Interestingly, Indianapolis defied Richard Florida's premise/agenda by doing well overall on the Tech pole while failing his 'diversity' mechanism for indexing. Apparently there are greater factors that overshadow 'diversity' when it comes to creating an attractive city environment. Were I a statistician, I'd be tempted to re-run Florida's 'diversity composite' without his gay-factor included, and see what effect it has on his corelative premise. Btw, I found it at least interesting, maybe even ironic, that Indianapolis & Indiana excel vs. national averages re spiritual metrics... as if to perhaps suggest they positively impact quality of life and the drawing power of a city.

For a link to the info cited, visit...
http://gotchange.blogspot.com/2004/03/intolerant-indy.html

So you'd expect his winners to be big job producers. Yet since 1993, cities that score the best on Florida?'s analysis have actually grown no faster than the overall U.S. jobs economy, increasing their employment base by only slightly more than 17 percent.

This makes the fundamental mistake of equating economic growth with the quantitative increase in the number of "jobs," which is not the definition of economic growth used by most economists, etc.

Economic growth, succinctly, is the qualitative improvement of the human condition. A much better, but still imperfect, metric of economic growth would, therefore, be growth in personal individual income (in all its forms, including environmental income, monetary income, leisure income, health, etc.). After all, I can double the number of jobs available by halving the average pay -- without producing any economic (and probably negative economic) growth.

To paraphrase an ex-president, it's about quality of life, stupid. Not the absolute number of people you can cram into an office park.

greg

Greg, I should have addressed that point better, but I'm surprised that you, of all people, aren't concerned about the possibility that Creative Class doctrine could produce a system in which some people are denied employment because they're not well-educated (or well-connected) enough....and in which those who fail to climb the greased pole of higher education end up working in greasy spoons at two in the morning.

Paul,

I'm honestly not sure what connection there is between Florida's arguments re: "The Creative Class" and employment of society's less fortunate?

If anything, Florida's argument is that the creative class is the class that generates real economic growth (through innovation) and that that growth is a rising tide that lifts all boats, including the least served. How would some people in a "creative class" community be denied employment?

Just because not everyone is going to be an ad exec, or a playwright, or an entrepreneur in Big Shining City on the hill doesn't mean that there won't also be other forms of employment in BSC. In fact, the greater number of affluent and dynamic individuals in BSC, compared to say River City, will foster greater opportunities for exactly that class you imply I'm callously ignoring (I think). If you're going to work the greasy spoon, wouldn't you rather work it in BSC, instead of River City?

greg, who hopes that everyone understands that River City is code for another well-loved Indiana metropolis.

So, Greg, the shift to a postindustrial economy will guarantee increased economic opportunities for everyone in the workforce? I didn't think that we would be reduced to waiting for the Magical Free Market Elves to distribute job skills to those whose careers have disappeared...

In any event, as Florida's book states (and as my review paraphrases him), the Creative Class will require the services of a Servile Cohort to take care of its personal needs. These may be "better" jobs in terms of pay (although that's an empirical proposition that might not hold out) and they may certainly be better in terms of working conditions compared to the satanic mills, but they are not necessarily going to offer the Servile Class the same opportunities for advancement or personal satisfaction the Creative Class demands as its due. (I should note here that originally this review of Florida was followed up by a review of Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed.)

Paul,

No, the shift to a postindustrial economy is going to suck. However, Florida's thesis is that it will suck less for those communities which embrace the creative class, instead of repelling same. It may not be as much about increasing economic opportunities as it is about working to keep them from falling in "creative class" communities as much as they'll fall in non-creative communities.

Job skills are important, but like knowledge, they're not a magic panacea with which everything is made better. If they were, Librarians would be the richest people on the planet and Monroe County (with the state's highest educational attainment rate) would also boast the highest median income (it's far from that).

The term "servile cohort" is unnecessarily inflammatory. All economies are made up of individuals who fill different roles and the quantity in each of those roles is dependent on the quantity in the others (i.e. the number of needed hotdog bun-makers is tightly dependent on the number of hotdog-makers, etc.). Why this would be different in a creative community vs. a non-creative one is beyond me.

What's the alternative? To build cities and communities that repel the most creative among us? I'm not quite getting your point.

greg

Greg, I'm not sure we're disagreeing all that much here. My major complaint about Florida's book is that it is a book written by a Creative Class member addressed to Creative Class members so they can have their Creative Class politicians adjust policies to serve the interests of the Creative Class. The people who aren't members of the C.C. get scant attention in Florida's book--as my review clearly indicates.

