In the article ‘Cities and Creative Class’, the
author Richard Florida seeks to identify the rise of the ‘Creative Class’ , a
new social class which are basically knowledge workers, whose economic function
is to create new ideas, new technology and/or creative content. Richard Florida
argues that the character of the cities is defined by this creative class and
reverses the traditional approach of Urban development by propagating that it
is the ‘place’ rather than ‘corporation’ that matters to this creative class
people. Florida’s hypothesis is substantiated by many regions of the world where
urban forms are dominated by the small cities which are not historical in
nature and have origin which is recent in nature and dominated by technology
and talent attracting large capital investment by Multi-National Corporations e.g.
Silicon Valley and Orange County in California and Bavaria in Germany. Rise of
such cities have brought into focus the concept of creative cities and policies
in many parts of the world are so directed to generate such creative magnets
for talent pool and foster economic growth. Deindustrialization of the western
manufacturing cities, the rise of the service industry and globalization of the
world all account for the growth of such creative cites and the dependence on
technology and Innovation for economic growth make them significant in the
history and geography of the world. In strict technological sense the parameter
of creativity of such cities is judged by the number of patents registered by
the Companies and creative people residing in the city.
Since creativity is created by the created by
the individuals, the natural corollary is that innovation can take place
anywhere especially in the present age of technology, but from Richard
Florida’s point of view Creativity needs an environment to thrive, that is
Creativity is cultural and contagious, so cities invests in urban interventions
to attract the creative souls of the world. The counter argument is put by
Glaeser, Kolko and Saiz, 2001 who state that instead, the productive advantage
that one area has over another is driven mostly by the people. Urban success
comes from being an attractive “consumer city” for high skill people[1].
Their advice for the mayors of the cities is to focus on the basic commodities
desired by those with skills rather than creating a funky, hip, gay friendly bohemian
town.
Taking the Creative Class argument to the next
level, Richard Florida in his 2006 book, ‘The Flight of the Creative Class’,
states that this global competition for creative talent will be the defining
economic issue of the 21st century[2]. Florida
argues that post 9/11 American policies have become less supportive for
attracting this creative class which can have serious consequences for the US
in terms of their economic growth and global supremacy. In the latest book ‘The
Great Reset’, Richard Florida states that the economic recession in America
calls for new policies to foster economic growth in cities by working on the
‘spatial fix’, an idea he borrowed from the economic geographer, David Harvey.
He calls Americans to shun their love for home ownership and argues for rent
based urban form that can have more creative class mobility. Richard Florida
says “The places that thrive today ,are those with the highest velocity of
ideas, the highest density of talented and creative people, and the highest
rate of metabolism[3].”
Top Down or
Bottom Up
One wonders, how this City Doctor, Richard Florida’s
prescription of top down approach towards the development of cities, with focus
on the elite creative class, will affect the health of the cities. What can be
the potential side effects of this Creative class therapy? Does focusing too much on the culture of
creativity and high influx of creative immigrants make the cities and their
real estate markets unrealistically high making the cities unsustainable in the
long run. If the issue is the attractiveness of cities, Do people rank this
creative class space as the top priority in deciding the cities to live in or Are
interested in more fundamental factors such as security, health, education,
infrastructure and political environment.
Native Class
In my opinion governments should focus on the ‘Native
Class’ rather than the Creative Class for the simple reason that the native
people make the city not the immigrants and cities should not be designed for
the mobile creative class. Creative class people are disloyal to the cities in
the sense that if the cities fail to excite them then they move to new cities
resulting in the flight of capital and creative people, so why concentrate so
much on this class? Secondly the mandate to govern is not given to the
government by the immigrants but by the native class so policies should be tailored
as per the aspirations of the native class. An Indian Banker who is not loyal
to India cannot be loyal to USA, so the moment he sees a recession he is the
first person to leave US and return to India, so why focus on him? Why make
policies to attract him? His only motive is to earn money and he will do it
where he sees opportunity. So why ‘create’ Creative cities for such opportunist
creative class?
[1] Review
of Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class, Edward L. Glaeser
[2] http://www.creativeclass.com/richard_florida/books/the_flight_of_the_creative_class,
accessed 14 March, 2012.
[3] http://www.fastcompany.com/1637457/richard-floridas-creative-destruction,
accessed 14 March, 2012.
