PLANK AUGUST 3, 2012
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When I’m not deep in a presidential election season, I do like writing about subjects other than politics, including the whole realm of urban policy/economic development/land use. It was that interest that led me, two years ago, to write a long magazine piece critiquing the remarkably lucrative enterprise that had grown out of Richard Florida’s 2002 best-seller, The Rise of the Creative Class. The book set forth a straightforward argument: that in the information age, cities would get more of an economic development boost from making themselves attractive to mobile, highly-educated professionals—by, say, investing in amenities like bike paths and the arts, and encouraging a gay-friendly atmosphere—rather than by giving potential employers big tax incentives or spending taxpayer dollars on giant downtown stadiums. As intuitive as it now seems—hip people like to live where hip people like to live—the argument struck many as revolutionary, and Florida shot overnight from being an anonymous Pittsburgh college professor to a star on the lecture and consulting circuit. In 2007, the University of Toronto offered him a $346,000 salary to set up his own think tank, the Martin Prosperity Institute. As his former tour manager boasted to me: "There was a tremendous money-generating aspect to Richard’s work. We did it in a grand way. We traveled in style. We stayed in boutique hotels in most of the places we were working."
More power to him, right? If struggling cities wanted to pay $35,000 to hear someone tell them to make themselves attractive to the laptop crowd, or pay $250,000 to come up with a plan to make this happen, that’s their choice. It was wrong, the former tour manager told me, to see any conflict in Florida’s dark pronouncements on the cities and towns that bankrolled his enterprise, because he hadn’t promised prosperity in the first place: “He wasn’t really making prescriptions...This wasn’t Jesus Christ throwing the money men out of the temple; this was an academic. He was a fucking college professor, and you’re hoping to resurrect Canton, Ohio? Yeah, good luck with that.”
What jarred me into writing my 2010 piece was a cover story that Florida wrote for The Atlantic in the spring of 2009, at the depth of the recession, an excerpt from his then-forthcoming book, The Great Reset, in which he seemed to argue for pulling the plug on many of the struggling cities and towns that had been paying big bucks for his revitalization medicine:
We need to be clear that ultimately, we can’t stop the decline of some places, and that we would be foolish to try. ... Different eras favor different places, along with the industries and lifestyles those places embody. ... We need to let demand for the key products and lifestyles of the old order fall, and begin building a new economy, based on a new geography.
Florida was even more direct in a May, 2009 blog post: “We can confer subsidies on places to improve their infrastructure, universities, and core institutions, or quality of life,” he wrote. But “at the end of the day, people—not industries or even places—should be our biggest concern. We can best help those who are hardest-hit by the crisis, by providing a generous social safety [net], investing in their skills, and when necessary helping them become mobile and move to where the opportunities are.”
So, got that, Rust Belt denizens? Pack your bags for Boulder and Raleigh-Durham and Fairfax County. Oh, and thanks again for the check. Here’s a brief excerpt from what I found in trying to reconcile the lucrative Creative Class pitch with the 2009 sorry-guys declaration:
To John Russo, co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University in Ohio, this all amounts to normalizing—a benign gloss that casts instability as mobility and regional decline verging on total erasure as a side effect of progress. “He’s always seemed to me an apologist for what’s going on,” Russo says. “[He] ignores the kind of decisions that put us in this whole problem, and by ignoring that, he solidifies the real class divisions that are out there.”
Now, by declaring cities or regions to be relics, Florida is denying any agency on the part of local leaders to stem the tide, says Karl Stauber, president of the Danville Regional Foundation in southern Virginia. “It’s very easy for people to adopt the victim position: We’re screwed and we can’t do anything about it,” he says. “My fundamental problem with Florida is that he reinforces the victim mentality.” At the same time, Stauber says, Florida’s regional determinism overlooks the role that specific decisions and investments have played in making some places thrive. It’s no accident, for one thing, that many of his most “creative” cities are home to public universities. Why assume that new investments might not prop up other places as well?
“Where we make public investments makes a bigger difference over a period of time than what strikes me as Florida’s more romantic view of how communities are transformed,” Stauber says. The difference that smart investment and leadership can make is laid out in a new book by the University of Chicago’s Sean Safford, Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown, in which Safford contrasts the decisions made in the city of the title with the shrewder leadership in Allentown, another steel town that has rebounded better. Florida’s creative-class theory “is bad because it distracts from what’s important,” Safford tells me.