I agree with you that the transition from economy A to B will be harsh (although I do think it will be net beneficial for society) but my criticism is that Florida refuses to acknowledge any sort of downsides, nor does he seem to want to worry about nuts-and-bolts issues like schools and tax policies (or zoning policies) that seem a bit more crucial to sustaining growth than attracting the 20- and 30-somethings who crowd into trendy pubs and can stay out until three a.m. following local bands. My term "servile cohort" is clearly and obviously not meant to denigrate people who hold those jobs, but instead to castigate Florida for his apparently dismissive attitude toward the fates of those who don't end up with nice jobs as ad execs or human rights lawyers.

The criticism on the policy level, then, is twofold (and somewhat contradictory). Malanga wants us to focus on "Second Wave" industries that he says Florida unfairly dismisses. I suggest at a minimum that Florida needs to reformulate his agenda to broaden access into the Creative Class and to make sure that those made worse off by the transition are not forgotten about. (The poor, of course, are the least likely to have their concerns taken seriously by most governments anyway; Florida could spare some time for them.)

Florida can state that his argument is, anyway, a regionalist account of a strategy that certain municipalities can use to improve their competitiveness--that is, he's arguing a city-level, not a class-based, case. That's fair. But his very terminology subtly undercuts that argument, and in any event it seems to me that the problems that Ehrenreich highlights (namely, that a number of the jobs created to service the Creative Class and the "Supercreative Core" are pretty awful) are at least as important as wondering whether Pittsburgh should install bike paths or build a baseball stadium.

I appreciate the Krugman hot dog reference, but trust me, I'm no Bill Greider.

I think you're focusing too much on the latte-huffing, iPod-listening, homosexual-marriage-supporting characteristics of Florida's "creative class" and not enough on the creative qualification itself. I don't read Florida's thesis as that all we need to do is gentrify a warehouse district, install a bike path or two, and pass a city ordinance declaring Earth Day a civic holiday in order to succeed.

I read his thesis as, brutally, that economic success depends on creativity and inventiveness. Those drive innovation, productivity gains, etc. and that there is a certain segment of society better positioned (for reasons I can't go into here due to space constraints) to have and harness that creativity.

Thus the economic development strategy is to work on making a place that's attractive to those people. Very often the notion of place is lost on our economic thinkers who will reduce every economic equation to some gibberish about total factor productivity, a term which always seems to include natural and capital resources while ignoring human ones (or pretending that the species Economic Man, who rationally makes decisions divorced from aesthetic or emotional criteria, exists).

I'm not of the opinion that schools and/or tax policies have much of anything to do with sustaining, promoting, or really affecting "growth" (whatever it means). I also don't think that Florida is dismissive of the "servile class." He simply points out that the servile class does a lot better where they get to serve in affluent, creative, localities than they do if they serve in some jerkwater Midwestern dystopia.

Why would the jobs created to service the Creative Class be any worse than the jobs created to service the Business Class, the Worker Class, or any other class?

I'm not familiar with Malanga (wasn't he part of Warhol's factory :-)?)) but anyone who uses the term "Second Wave" is going to elicit an automotor reflex in me. I can feel my leg jerking right now. When I need some techo-futurism (perhaps I'm being unfair), well I already know where I've left my copies of Toffler.

greg

Malanga doesn't use "second wave"--I'm not sure, at this remove, whether Florida did or whether I put it in my review of my own volition. But your criticisms of my critique of Florida are, I have to say, sounding a lot like the criticisms of someone who has neither read Rise nor my review of it. Yes, I agree that it's probably better from an economic perspective--much, much better--to be working-class in Austin instead of Cleveland (or, rather, generic CC-friendly City A than generic CC-hostile City B) as long as the relationship between economic growth and CC concentrations holds AND the economic growth doesn't all accrue to the members of the CC. (Technically, of course, it still might be more pleasant to live in Austin at the same wages than in Cleveland, if only for the intellectual benefits; but it does require a certain amount of sophistication to enjoy CC endeavors, and the very indices Florida creates demonstrate that stereotypically "Red" cities (in the American political sense) are not apt to have those amenities anyway.)

I am hardly ignorant of the concept of "place," nor are thoroughly mainstream economists like Paul Krugman (back when he did mainstream economic work instead of shoddy political commentary); in fact, the original version of this review included links to articles by James Howard Kunstler (whose The Geography of Nowhere was the book I reviewed immediately before this one). Kunstler's writings are intensely focused on place (to the detriment, in fact, of his analysis).

