Creative Class

Take a look at Richard Florida’s recent appearance on Allan Gregg in Conversation where the pair discuss the power of the bohemian and gay and lesbian factors on a city, tolerance, prosperity, Who’s Your City?, and more.

This AP report is just sickening.

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting “Assassinate Obama.” Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars. Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America. From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders. There have been “hundreds” of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

Bloomberg reports:

Tour buses have hit San Francisco’s well-known gay district, and some residents are none too happy about it. While the visitors may consider themselves tourists just taking in another site, locals call them something else: quick-hit voyeurs who disrupt traffic and parking and rarely spend any money …  Castro residents say the buses started showing up about four months ago, and now arrive every Thursday and Sunday, typically between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.

The Castro district became a haven for gays during the political and social activism of the 1960s and 1970s. One of its merchants, camera shop owner Harvey Milk, became San Francisco’s first openly gay supervisor. Milk was assassinated in 1978, further uniting the community. A movie based on his life is planned for release later this year, which may draw even more tourists to the neighborhood, residents say.

Your thoughts?

A couple of weeks ago I was invited back home to Toronto to attend the Canadian Youth Arts Network Forum wherein a group of about 40 young artists were brought together with various leaders in the cultural and creative industries and policy advisors.  We discussed ways to strengthen the youth arts sector and our common predicament under this government among other things. It was a really interesting meeting of minds and practices, and a lot of critical information, expertise, and advice were made available not just to the youth delegates of the conference, but to the leaders and advisors as well. It was the fortunate situation of us mutually needing a better sense of the others’ perspective.

There has been much made of the business argument for the arts. As artists, we’re fortunate that it’s within the mandate of institutes like the MPI and that they’ve made the kind of point that might resonate with our current federal regime: the arts are drivers of regional income. They help people make money - that’s a compelling argument to Conservative values. Another potentially persuasive argument to Conservatives or those of any political persuasion is the outreach potential of the arts to two oft neglected groups that I hope to hear addressed in the upcoming debates: youth and the homeless.

In both cases, the arts have shown themselves to be the most effective tools to affect the lives of youth at risk or otherwise, and the homeless as well, particularly in urban environments. This is on target with much of the latest research and theory on cities. Prof. Adam Krims’ latest work, Music and Urban Geography theorizes about how music affects and has affected the tremendous physical upheaval that urban and ex-urban space experienced in the modern, post WWII era. One of his most interesting observations is the way in which the city has moved toward design intensity which he defines in the introductions as “the tendency in advanced societies for products and services to owe much of their value to aspects of design and informational content, and for design and informational aspects of products and services to develop rapidly.”

As young people and (sub)urbanites, the bar has been raised as far as our tolerance and expectations of design. The simple fact is that unless the content of our products and services appeal to this heightened design sensibility, they are disadvantaging themselves with respect to young people as well as urban populations who are native to this design intensive era we occupy. The value of art has never been higher. It’s no surprise that, at the international level, the UN has acknowledged hip hop’s outreach potential with their Messenger of Truth program. At the local level in Toronto, programs like Sketch make this point more poignantly than I ever could. Even at the most crass level of pop culture in these media-intense times, not supporting your ability to compete in the arts is like surrendering your access to the interest of the youth contingent, at least.

If the arts are understood to be the most effective outreach tool for affecting change in youth, then by cutting funding for the arts are we diminishing our ability to communicate with our young people? What is the potential fallout of a less engaged youth population? If arts programs are helping those without homes get on their feet and contribute to society then why do we not understand contributions to the arts as “investments” rather than “funding”?

Much will be said at the debates, but it will be more important to see what our politicians actually do.

And now as always, some music.

This is the new Cato/Fraser Economic Freedom Index (h/t Alison Kemper). Wil Wilkinson comments:

[T]he frosty land of toques and chesterfields has leap-frogged the U.S. to take 7th place, completely humiliating the tied-for-8th place land of the ever-less-free, home of the brave. Is it now possible to even half-credibly make the case that the United States, in the age of warrantless wiretaps and the shoeless airport security line, is a freer country than Canada? I doubt it. Read it and weep, fair weather laissez faire yanks.

Wil Wilkinson takes David Brooks’ - and John McCain’s - “country first” calls for a new collectivism apart.  Individualism, Wilkinson reminds us, is in sync with the great march of human progress. Individualistic societies grow faster and their people are happier than collectivist ones.

Wealth, which produces all sorts of hugely desirable human goods, also weakens orientation toward pre-assigned roles and their obligations and strengthens the orientation toward individual fulfillment, resulting in more fulfillment. Collectivist moral cultures do serve an important function in the typical human condition. But we are lucky when that function has become unnecessary

He cites a study by  Aaron Ahuvia in the Journal of Happiness Studies which finds that:

Rather [than increasing happiness directly through increased consumption], economic development increases SWB [subjective well-being] by creating a cultural environment where individuals make choices to maximize their happiness rather than meet social obligations (Coleman, 1990; Galbraith, 1992; Triandis, 1989; Triandis et al., 1990; Veenhoven, 1999; Watkins and Liu, 1996). This cultural transformation away from obligation and toward the pursuit of happiness is part of a broader transition away from collectivism and toward individualist cultural values and forms of social organization.

Collectivism is a hallamark of backwardness, closure, and fear. To my mind, the value of individualism and individual self-expression is something I thought both liberals and conservatives could agree on. And while I respect John McCain as a individual, his country-first calls for a new collectivism frankly scare me.

Here’s something interesting…

So Maclean’s did a nice article about a recent study measuring “Learning,” from the Canadian Council of Learning. The name of the article is “Canada’s Smartest Cities.”