Most confounding to some Florida critics is how he both extols the importance of place and declares that many Americans’ best option is to move elsewhere. If the power of place is enough to draw one person to Austin, might it not also be enough to make another stay in Buffalo? “What it ignores is that [bypassed] places have sunken infrastructure—not just in roads and buildings and sewers but the stuff that matters,” says David Lewis of the University of Albany’s department of geography and planning. “Given that he talks so much about the value of place, I’m surprised that he ignores that no matter what the situation is in a community, there’s still a value there. It ignores the reality that some people are attached to their place.”
Florida, to his credit, spoke with me at length for the piece, in one of the odder interviews I’ve ever had with someone—he remained aggressively upbeat and cheerful throughout my obviously skeptical questions, conceding some points with surprising blitheness. At first, he told me that the Atlantic excerpt was the “best thing” he had ever written, but near the end of the interview he said something you don’t hear from many authors: “Maybe I’m a better thinker when I talk than when I’m on paper.” After the piece appeared, I got some tart replies from Florida boosters such as Ryan Avent, but the guru himself remained silent.
And now, lo and behold, it is the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Creative Class, and Florida is milking the celebration for all it’s worth, on the talk-show circuit and at the Atlantic Cities blog he co-founded* where he recently updated his list of the most “creative-class” metro areas with head-scratching results (Huntsville and Trenton rank above Boston and San Francisco. OK.)
Interestingly, though, Florida is striking a much different tone these days than he did in the Great Reset when it comes to “stopping the decline of some places.” He’s touting glimmers of creative-class activity in Detroit, the very city that elicited this riff from him during a 2009 Talk of the Nation appearance:
Tessa from Detroit called in: “My neighborhood is really disappearing,” she says. “I would love to hear some comments from your guest about what’s going to happen to my neighborhood. What are his predictions? ... Do we get out? Do we stay?"
Florida assured Tessa that Detroit’s plight “is not something I’m particularly happy about.” He told her his wife is from Detroit. And then he told her that his friends who live in Detroit are making it as “freelancers” who “commute on an irregular basis” to work on projects somewhere else. He had recently given a speech to Detroit airport officials, who told him that the airport would remain viable. “That airport provides connective fiber,” he told her. “Finding local employment is going to be a lot harder. So you either have to say, can I commute to work, by plane perhaps, or do I have to look for a place that has a better set of opportunities for me?”
There was no way to know if the answer was satisfactory: Tessa from Detroit was off the air.
Who knows if Tessa took Florida’s 2009 advice and skipped town. Too bad if she did, given that Detroit is now once again Creative Class-approved. Just think, she might even get to see Florida speak there sometime soon, assuming the locals can scrape together the dough.
*Wording corrected to accurately describe Florida’s role at the blog.
follow me on Twitter @AlecMacGillis
8 comments
I think of "super regions" when I think of Richard Florida. And it's not just because I like trains. America's enormous size has discouraged efforts to connect regionally, even though most trade and commerce occurs regionally. I reside in the SE, where regional travel is difficult and getting worse. Fifteen years ago there were 15 to 20 flights per day, literally all day, between Tampa and Jacksonville. Now there is one, zero later this month if a small regional carrier from out west hadn't stepped into the breach. Highways already congested are not the answer. A super regional system to connect New Orleans, Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Greenville, Savannah, Jacsonville, Orlando, Tampa, and Miami would facilitate an enormous increase in economic potential and opportunity. A super regional system for the industrial mid-west could jump start the economic revitalization of the entire region. And such a super region opens up the entire region no matter where one chooses to reside in the region, as movement within the region becomes much faster and efficient. I know, super regions are not gonna happen. I suppose Richard Florida is like my former spouse, a self-described inventor. She never invented anything, but was a fountain of ideas for inventions, a distinction she could neither grasp nor make.