I remember your dismissal of the ideas that tax policies have anything to do with growth, but I can't possibly conceive how the quality of a public school system could be negatively correlated with economic growth in any reasonable system. Indeed, given the nature of the creative economy, I can't possibly imagine a negative correlation between educational achievement and CC potential.

I've ignored your snide remarks about the Midwest, but I will point out that I actually live in one of Florida's major examples (the principal non-American one, in fact) and quite a bit of what he claims as the triumph of the CC seems to be a mixture of non-CC successes, from low Irish tax rates, proximity to the European market, easy access to that market, and the success of the Irish government in luring foreign investment. Only a handful of innovations seem to confirm his thesis (specifically the international financial district among the Liffey) and quite good Irish economists and political scientists have written longish explanations of why that district (and other innovations) are secondary to the root causes of increased investment in education and the tax policies mentioned above.

Well, first, I'm only making snide remarks about the Midwest because a) it's my home (by way of bona fides, I chose to live in Bloomington thirty years ago and my family, on the paternal side, is from Cleveland) and b) because the Midwest, outside of Bloomington (and increasingly in it), and particularly Indiana, absolutely breaks my friggin' heart. In short, my snideness is tough love by another name.

No, I've not read your reviews of Florida (except what you've written here on ITA and the link from which I quoted) but I've certainly read Rise and I met Florida when he spoke here at the Buskirk-Chumley (a creative class edifice if ever there was one).

You're right that Kunstler is intensely focused on place, as am I, and that we both tend to look at the world through a place-tinged lens. I've a lot of experiential evidence that that's the best way to look at the world, but that of course doesn't mean I'm right on the matter.

I think the quality of a school system is a large part of the quality of the stock of its students and their parents, not the other way around. In other words, good parents make good students who make good schools that produce good students who go on to be good parents.

I don't disagree that there is, and will be, a large correlation between "creative places" and aggregate educational achievement. Bloomington/Monroe County are probably as best an example of this phenomena as can be readily found.

By the way, last week the NYT (creative class house organ) had a really concise article on the (lack of) relationship between taxation policy and growth, I doubt it's available online but I've put a copy up at:

http://www.littlebear.com/TaxesGrowth.pdf

I'm as open (really) to the notion that taxes somehow materially affect locational decisions of individuals (as opposed to capital, and even then the evidence is sketchy). But I've just not seen the evidence.

greg

Ah: If you're talking about the locational decisions of individuals, then at a interregional level, yes, the effects will be slight. (Within regions, however, it's clear there will be shifts--people shifting their time between Connecticut and NYC, for instance, to avoid taxes.) I was indeed talking about capital. I do think, however, that the quality of the school system generally can contribute to a heightened sensitivity toward community (i.e., preventing "elite" or even middle-class exit from public systems) while also serving to lure education-sensitive adults (viz., a large number of parents).

I think we disagree then on our interpretation of Rise (although I will note that my review is hardly unfriendly, if not glowing). I also have a lack of faith in the ability of the bureaucrats of local governments to put together a culturally-invigorating city--but I do think that they can create an environment in which other, more culturally-attuned people can do so.

I agree that bureaucrats are not the first place to look for successful cultural initiatives. However, I think the bureaucrats that made the decision to locate Indiana University in Bloomington did a fine job in that regard. And anyone who knows me knows I have no fondness for our ex-mayor (nor he for me) but I think that Fernandez' efforts with regard to the downtown arts scene (Buskirk-Chumley et. al.) have returned tremendous dividends.

So it can happen but you're right that it's probably the exception, rather than the norm. Most (Midwestern!) civic bureaucrats are far too busy falling over themselves in a race to disappropriate the public from its goods and hand those goods over to the land speculators and automobile dealers to have enough time to spend on real economic development.

But what I think the bureaucrats can do, if they can't take an actual proactive role, is to step away from screwing things up. Stop throwing public money at developers who will use it to convert yet another greenspace into an outlet for Chinese-made goods. Stop subsidizing sprawl, stop genuflecting to the transportation bureaucrats who say that the only road is one made wider, straighter, and more amenable to the automobile, as opposed to the humans trapped within.

In other words, what the bureaucrats can do is stop doing what they're doing. Just stop. If that makes me, a diehard wooly-headed liberal, for a smaller government then so be it.

greg

Well, I think I agree with you on that point--I am always fonder of organic growth than planned development (although some planned developments, like the Mall or Central Park, are national treasures). And, in fact, that was the point I agreed with Florida most strongly on....