The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida
Book review by Eric Miller
“If you are interested in the short-term, plant crops. If you are interested in the medium-term, plant buildings. If you are interested in the long-term, plant people.”
| Lewis Mumford |
The increasing numbers of what Richard Florida calls the "creative class" want diverse, tolerant, interesting, and lively cities where they are free to be who they are. They want a business culture that welcomes deviation from the norm. They want to work when they want to work and, time-crunched, they want unique entertainment and cultural amenities at their fingertips.
No living environment can provide this better than cities, and cities now compete for these talented entrepreneurs and information workers. But many don’t know how. Misguided, they build stadiums and generic mega-retail complexes that only chase creative people out of rich older cities like Buffalo and Pittsburgh and over to more tolerant and welcoming places like Austin, Texas, or even Allentown, PA.
In this book, Richard Florida describes who the creative class are, as well as what they want in a job, how they define themselves, and what they want from where they live.
The “creative class” includes anyone who works creatively. They are paid to create, rather than to perform a task. But that creativity extends beyond artists and software engineers; progressive companies realize even a barista or line-worker can be creative and add value to a product if that creativity is fostered.
Creative class workers don’t want to work for a corporation for life. They like to move horizontally through the labor market, finding positions that best fit their creative goals. They don’t want stock options and high paychecks as much as they want flexibility, a stimulating environment, and a tolerance and understanding of the value of differences.
Members of the creative class don’t define themselves by their title or the company they work for. They are not organization men or women.
This point is brought home by the story of a labor-related meeting in Harrisburg where Pennsylvania state officials lamented that the state was producing more hairdressers than mechanics and factory workers. These jobs go unfilled for lack of qualified workers despite the promise of high pay and a stable job. Florida put the question to audiences across the country. Time and again, more people said they would chose to be a hairdresser than a factory worker. The pay isn’t good, but the environment is more stimulating, the satisfaction more immediate, you meet a variety of people, you can work flexible hours, and there is ample opportunity to be creative.
Perhaps the most disturbing insight in the book is that members of the creative class are beginning to segregate themselves geographically from members of the service class and working class. He shows which cities have the largest numbers of members in the creative class as well as how cities stack up on the “child-friendly,” “gay,” and other indexes.
Florida says public and private investment should move away from physical capital and into creative capital, i.e. research and universities. But that is not enough. The promises of a creative economy must also aim at overcoming class divides and find ways of creating social cohesion.
But a more important insight is that creativity is not an end in itself; it must serve some end that will make our lives better. We can find this end by answering questions such as, “What kind of society do we want?” To be able find those answers--even to ask the questions--the creative class must not exist only within itself. Members of the creative class must be involved in more than their own lives and occupations and become involved and aware of their power to direct their energy to a larger good.
Reviewed by Eric Miller