- rayward
August 3, 2012 at 2:07pm
"Commute by plane?" Ha ha ha. Lots of people can't afford to commute by BUS. Sometimes I think the Chinese communists had a point, everybody into the fields. Or at least the graveyard shift at the sewer plant or the diner. Anyway, rayward's comment about improved travel is part of the discussion about infrastructure, which like class we aren't having. High speed rail might help some of our connectivity and travel issues. Same with fiber-optic, people can possibly work from the house, anywhere in the world, with the right set of tools. But, just throwing entire cities down the tubes doesn't make sense. However finding new uses for them or areas within them might be necessary. For example we have neighborhoods with vacant lots. Some are depressed and dangerous. Using the open spaces for parks and urban farms improves the ecology of the area and also provides work, recreation and even food. Using vacant land to build schools and libraries, providing start up monies for small business, local business, so the "creative class" can include more people would anchor communities and give people tools to survive but just as importantly, to live richer lives. As it is, my city often erupts in gunfire, cries of despair and rage. In some communities, hope is gone because there is no horizon - only walls, concrete limitations so tauntingly close to the crystal towers downtown. People think, with reason, that they'll be dead by twenty. Kids are jailed by the thousands - people who never had a chance. Schools are just falling apart, the streets are full of holes. Rich people seem to think they're immune and don't want to help, increasingly one gets the sense they simply don't care. Monies for the arts, for start-up businesses that could anchor neighborhoods and provide jobs, money and hope, are extremely scarce. There ARE clusters of bright, innovative, creative people - they need concrete help - money - not lectures from the privileged. Urban planners and congresspeople can use ideas like this, they could help, they could look beyond the cosmetic, beyond the bike paths and the tourist attractions, valuable as those may be. In fact they must in order for cities and towns to remain ecologically and economically sustainable and also more independent - as it stands, many cities would be completely helpless if something were to happen to the connectivity between cities and cities and the countryside and international borders and ports. Bike paths are fine, anything that helps the environment is fine, as an artist I'd be thrilled if somebody wanted to lay some cash on me (in fact I'd probably die on the spot, from shock) but we need to deal with nitty-gritty issues about survival and sustainability. That's difficult to do these days when people are busily informing us that this = "class warfare," and the EPA = "killing jobs," and factory farms are the norm - factory fishing - and education and the arts are regarded as elitist or even useless. Ordinary people, who are increasingly poor relative to the top 5%, have no say in the matter but must take whatever crumbs remain and are by the same token just powerless to fix things or even have a degree of self-determination - yet - we're hectored for being, essentially, bums by guys like Romney (hence his culture comments, and others which blame the poor, lower middle class, older people, the very young, minorities, immigrants and unemployed people for our predicament.) Yet where, realistically, are the truly creative people and ideas supposed to come from? Not, I think, from people who are already secure and who live in safe cocoons - people who are willing to cross lines, to see through other people's eyes, people who've worked in strange situations, who put themselves out there and experience things, learn things - this is education money can't buy. And industries which prosper by doing the same old thing, regardless of its cost to the world - like the extraction industries - need to think down the line - investors need to invest long range, in things that preserve the world and its animals and its people and and its plants and not simply look at short term profit. (I know, ridiculous idea!) Also, people across the economic spectrum have lost a basic grip on reality, even down to simple issues like where food comes from and how to grow it or how it gets from farm or port to city. Listen to stories about the Depression, how entire communities were forced to hit the highways and the rails, people lived in camps, at the same time we had a massive environmental crisis. How many people truly, viscerally understand what this was like, only a few decades ago? If you're young, changes are you didn't hear these stories because your parents hadn't been born yet. And how many people have a range of experiences, outside their particular bubble, neighborhood, city or class that can help them be creative, empathic, and in turn help create vital cities and economies? We make things that much worse by an educational system increasingly fragmented along lines of class and religion - a shocking (not) story recently indicated that cities and towns are increasingly segregated by class so the opportunity for people to get to know "the other" is limited and this adds to the problem. Some schools are not even teaching reality-based facts anymore but are pushing religious ideas. Those kids will be even less able to cope when they come of age. As a nation we're not thinking even about conditions that imperil this year's crop - scientists are ignored when it comes to environment, global warming and attempts to stop this process are damned and the energy sector refuses to stop and think and reinvest in other forms of energy, with the full-throated support of the GOP but sadly even the Obama Administration; efforts to change are truly feeble. Also the terrible condition of our infrastructure from sewer pipes and dams to the interstates to the electrical grid - in a time of low employment we should be using the human resources to fix these now. We don't have sufficient water to run some of our nuclear plants within optimal spec. Power outages have been extensive this summer. Regions under water last year are suffering from drought this year. We can't assume that Mother Nature will reliably provide. In fact all the signs suggest the opposite. Yet, do we plan for the worst? Do we have systems for capturing excess rain and flood waters in the Missouri and Mississippi Valleys to prevent the destruction of towns and farms when there's too much water and save it for years of drought? Of course not. Even Joseph in Egypt knew the importance of this sort of thinking and planning; we've forgotten it. No wonder we are having problems with the economy and with the health of our cities and towns. America has up until now gotten along somehow, or some people have, despite droughts, depressions, civil and other wars, local environmental devastation; in some cases we've done very well because of wars, destruction of environment, vulture capitalism that has seized national resources, wealth and power and left whole cities dying, whole industries in crumbles. Lurching from crisis to crisis and hoping to make out ok in between isn't the same thing as rational planning let alone planning for the future.
