Nearly one in four American homeowners are now underwater on their mortgage. Richard Florida crunches the numbers to find the 20 cities with the biggest debt and housing problems.
Where do the biggest brainiacs in America live? Richard Florida crunches the numbers to figure out the smartest cities in the country.
Wondering where the jobs of the future are going to be? Richard Florida crunched the numbers to create a list of the American cities with the fastest-growing job markets, from New York to Durham to Bethesda.
The fiscal and monetary fixes that have helped mature industrial economies like the United States get back on their feet since the Great Depression are not going to make the difference this time. Mortgage interest tax credits and massive highway investments are artifacts of our outmoded industrial age; in fact, our whole housing-auto complex is superannuated.
Which cities have the most immigrants and foreign born citizens in America? Richard Florida and his team crunch the numbers to come up with a surprising list and explore why these cities benefit from high immigrant populations.
From the obvious (San Francisco) to the surprising (Columbus), Richard Florida and Gary Gates crunched the numbers to come up with the gayest cities in the country.
Wondering where you earn the highest incomes? Richard Florida and his team have put together the definitive list of American's 20 highest earning cities.
Canada's economy is badly in need of significant structural changes. Without the pressure of a crisis, there's a real danger that we'll settle for complacency, instead.
More and more workers are plugging in and taking meetings at places, like Starbucks, that aren’t home or the office. Richard Florida on why this trend will change our business world.
Periods of crisis and creative destruction such as the current one are when new categories of jobs are created as old categories of jobs are destroyed. The key to a sustained recovery is to turn as many of these – as well as existing lower-paying jobs – into better, family-supporting jobs.
There's no question that this year's 1.6 million college graduates are entering the job market during one of America's worst economic crises. But this does not mean that college grads are facing unprecedented kinds of trouble.
Richard Florida says owning a home may actually be a drawback given the economic flexibility required to power long-lasting recovery. He and his colleagues tracked homeownership levels across U.S. cities and regions to see how they correlate to other measurable demographic and economic factors.
The Class of 2010 is heading into the real world but where should they live? Urban guru Richard Florida and his team find the best cities for the young and ambitious.
Richard Florida examines the challenges Toronto and Canada face, especially in light of how the tectonic economic events of the past 18 months are recasting the role of cities and regions worldwide.
Local entrepreneurship, arts and cultural industries ... have become the core stuff of economic development, writes Richard Florida in The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity. Please see the excerpt.
Richard Florida takes a look at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. When you account for population size, medal count reveals a crude measure of what's behind national athletic excellence.
South Korea has clawed its way out of poverty by becoming a manufacturing powerhouse. But to stay a world-class economy will require the country to draw on a different set of skills. In the future, it will be the ability to create—as distinct from the ability to produce—that will foster innovation, and with it, sustainable economic growth. Whether it is new ideas, new business models, new cultural forms, new technologies, or new industries, it is creative capital that will drive the world economy. The ability to harness creativity will be the biggest challenge, as well as the biggest opportunity, for South Korea.
Richard Florida's take on "How Cities Renew" in relation to his recent trip to Abu Dhabi, his observations on the city and its people.
The concentration of bohemians and gays consistently have a staggering impact on housing values.
Today a highly significant demographic realignment is at work: the mass relocation of highly skilled, highly educated, and highly paid people to a relatively small number of metropolitan regions, and corresponding exodus of traditional lower- and middle-class people from those same places.
Richard Florida on how members of Generation Y are picking their new hometowns as they graduate from college and enter the workforce during a recession.
Will Wilkinson, a research fellow at Washington's Cato Institute wrote this terrific essay on Toronto's largely successful experiment in immigration – its global-straddling ethnic mosaic.
Richard Florida's research on mega-regions provides a potentially useful framework for thinking about where and how to invest in a national high-speed rail system.
Homeownership has been a central tenet of a ‘richer and fuller life’ in the USA, but foreclosures are severely testing this model. A possible solution: Rent these homes as a first step toward a more affordable, flexible housing system.
The crash of 2008 continues to reverberate loudly nationwide-destroying jobs, bankrupting businesses, and displacing homeowners. But already, it has damaged some places much more severly than others. On the other side of the crisis, American's economic landscape will look very different than it does doay. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?
