Creative Class

Some topics, like some years, seem never to go out of fashion. So with the ranking of cities. This is in part due to the almost endless ways in which the pie can be sliced and the endless interest in the different types of fruit. Surveys throw up different results. In one of the newer slices, Tyler Brule ranks the most livable cities in the world in the FT. The index is based on Monocle’s “world’s most livable cities.”

Zurich, Switzerland wins as the most livable city in the world followed by Copenhagen and Tokyo. But Copenhagen is the most interesting result. I have spent some time in Copenhagen recently and have been curious about several things. The Danes are the happiest people in the world, are the most entrepreneurial, and now have one of the most livable cities. Curious. I wonder what the Baltic states have that the rest of us do not? Is it the homogeneous culture, is it the low level of stress? In the sixties the Danes decided not to teach children how to read because it was too stressful. College students get a stipend to go to school. And the city, well it is also a very livable place with almost everyone on bicycles, including women with babies in the winter.

The Iranian Presidential Election will be held this Friday. Against seemingly insurmountable odds, Hossein Mousavi, a moderate and progressive candidate (by Iranian standards) has emerged as a serious contender to the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

While his “Green Revolution,” at first seemed nothing more than a Sisyphean struggle by a group of young moderate Iranians against a totalitarian and despotic government - destined for failure despite their greatest efforts - the winds of change have dramatically and suddenly tipped in Mousavi’s favor and, at this point, it’s anyone’s race.

Iran’s state-controlled media has given Mr. Mousavi no air-time, the government has banned his party from hosting peaceful rallies in sports stadiums and other public venues, and those rallies which have occurred spontaneously in the street have been met with hostilities from government officials. Still, his candidacy built momentum.

So how did Mr. Mousavi, whose supporters promise “a new greeting to the world,” emerge as a serious contender to Mr Ahmadinejad despite a state-wide government campaign to quell his movement? The answer: FACEBOOK. Mousavi’s supporters - mostly young people and educated urban dwellers - have taken to the Web, garnering support and enthusiasm on Facebook and on blogs, posting videos of their candidate on YouTube, and organizing impromptu street rallies by mass-texting fellow supporters literally on the fly. The result: a highly organized, energetic, and sophisticated force for change.

Mousavi supporter Emad Mortazavi, a 24-year-old sociology student, said, “Last week, there was suddenly this feeling that it was possible, that Mousavi could get enough votes. Social-networking sites and text-messaging have played a big role in spreading the message.”

In typical form, Ahmadinejad blocked Facebook in May in an attempt to silence his opposition, but to no avail (it was opened back up three days later). In the end, Iran’s youth proved more tech-savvy than anyone in Ahmadinejad’s government.

In an uncanny mirror image of the U.S. election last year, it appears the Net-Generation - people born between 1980 and 1996 - may once again anchor the winning candidate by embracing progressive attitudes and exploiting the power of the internet to collaborate and organize for their candidate. Evidence of a seismic demographic shift, the precipitous rise of Mousavi proves that young Iranians are a force to be reckoned with.

The AFP reports:

“With more than 60 percent of Iranians born after their nation’s Islamic revolution in 1979, the under-30 vote will be crucial in next week’s election in which hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is being challenged by three fiercely critical rivals.

Several analysts predict a high urban youth turnout in favour of former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi…Tehran has been gripped by a new fashion frenzy ahead of the June 12 vote, with scores of teenagers and 20-somethings sporting green wristbands, scarves and T-shirts.”

Iranian youth ultimately face many of the same problems as young people in Canada, the U.S., and Europe. In a time of economic turmoil they want a candidate who can answer their questions and who can appeal to their better instincts; not some religious zealot who spends most of his time demonizing the Western World and threatening the extinction of its neighbors. The DailyKos writes,

“The economy is a key issue, and many young people with college degrees cannot find jobs or acceptable living arrangements in Tehran and other major cities…the ruling elites cannot ignore the desires of such an enormous percentage of the nation for long. Iran is in for some major shifts due to demographics alone.”

Tomorrow, the Iranian people will take to the polls. The sun may rise Saturday morning on a very different looking Middle East.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia created and diligently monitored by scores of regular users mass collaborating over the internet, has been a source of immense controversy since it first appeared online seven years ago.

While most of us (I think) regard the online encyclopedia as a very useful resource for initial research into an unfamiliar topic (not to mention one of the world’s greatest time killers), and see its method of creation (mass collaboration) as both novel and strikingly accurate, there has been no shortage of bluster from both sides of the aisle to just how best to describe/exalt/deride the online phenomenon.

The staunchest self-described ‘Wikipedians’ see their community as the first real democracy, a new egalitarian mode of production and a nation online.

Critics argue that Wikipedia is, quite literally, the death of knowledge. Wikipedia embodies a generation (mine) of lazy cheaters - using half-baked, ‘user-generated’ (re: inaccurate) articles written by computer-nerds and other weirdos that skew the truth and focus only on the trivial. Wikipedia is lowering our standards for accuracy and simultaneously lowering our collective IQ.

Describing Wikipedia as either a Virtual Utopia or The Death of Knowledge is reductionism at its finest. While I am generally skeptical of these far-flung metaphors that try to pin down the online encyclopedia, I was intrigued by one recent attempt by Noam Cohen in the New York Times. He says Wikipedia most closely resembles a vast, diverse, online fact city- and quite a creative one at that.

Cohen adapts a Socratic tone in asking a number of thought provoking questions. He says:

“Wikipedia encourages contributors to mimic the basic civility, trust, cultural acceptance and self-organizing qualities familiar to any city dweller. Why don’t people attack each other on the way home? Why do they stay in line at the bank? Why don’t people guffaw at the person with blue hair?”