- Sophia
August 3, 2012 at 3:32pm
Florida wrote this article for TNR: http://www.tnr.com/article/economy/76961/richard-florida-reset-recovery-economy-future#comment-288225 Many people have bettered their situation throughout history by moving on. Look at all the immigrants to America. I'm glad that my grandparents left a no-win situation in the Old World and came here. Those of their contemporaries who thought they could fix the Old Country usually failed. We should improve labor force mobility by renewing our rail infrastructure, putting everybody on a national single payer health insurance system, and promoting rental of housing over home ownership. Otherwise people remain shackled to the land like serfs.
- amidut
August 3, 2012 at 9:24pm
The United States was once connected by a network of railways, some of which took people fairly comfortably over great distances, even coast to coast. The last major rail terminal to be built is Union Station in Los Angeles (only major terminal by a female architect), which was opened in 1940. I live in a state with no, repeat no, passenger services at all -- despite a natural Memphis-Nashville-Knoxville axis that could go on through northern Virginia into DC, and potential for a Chicago-Indianapolis-Louisville-Knoxville-Atlanta line that could revitalize a whole swathe of the region. Even our fairly well-served airport is getting thinned out as far as flights go, with fewer direct connections to major cities than when I got here five years ago. But trains are European -- and that's bad -- so let's forget that we ever had them.
- ironyroad
August 3, 2012 at 10:38pm
I almost failed my August dementia test. I kept asking myself, "How could Florida write an article?" It would be as silly as Seattle or Everett (near where I live) claiming to write articles about how to prosper. Things always look better from a distance. You might think Everett (with Boeing) and Seattle (near Microsoft and making out with Amazon and Google) would be prospering and blessed, but things always look better from a distance. She packed my bags last night pre-flight Zero hour nine a.m. And I'm gonna be high as a kite by then I miss the earth so much I miss my wife It's lonely out in space On such a timeless flight
- skahn
August 3, 2012 at 11:05pm
amidut, I completely agree with you about railways, and single payer health insurance. But - houses are a way of building wealth or at least not flushing it down the tubes. I'm a renter myself, largely because I've always been living on the economic edge even when I've had more than one job, and, I didn't want to get into a subprime mortgage. Also, I don't like that tied-down feeling. However, when I add up the rent we've paid on the apartment where we've lived for almost 20 years, which keeps going up to the point where we probably can't afford to stay here much longer (alas) I could cry. I should be part owner of this property. My landlord has done quite well. So, who's the serf?
- Sophia
August 4, 2012 at 2:48pm
Ergo, if you are going to encourage renting, then we need to look at rent controls or some systems of renting to buy, otherwise people, working people, are simply funding the property owners and making THEM as well as our bosses wealthy. Talk about serfdom. While I'm on the subject: this tendency in recent years to make employees "independent contractors;" swell. That means no benefits, we pay all the social security tax, plus in my case liability insurance + studio rent. That is just crushing a lot of creative people, artists, teachers, musicians etc. And it hurts the community if we can't afford to do our work or live in the city because the rent's too high and we own no property because all our money has been going to enrich our bosses, insurance companies and landlords. So?
