Fisher Slams Florida (Richard, that is)
Today's dispatch in Raw Fisher is worth a look. It's essentially a nicely placed elbow by Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher at the world's most annoying sense-of-place guru, Richard Florida.
Florida is the renowned author of "The Rise of the Creative Class," a book that essentially advised dying cities to promote amenities that attract professionals in, well, the "creative class"--artists, software geeks, and the like.
Fisher notes that Florida has ditched the District, where he used to live in the Forest Hills neighborhood, in favor of Toronto, where he apparently got a great job offer. Fisher savages Florida's observation that in his new Toronto neighborhood, kids mobbed his front door on Halloween night, whereas in Forest Hills he got virtually no Trick-or-Treat traffic. The columnist lays low the thinker with this flourish:
For reasons that always baffled me, this great bard of urban vibrancy, a latter-day Jane Jacobs (the spiritual grandmother of the smart-growth movement), chose to live in about as anti-urban a city setting as could be had, nowhere near a Metro station, way up on a hill, in a beautiful setting right near Rock Creek Park, but well away from any of the amenities he preaches for in his books. Of course he didn't see kids on Halloween--what halfway intelligent kid would waste his time wandering around in a dark neighborhood of widely separated houses well off the main drag?
In the end, says Fisher, Florida chooses his home base not so much on the basis of his written beliefs about strong urban communities, but on the basis of the best job offer. Just like the rest of us, in other words.
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10:54 am
In 2008, many economists and policymakers have realized that excessive leveraging in the capital markets produced unsustainable real estate and asset valuations, and "paper wealth", that are now undergoing de-valuation as the over-leveraging unwinds in global real estate and capital markets. The WSJ, NYT, FT and Economists have done a good job documenting this.
Has anyone analyzed the connection between growth fueled by over-leveraging, and the rise and size of the Creative Class? To what degree did this recent over-leveraging create and support the salaries and bonuses of the "creative class" as so well documented by Richard Florida? This in reference to higher-income members of the "creative class" that can afford the lofts, the boutique hotels, the trendy restaurants and bars, and the arts centers that Dr. Florida documented in numerous booming real estate markets inhabited by the "Creative Class". This does not refer to creative individuals who are not sufficiently remunerated to support trendy restaurants or secure a mortgage for an upscale loft.
We need updated 2008 evaluations on how our recent excessive leveraging and asset valuations provided the markets and thus revenue sources for many of the firms, departments, business units, and cottage industries that employed many members of the "creative class" (or provided deep-pocketed clients) and thus made the Creative Class wealthy enough to support real estate booms.
It seems many urban planners and elected officials were attracted to the pitch of wooing the Creative Class not because they liked the idea of people finding their "inner-creative-self" and becoming self-actualized. Rather, planners and elected officials were sold on the economics of the Creative Class. Therefore, should we not begin quantitative analysis on what degree the Creative Class's 'beneficial economics' may turn out to be as transitory and unsustainable as the real estate booms they supported in the urban areas documented by Dr. Florida?
If locales continue to pursue the Creative Class in 2008 and beyond, will they still reap the expected economic benefits? Or will resources be mistakenly sent chasing something that was a “one-hit wonder”? Were the documented fiscal benefits of having a Creative Class really a late-stage manifestation of the "Irrational Exuberance" of the marketplace?
If the 2007-08 (and 09?) credit crunch and its de-leveraging produce a “new financial order” of fewer real estate bubbles and fewer developments viable only thru excessive leveraging, then will the future Creative Class be just as creative individually as in the past, yet just less relevant to the local economy because, in a post- deleveraged world, they earn less and are smaller in numbers? Maybe not in Silicon valley, Hollywood, Vancouver, and NYC…but what about in the many smaller secondary markets striving to sustain a local industry in technology, entertainment & media, the arts, and high finance? In this new Post-DeLeveraged World, can so many secondary markets expect to attract relevant numbers of high-paying members of the Creative Class and their employers or clients? Will the Creative Class still matter to urban planners and elected officials, or be primarily of interest only to studies and books on achieving personal career satisfaction and self-actualization?