Richard Florida and 'The Rise of the Creative Class'
By 2004 the professor's best-seller urging cities to grow and prosper by attracting talented people looking for friendly, lively, socially tolerant places to live had swept the globe.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
April 11, 2004
Richard Florida has been the toast of city conferences from Toronto to Auckland since he wrote "The Rise of the Creative Class: And How it's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life."
His 2002 best-seller, hotly debated among urban gurus, argues that economically healthy cities such as San Francisco and Boston have prospered in part by focusing on attracting talented people who are looking for friendly, lively, interesting and socially tolerant places to live.
Florida, who is leaving CMU after 17 years to take a public policy faculty position with George Mason University near Washington, D.C., broadly defines the "creative class" as the 38 million Americans who make their living as scientists, engineers, architects, educators, writers, artists and entertainers.
A severe critic of Pittsburgh's heavy-handed urban redevelopment schemes and a soulmate of urban guru Jane Jacobs, he describes himself as a John Kerry-leaning fiscal conservative and social liberal who believes "government should enable people."
Florida is now a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and a Distinguished Fellow at NYU's School of Professional Studies. I interviewed him by phone.
Richard Florida
Q: What, in a line or two, is "Rise of the Creative Class" about?
A: The book says that creativity is the source of economic wealth. It is the driving force of economic wealth. It has been somewhat misconstrued as homage to the New Economy or the "Creative Class," but that's a misrepresentation. The book says that every single human being is creative, and that "the key to economic wealth and growth is to tap the creative furnace that lies deep inside every human being."
Q: What have you learned since you wrote it?
A: One is that the creative economy is quite global. I looked at it as a domestic manifestation or phenomenon, when it is global. The United States faces fierce competition in the creative age. Countries such as Canada and certainly Australia and New Zealand are abandoning their long legacies of social welfarism and developing societies that try to mix entrepreneurship with openness.
We were once the only country that allowed you to come here if you were politically and culturally persecuted, if you have a good idea, if you want to pursue economic opportunity, and let you be yourself and build your dreams. Other countries are wising up to that -- that's what my new book will be saying.
In some sense, Pittsburgh is a very important microcosm for the United States to look at. Here is a place that had incredible technology, incredible research and incredible economic might, and in less than 50 years lost it all -- mainly because it became the kind of place that people felt they could no longer better themselves and realize their dreams.
Q: Of Pittsburgh's current problems, what is the worst?
A: It's leadership, broadly. It's a combination of both civic and political leadership. There is a reluctance for anyone to lead and the leadership we have remains, at best, wedded to a 1950s model of economic revitalization.
Q: Is there anything that City Hall ...
A: You have to get rid of the mayor. There's no confidence in the mayor. It's just ... he has to go.
Q: Are there any answers in your book to Pittsburgh's problems?
A: The whole idea of Davey Lawrence and Richard Mellon worked well 50 years ago, it can't work today. You've got to go out there and harness the energy of people. (Councilman) Bill Peduto said this very well. He said, "Look, Mr. Mayor. All you have to do is get these people involved. Don't fight them." That's where the key is.
Another thing we have to do is become a city that is committed to openness and diversity and that welcomes immigrants. We have to be a city that will let gay people feel comfortable coming out of the closet and being themselves. We have to be the kind of city where young women feel like they have a role. We can't be a 1950s country club city anymore.
Q: When you talk about government, you always seem to be talking about government not as tool but as a "squelcher" that is in the way.
A: Where I share common ground with some Republicans and libertarians, is that I think old-style government programs have become a huge impediment to leveraging the creative age and allowing it to emerge. That said, I think there is still a role for government to set up the parameters in which market-based actions take place.
Let me give you some examples: Some of the New Deal programs which spurred suburban development by providing lower-cost mortgage loans, New Deal programs which leveraged highway construction. New Deal programs which actually boosted wages and ushered in occupation and safety and health (rules) -- and I might say this contentiously to a libertarian -- allowed people to join unions and allowed their wages to go up. All of those things helped build a U.S. mass-production Industrial Age economy.
I think we need to think about programs like that today -- programs that are not telling people what to do and restricting their behavior, but programs that are actually enabling our economy to grow and prosper.
Q: Sounds like the Founding Fathers to me.
A: Yeah. If you asked me what the problems of our current structure are, I'd say it is oriented toward large-scale political institutions and large companies when it should be oriented to entrepreneurial efforts, small firms and to people's energy. We have to move away from large-scale government programs to community-oriented efforts.
Q: Have you learned anything from your critics, either from the left or right?
A: I've learned that this whole notion of creativity and the creative class can be misconstrued as being elitist, and it is not. It's not the way it was intended. It gets masked by this idea that the creative class is elitist, that it's about bohemians, that it's about latte bars, that it's about nightlife districts, that it's about young yuppie people. That's not what it's about.
If you look at the critics of my work, look at where they come from, they come from the socially conservative right and they come from the far left.
I can show you two quotes, one coming from the Democratic Leadership Council's Blueprint magazine and the other coming from the (conservative Manhattan Institute's) City Journal. Both critiques are political. And both critiques are essentially saying, "Don't let the genie out of the bottle. Don't let these creative people get their way. Let's control, control, control. Let's squelch."
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In 2001 I asked Richard Florida about the future of Pittsburgh.
Key to Pittsburgh's future not what we're told
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Saturday, Feb. 17, 2001
Richard Florida, the Heinz Professor of Regional Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon University, spends his time thinking deep thoughts about the New Economy and writing books with titles like 'Industrializing Knowledge' and 'Beyond Mass Production.'