- Sophia
August 4, 2012 at 2:53pm
Rayward says - "A super regional system to connect New Orleans, Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Greenville, Savannah, Jacsonville, Orlando, Tampa, and Miami would facilitate an enormous increase in economic potential and opportunity." Ah...I think at some point we had something like that called Amtrak but like all things with a "Washington D.C." tint to it, they fall out of fashion just like street cars and mass transit for the working schmucks of America. Looking at old Amtrak route maps the South had more connectivity than it does today. But getting back to Ray's point. If we were to return to or invest in the idea of regional transportation systems, we have to get past the parochial nature of our states. Even within the states, the parochialism does a lot of damage. For instance, a high speed commuter train was proposed to connect Baton Rouge with New Orleans. Bobby Jindal shot it down for no good reason other than to say it was a waste of money. But business leaders in both metro areas disagree and continue to push for its development. The regional issue for planners is to develop comprehensive plans that would allow major metro areas to identify key hubs and nodes built around commuter rail or mass transit stops that would foster redevelopment and encourage the type of investment in amenities that people desire. Not everyone wants a gourmet cheese shop and boutique yoga studio in their neighborhood, but everyone needs a decent grocery store & pharmacy, wants a choice of restaurants and affordable entertainment that is easily accessible by car, bus, street car, walking or bike. Where Richard Florida fails is identifying or even laying out strategies for mid-size cities and towns (that aren't already past the point of no return) where they can identify ways of encouraging reinvestment. Along with that is coming up with ways to encourage organic growth of mixed-income neighborhoods that have a mix of amenities that people want. A good example is the Denver metro area. 15 years ago, the greater metro area operated like a sea of 15 different municipalities each with their own agenda and goals for infrastructure investment, business development, taxes, traffic, crime and services. But those goals and master plans ended at the county or city line. Then mayor Hickenlooper was able to get all of the metro area mayors and representatives to develop and plan a regional mass transit system based on light rail where each municipality (like Lakewood, Arvada, Westminster, Englewood, etc.) would identify nodes within their cities to develop and concentrate light rail stations and mixed-used development with a focus on walkable communities. Amazingly, it worked and now the greater Denver metro area has a regional transit system that serves all of the outlying suburbs and connects them. Along the way, these once dying suburbs began to see development investment increase, young professionals, empty nesters, and young families wanting to move to these new developments. What Florida doesn't say and what MacGillis hints at, is that there are people who like living in Scranton, Ohio and will never move away because they grew up there. But no matter how many yoga studios or trendy cocktail bars move in, it isn't necessarily going to make it desirable enough to make someone NOT from Ohio want to move there. If there isn't a diversity of decent jobs, supportable infrastructure (like decent schools, and other government services), people & business won't locate there. Throw in the structural parochialism between the City and the suburbs/exurbs that exists everywhere and you begin to see why much of middle America is slumping and has overall population declines (despite the occasional outliers). Here in New Orleans, Katrina offered the rare opportunity for a city to literally and figuratively hit the reset button. As devastating as it was, the event wiped out decades of criminal neglect and decay and forced a city and region to take a hard look at how it needs to improve itself. The city implemented tax incentives for certain neighborhoods, private organizations like the Idea Village run entrepreneur workshops every year to foster local and regional start-ups, private investment and redevelopment is following the Federal investment dollars in the new VA hospital and LSU medical centers, a bio-innovation district is under way, mixed-use development is on the rise, street car expansion and road improvements have happened, the entire school system has been restructured as charter schools and yet, New Orleans still has fundamental problems with poverty, over-reliance on welfare and a stark class divide. Yet, you have neighborhoods where $250,000 homes are around the corner from $850,000 homes and the city's diversity is still intact despite the sudden influx of Northeastern hipsters overpopulating the Bywater and Marigny neighborhoods. The greater New Orleans metro area still needs some political & civic leaders that will take the lead in making the GNO area more connected and interactive with both sides of the river and Lake Pontchartrain. It might take 5 or 10 years more but since I began visiting NO in 2006 and moved here in 2009, the city & area has undergone a remarkable transformation in the last 6 years.
- singlspeed
August 6, 2012 at 11:30am