But I wondered about the difference or connection between Smarts and Learning, so I did a search of the meaty 45-page report - and found zero (nada, zilch, l’oeuf) instances of the word “Smart.” The authors were plainly sensitive to the issues surrounding labeling something as “smart.”

I’ve wondered about this frequently. Is it elitist to value higher education?  By celebrating smartness, are we in essence devaluing those who have not had the opportunities or chosen the path to higher learning?

I confess, I enjoy being around smart people. I find a strong connection between well-educated people and those who are open, tolerant, inquisitive, far seeing, and inclusive. But I’ve also found some of the most maddening people in well-educated professionals - rude, selfish, entitled, unsympathetic, and petty. (They make me want to hang out in a trailer park, or some other low-rent neighborhood where anything goes.)

I still think that the educational attainment of city or community is one of the best measures of a place’s quality of life.  Generally, better-educated citizenry make tougher and better decisions for the future, and see value in making a community better for all, not just their peers.

One of the reasons that we are investigating the campus as an entrepreneurial environment is that in its most ideal form there is huge diversity on campus (i.e., age, race, field of study, nationality, political viewpoints, personal preferences, socio-economic background, etc). This diversity is believed to bring many advantages.

The social and economic benefits of diversity are discussed at length in Richard’s writing and others - I am partial to Jane Jacobs’ ideas in The Economy of Cities.

WSJ writer Hannah Karp’s story, From Bloomingdales to Bloomington, tells of a new diversity at Indiana University’s main Bloomington campus where a large influx of students from the Northeast is changing life on campus. From the story:

In Indiana University’s Assembly Hall last Friday, a remarkably large chorus hailing from private high schools in the Northeast was singing the school’s ode to the “Cream and Crimson” in a pronounced New York accent.

It’s a striking byproduct of one of the most competitive college admissions sessions ever — an influx of East Coast prep-school students in Indiana. Indiana University welcomed about 260 students from the greater New York City area to the limestone lecture halls on its lush, leafy campus last week, up 12.5% from last year. Another 175 came from New Jersey, up 25% from 2007, and 50 hail from Connecticut. While the numbers of students matriculating from in-state and other parts of the country are steadily increasing as well — the school had some 500 more students accept admission offers than it had planned for — the last three years have been marked by unprecedented growth from the Northeast.

The droves of East Coast students descending on Bloomington are ruffling some feathers among the 61% of students who call Indiana home.

Upperclassmen say the tension begins to build from day one of freshman year, as most East Coasters request to live in the same cluster of dorms and send in housing deposits to guarantee their spots long before committing to the school. Jess Berne, a freshman from New York’s suburban Westchester County who had also applied to Penn State and the University of Wisconsin, sent in her housing deposit to Indiana as soon as she was admitted in October, at the school’s recommendation, eight months before she decided to actually enroll. She also requested to room with a fellow New Yorker, Becky Davies, whom she met on Facebook.

The story is interesting/funny (a father of a NY student thinks something is not quite right in Bloomington because people are so friendly) and anecdotal, but leads one to wonder whether diversity works ‘positively’ with open, accepting minds leading the way new understanding and ideas? Or does diversity work because of ‘friction’ and new outputs are the result of worlds colliding?

Are these ‘new imigrants’ to Bloomington having the same effect on campus as Eastern Europeans or Latin Americans have on US cities when they arrive in large numbers? Any thoughts?

For a class to exist - the working class, the capitalist class - it has to inherit something to continue from one generation to the next. Money, or the lack of, was usually the thing that helped define a class. Titles and status also worked pretty well. If a class is defined by intangibles - like drive, character, education, creativity - can it be inherited and, if it cannot, can it be a class?

Think of entrepreneurship. If one cannot inherit the “claw with the prey,” how does the class continue? What holds it together from one generation to the next? This has interesting public policy implications. What should public policy support? Are we still in the Schumpeterian world where the capitalist class invites in the gifted few to revitalize the system from time to time? We seem to invite immigrants and they seem to perform rather well.

One of the reasons I research the entrepreneurial activities that take place in and around universities is that in many ways the campus is an ideal incubator for ideas. The frontier that is the university demands new ideas constantly (or at least should).

It is a safe space where idea generation and radical thinking are highly valued and often times rewarded. This, as we know from Richard’s and other people’s work, is crucial to improved quality of place - in both economic and social terms.

Recent Ithaca College graduate Jared O’Toole has just launched a new startup called MindFrenzy.com that is an outlet for people with new or unformed ideas. The site is targeting college students because, as Jared stated in an email,

“I just graduated college and I wanted to start a website that would help encourage college students to go after their ideas. That’s the main motivation behind MindFrenzy because most ideas in college aren’t really developed yet and kids usually need some kind of positive push before they stray from that job search and start their own thing.”

The website launched in mid August and has some interesting ideas listed and are looking for feedback from the community. In describing the site Jared stated,

“MindFrenzy is a think-tank geared towards those 2nd, 3rd, and 4th ideas on your notepad. It aims to be a creative community where even the wackiest or out-of-the-box ideas can get feedback in a positive fashion. You never know when a comment will spark something that lets you see how to get that crazy idea and turn it into something more practical.”

I think the idea of “catching” and sharing lots of the “crazy” ideas that are generated on campus is brilliant and I really look forward to seeing where Jared and his Ithaca-born idea will go (Jared pulled himself out of the finance interviewing process in order to pursue this venture).

Do you have a personal MindFrenzy.com? What do you do with the ideas that you (or your organization) don’t decide to go with? Do you keep track of them? Do they ever make it back? How does that work?