Less than a month after taking office, the Obama administration unveiled its massive stimulus package aimed at recharging the lagging American economy - a staggering three-quarters of a trillion dollars. As the Harper administration rushes to dole out a $40-billion stimulus of its own, it's high time to ask a simple question: Are we stimulating the right things?
As part of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto, Richard Florida and Roger Martin delivered a report called "Ontario in the Creative Age," commissioned by Premier Dalton McGuinty contemplating today's challenge of moving from jobs oriented to routine to jobs that hinge on creativity.
Richard Florida visits Russia this month and discusses the country's push to develop more of a market-based economy, having abandoned its state-run economy to the historical dustbin as well as drawing upon the similarities between the youth of both Russia and the U.S.
Restarting economic growth this time around will require a new social and economic framework that is in line with the new idea-driven economy.
Richard Florida and James Milay explore the the effects if a recession hits Canada suggesting that the continuing shift in Canada's economy from traditional blue-collar, working-class jobs to creative and service jobs will dampen the effects of job losses over all, but those in the working class will feel the pain much more.
Richard Florida warns of an extended period of volatility and conflict in American politics.
Richard Florida's take on Montreal and it's position amidst the current economic storm.
Richard Florida on the financial crisis.
Florida’s public policy-makers must recognize that mega-regions are the engines of the newglobal economy. They must support Florida’s mega — the 15th largest in the world.
Richard Florida suggests that the big sort poses huge implications for US economic competitiveness and a wide range of domestic economic and social issues.
... but not for the reasons you think. One of the few things increasing as fast as the price of oil lately has been the amount of commentary linking higher energy costs to the death of suburbia. Clearly, higher gas prices have affected where people want – or can afford – to live. Just as the demand for SUVs plummets and consumers have finally begun to see the point of hybrids, people are turning away from sprawling exurbs toward urban neighbourhoods and inner suburbs.
What matters now is quality of place, defined as the intersection of three key elements of our cities: what's there, who's there and what's going on.
A mega-region needs to think and act like a mega-region, not like a bunch of separate cities with empty space between them.
"...we are experiencing modern history’s third great power shift, after the rise of the West from the 15th century on and then the rise of the U.S. in the 19th century."
Fareed Zakaria: The end result will be a “landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in until now – one defined and directed from many places and by many peoples.”
"The diversity, of whatever kind, that is generated by cities rests on the fact that in cities so many people are so close together, and among them contain so many different tastes, skills, needs, supplies, and bees in their bonnets."
Over the past decade or so, greater Portland has developed a well-deserved reputation as one of the nation's very best places to live.
When people talk about economic competitiveness, the focus tends to be on nation states. In the 1980s, many were obsessed with the rise of Japan. Today, our gaze has shifted to the phenomenal growth of Brazil, Russia, India and China. But this focus on nations is off the mark.
"The party that can bring together the working class and the creative class is likely to build a lasting majority"
From where I sit, Philadelphia's future looks very bright. Trust me: I know all about the issues that confront the city. I grew up in New Jersey, went to Rutgers, and spent much of my teens and 20s hanging out in Center City. I've seen the dark days and watched the recovery.
For the past two weeks, all eyes have focused on Barack Obama and race. A couple of weeks ago, it was Hillary Clinton's gender. A month before that, it was all about the Obama surge among young voters.
The old model of a university pumping out research results and educated students, or even commercial innovations and start-ups, are no longer sufficient. Business and political leadership have taken technology seriously; now, they must do the same with talent and tolerance. The places that don't will find that the discoveries and talent they produce will continue to migrate away.
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail
For decades we've heard that new transport and communication technologies - from the street car to the Internet - would make geography and place irrelevant...
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail
The most overlooked — but most important — element of my theory and of the creative economy itself is that every human being is creative.
This is the first in a series of articles in which The Globe and Mail visits an iconic Toronto neighbourhood or event with Richard Florida.
Richard Florida on his adopted city's central role in a new world order built not around nations but around mega-regions.
Richard Florida examines how in a broader creative sector, the United States will add 10 million jobs over the next decade. While the U.S. economy will add more than one million computer and engineering jobs, health care and education are expected to generate more than three times as many jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