He could just as easily ask: why don’t people sabotage Wikipedia pages? Why don’t people post misinformation?

The reality, of course, is that they do. Just as sometimes in our real cities, people are attacked, lines are budded, and people with blue hair get ridiculed- occasionally. But the stronger the city and the sense of community, the stronger the social forces that combat devious behavior. The same is true for Wikipedia.

To support his claim, Cohen consults the writings of Urban Oracle Jane Jacobs. He quotes the prolific Wikipedian Andrew Lih (who paraphrases Jacobs) saying she “argued that sidewalks provided three important things: safety, contact, and the assimilation of children.” He continues, “She may as well have been talking about wikis. A wiki has all its activities happening in the open for inspection, as on Jacobs’s sidewalk. Trust is built by observing the actions of others in the community and discovering people with like or complementary interests.”

So is Wikipedia perfect? Or another question: will we (because it really is we) ever ‘finish’ Wikipedia? The same question could be posed for Chicago, Paris, or Toronto. Of course it isn’t perfect and it will probably never be finished - just as a city is constantly changing, evolving, and reinventing itself.

For the sake of all people who can access this vast, unprecedented body of knowledge, I hope Wikipedia grows - especially in the 100+ versions that exist now in other languages. Never before have we been given such a low barrier - the internet - to access this vast canon of human knowledge.

So forget the controversy, the metaphors, and the bluster and take a stroll down one of the long, wide information boulevards of the online city - you never know what side street you may end up on, or what secrets you might find.

On a lighter note: College Humor’s take on the Wiki-phenomenon.

Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations suggested over 200 years ago that what makes us human was the fact that we exchange. Dogs do not. Well, today we know that sometimes animals do exchange according to an article in a recent issue of the Economist Magazine (February 21, 2009 p. 80).

In a recent book, Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist at Harvard University believes that what makes homo sapiens unique is that their food is so often cooked. In a new book Catching Fire he explains that what makes us truly human is cooking food. We are the only species that cooks food. But what is really interesting is that cooking, especially meat, is what led to our big brains. Without cooking the human brain, which consumes 20-25 percent of the body’s energy, could not keep running. Without cooking, raw food cannot feed the brain. Cooking softens food and makes it easier to digest so even the tough stuff is easy to use. Cooking also increases the food digested in the small intestine from 50 percent to 95 percent.

What is really interesting is do we have a connection between cooking and the creative class? Most creative cities and regions we know have lots of gays, bohemians, and immigrants. But what role does cooking play in all of this? Do we not find that most of the creative places also have great eating places? Is this the immigrant connection? I do not mean the simple fast food restaurants, but really good cooking and good food. What is the connection between these two activities?

Does culture and therefore cooking and food also act as a part of the social capital that drives creativity and the creative class? Give me a good bowl of pasta, a nice bottle of wine, and the creative juices will start to flow because we are feeding the brain. Give us bad food and obesity develops, the brain does not develop, and we have no creative class.

Food for thought.

After the inauguration here, my wife joked/hoped that Oprah would be buying a home in D.C. In that vein, Joel Kotkin offered a really interesting piece in the WAPO highlighting the D.C. Metro’s ‘coronation’ as the undisputed power broker among U.S. metros.

Kotkin directly states his thesis: “For more than two centuries, it has been a wannabe among the great world capitals. But now, Washington is finally ready for its close-up.”

While D.C. has been growing in stature (in terms of population, wealth, tech, and lifestyle) for the last 20 years or so, our current economic crisis and the submission of other great power centers has put the District at the ‘height of its power.’ From Kotkin,

No longer a jumped-up Canberra or, worse, Sacramento, it seems about to emerge as Pyongyang on the Potomac, the undisputed center of national power and influence. As a new president takes over the White House, the United States’ capacity for centralization has arguably never been greater. But it’s neither Barack Obama’s charm nor his intentions that are driving the centrifugal process that’s concentrating authority in the capital city. It’s the unprecedented collapse of rival centers of power.

This is most obvious in economic affairs, an area in which the nation’s great regions have previously enjoyed significant autonomy. But already the dukes of Wall Street and Detroit have submitted their papers to Washington for vassalage. Soon many other industries, from high-tech to agriculture and energy, will become subject to a Kremlin full of special czars. Even the most haughty boyar may have to genuflect to official orthodoxy on everything from social equity to sanctioned science.

At the same time, the notion of decentralized political power — the linchpin of federalism — is unraveling. Today, once proudly independent — even defiant — states, counties and cities sit on the verge of insolvency. New York and California, two megastates, face record deficits. From California to the Carolinas, local potentates with no power to print their own money will be forced to kiss Washington’s ring.

Kotkin goes on to explain that D.C. is ready for this moment with a huge talent base and a great amenity-driven metro. He also argues that those of us who live here will benefit from this concentration of power in D.C. via greater opportunities and rising real estate values. Although I may benefit from this personally, I have great concerns about what this will mean for innovation, growth, and entrepreneurship (sustainable growth) in the U.S. Any thoughts?

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.

A new, international version of the popular board game ‘Monopoly’ is out next week.

The new version of the game has 22 international cities included. The most heavily represented nations are (drum roll please!) - Canada and China. Three cities each from each of those two nations are among 22 selected by more than five million fans of the game who voted online for the best cities.

Of these, Montreal received the most votes and will be paired with Latvian capital Riga as the most expensive property group on the board. Next in rank are Capetown, Belgrade, and Paris. Last-placed of the 22 was Poland’s Gdynia and no German, Indian, Russian, or Scandinavian towns made the list.

Click here to see if your city made the cut. What cities do you feel are missing from Monopoly’s new international edition? Which places would you include?