The Rise of the Creative Class
Not certain that I buy into any of the arguments that Richard Florida is making here, and from what I’ve read I don’t think that he buys into his own argument anymore either. He seems to have walked back many of the key points he has put forward in the book in later years.
That said, this was worth reading for the graphs and dataset analysis on various cities in the US alone. It is a great showcase of some awesome datasets all in one place. I was very fascinated by all of the data in this book, the way the book itself uses this data is a complete snorefest. I don’t think his analysis is meaningful at all.
The curation of the datasets alone was worth skimming through, but you as a reader (if you have travelled across the US to any meaningful extent) will probably have a more insightful analysis of it than the author.
Not really sure I had much other thought related to this text. I think it is generally true that many towns and cities have different types of setups and situations that are attuned to certain types of people. By that I mean, certain elements attract certain types of people and repel others.
This is about as much of the texts arguments that I agree with, different areas are conducive to different things. Everything else in his analysis about the mixing of hipster culture and elitist culture are just kind of whatever. This is a pile of misunderstood correlations by someone who doesn’t understand culture at all.
The entire thesis of this book, at least the parts that I skimmed, is that stimulating the creative class causes cities to grow in economically meaningful ways, and thus we can draw some weird urban planning implications from this data. Most attempts that cities make to follow this type of branding and advice end up failing.
The astroturfed methodology that is frequently cited by urban planners simply does not work in my opinion. The types of creativity that is safe, sanitized, and voted on by committee for a general public is not the types of things that make a city interesting to live in.
It doesn’t really matter how many public art murals you commission or how many symphonic institutes you give grants to, these kinds of stimulus don’t do anything to attract the creative class to a given area. Instead, they feel tepid and lame.
The way creative or hipster groups evolve in the present is usually a somewhat organic process. It is often a matter of being in the right place at the right time with several strong personalities that have disposable incomes. It is often a lot more personality driven behind the scenes than anyone ever imagines. This author just doesn’t get that and thinks it can be forced by idiotic urban planning groups and real estate developers.