But he is also a nationally known expert on cities and how, if they want to thrive and prosper, they need to do things to attract the imaginations of young people who will want to live there. I talked to him by phone from his office at CMU.
Q: One hundred years ago, Pittsburgh was on top of the world - it had all the money, power, smarts. Is our 50 years of fame over around here?
A: Not necessarily so. One thing to remember is that Pittsburgh was always a center not only of industrial greatness but of real innovation. Some of the earliest venture capital was provide by the Mellons to their companies, and to the Mellon Institute as a center for research and development.
One thing Pittsburgh has over other regions, which is really its key to success, is the fact that it invested in really strong universities, in particular the one I teach at, Carnegie Mellon.
Somehow, Pittsburgh ended up with one of the world's greatest computer science departments and the world's greatest software program. Those assets you can't just create out of thin air. We happen to be blessed with them. The real key that we face is how do you turn them into economic growth for the region.
Q: What's a quick definition of the Old Economy?
A: Well, sometimes I don't like those words, although we all use them and we use the language we have. In my view, the Old Economy means an economy that was organized around large, bureaucratic, vertically integrated, kind of stodgy, kind of conservative companies - which gave rise to a culture of conservatism and stodginess. And I don't mean political conservatism, I mean bureaucratic conservatism.
Q: And the New Economy?
A: What's really new about the economy is not the Internet. It's not technology. It's not the gyrations of the NASDAQ. It's not the fact that IPO's (initial public offerings) are going up and down.
It's that during the last past years a whole bunch of social changes have come in to place: A workplace that is more about being attractive to people and where you can be yourself. The fact that people want to live in neighborhoods that are very diverse and have all kinds of people. The fact that a person's appearance or looks or gender or race isn't held against them when they compete for a job.
It's these kinds of social changes in the workplace and in communities that are really new. The New Economy means whole new ways of working, whole new ways of living and whole new ways of building communities.
Q: How does Pittsburgh fare under this new model or paradigm or whatever you call it?
A: Pittsburgh has had a hard time adapting to the speed, the flexibility, the diversity and the openness of the New Economy. It's a community that was built around — to some degree -- private clubs, around exclusivity, where people tried to emulate, if you will, the Robber Barons. ...
I think the most important message for Pittsburgh is, we have the technology, we have the innovation, we have the underlying infrastructure. We have got to create the culture, the kind of excitement, the kind of New Economy outlook where people from all over the world say, 'I want to come to Pittsburgh, because it's not only a great place to work, it's a great place to live and it's a great place to have fun.'
This isn't about low-cost affordable housing. This is about creating a place that captures people's imagination.
Q: How important is regional cooperation to making Pittsburgh worthy of the 21st century?
A: I think the notion that you can consolidate a bunch of governments into a regional government is a leftover notion of the old age of vertically integrated industry. The idea was, you take a bunch of companies and you fold 'em up into one giant conglomerate and you're going to be really powerful.
People took that mentality and translated it to government. They said really the problem is that Pittsburgh has all these separate municipalities, and nonprofits, and if we just combine them we'll be successful and we'll consolidate and we'll be more efficient. ...
Yeah, that's true. I'm not going to say consolidation is a bad thing. Maybe it's even real efficient. But you're not going to get there.
No one who controls these little fiefdoms is going to go away and walk gladly into the sunset. Every mayor, every CEO of a nonprofit, is going to fight to death for their organization.
Q: How important to the region are things like giant, billion-dollar projects like maglev?
A: Was Silicon Valley built on giant projects? Was Austin, Texas, built around giant maglev projects? Was the success of Seattle built around giant projects? No. They were built around people building new innovative businesses and communities that offer people high quality of life.
When I talk to young people about where they going to live and work, if you cut through all the b.s., they want to live in a place that offers them excitement and fun and amenities, as well as a great job.
It's the little things: It's the ability to ride your bike or snowboard and be safe in a park or enjoy good restaurants. It's not these giant projects.
One of the problems with our regional development outlook is, we think, 'The stadiums will save us.' 'No, it's not the stadiums, it's really the convention center.' 'No, we've got to make Downtown have a mall.' 'No, it's not the mall, we need a maglev.'
We have some vision that a politician with a giant project is going to save us. That ain't gonna do it.
Q: Thirty years from now will the region be known as a high-tech New Economy area, an Old Economy that wouldn't let go or something in the middle?
A: Pittsburgh can take its history, its authenticity, its ethnic heritage and its industrial heritage, and combine that with something new. That's what this region really is. That's why Fifth and Forbes (the aborted Downtown renewal project) got so many young people so vexed. They said, 'This is our history, this is what makes Pittsburgh unique, these funny little buildings with Candy-Rama’ (candy stores).
It's Homestead and it's the character of city neighborhoods like Friendship and the character of East Liberty and the South Side that has captured young people's imagination. It's the authenticity that city after city is trying to create a Disneyland version of.
We won't be Seattle, we won't be Austin, we won't be Silicon Valley. But we can be a new Pittsburgh - and that's what the people who are choosing to come here are telling us. Don't erase your history.
Q: Is there any one thing we can do?
A: Yes, it's to make our people climate better than anyone else's people climate, where anybody in the world can say, I come to Pittsburgh and plug in and make a life in a day. I think that's the vision for the future of this place. Can we do it? Yeah. Do we have the will to do it? That's up to us. ...
I think we've got to look at what is really unique about Pittsburgh and build on those assets and combine them with the technology - the high-tech companies and the startups. That's the way we have to go. Not following this old path of two regional leaders telling us we need to make massive investments in some Downtown project, and it's going to save us, but it ain't.