitious young people has flourished there. Dave, my friend in Vietnam just graduated from McGill’s School of Management and is wandering Southeast Asia barefooted and bearded trying to ‘find himself,’ but really he’s just on vacation. Like me, he will soon find himself up to his elbows in financial statements and spreadsheets. He is returning to Toronto to work at a boutique private equity group. Jeff was drawn to the epicenter of the political world. Dave, a former business student with an entrepreneurial streak, will return to Toronto- Canada’s financial capital, because he knows the city offers great opportunity for a person with his interests (it also helps that he is a die-hard Leafs fan). In both instances, the where did not merely influence their decisions, it determined them. If anything, their stints in Alaska and Vietnam simply reinforce the notion that the Creative Class, and young people in particular, travel and move throughout the world with increasing ease.

Though not identifying it as the “Net Gen” specifically, Richard Florida presciently foresaw the emergence of a new generation of the “Creative Class” in The Rise of the Creative Class, a theme that has surfaced in ensuing works. His experience interacting with students at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University revealed that young people are drawn to certain hubs, crowding together in thriving and diverse places where like-minded individuals share lifestyles, cultural tastes, and work interests. While the moniker ‘Creative Class’ is not generation-specific, by 2018, when all members of my cohort will be of working age, the Net Generation will, simply put, dominate the creative class. As Boomers retire and Generation Xers fill the ranks of senior management, there will be an overwhelming demand for these young, highly educated people. Attracting them to companies and regions where they can thrive and prosper will be the next great imperative for today’s corporate leaders and politicians.

I encourage everyone to share your thoughts and opinions with me.  If a conversation begins, I will be happy to engage in it with you.