On "The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited" by Richard Florida ***

I had read Florida’s theories in various Citylab articles and so thought he would be a good writer to end my Econ list with. As a whole, the book I chose had much to offer, but it was also quite familiar to me, full of standard educated thinking of the past twenty years: diversity good, city good, etc. And much of the book seemed to be Florida pushing his theory on everything. It reminded me of how some scholars will create a theory and then write book after book using said theory. It becomes a personal industry. Despite my interest in the subject and Florida’s easy style, I found myself not as enthralled as I would have thought. What follows are my loose notes as I proceeded chapter by chapter.

Businesses move to where the talent, tech, and tolerance are. They don’t move to where there are ample office parks and infrastructure. Where the kind of people you want to employ live or want to live is where your company wants to be. Creative jobs make up a large portion of economy and tend to be best paying. We moved from manufacturing to service but it’s creative where the real growth is happening.

What goes into creativity? There is a contradiction between creativity and organization. The latter stifles the former, but without the latter creativity can’t progress far. It takes more than one person usually to make an idea successful, but often just the one person provides the spark. Creativity flourishes in open and diverse societies. It is often the product of a person’s focus—or ability to do so. Groups can take away from that focus. When organization is too strong, creativity ceases. But the stability of organization also provides the opportunity for creativity to thrive.

The creative class has grown as a percentage of the workforce over the past century. Its wages are higher than the working class or the service class. Its openness, however, is set back by the way it is dominated by Asian and white ethnicities. During economic crisis it experienced fewer job losses than the working class or service class. But what is the creative class? Florida’s definition is a bit hard to figure out. Anyone who has to think or make decisions, it seems, is creative class. Obviously someone who packs boxes all day based on a form denoting where each item should go is service sector; however, if someone has to figure out how best to pack those boxes, is that creative?

Motivating factors in work are less money and more the challenge, stability, and flexibility. So is the claim, based on surveys. That’s why professions like machine operator lacked skilled employees but we have a surplus of hairdressers, which is considered more rewarding. But some of Florida’s statistics seem not to match his claims as much as he makes them out to be. He makes the point that money is less a motivation for type of work than a motivation for dissatisfaction. Highest paid employees tend to enjoy work more. As such, I’m not sure I completely buy his point.

Next is a chapter on flexibility and security and the way creative jobs offer the former but sometimes at the cost of the latter. Companies and employees both seem less inclined to partner for as long as in the past. People move around a lot. Often these are lateral moves rather than hierarchical ones. Bosses no longer know the jobs of their employees. Businesses are flat, with various experts who move from company to company.

Company cultures have changed to allow more flexibility and casualness in aiding creative types. Gone are dress codes. Offices are open, to encourage collaboration. But sometimes such changes are merely for show. Adding ping pong might be a way to make things casual, but if the office isn’t truly flexible and expects long hours, it’s not really conducive to long term creatives.

Time has become the most difficult resource to maintain. Creatives work more hours. And they merge work and home more. In that sense, the old factory worker often ends up with more leisure time than the so-called leisure class. Beyond that people in creative professions often multitask, making time seem even more scarce.

The creative class prefers active leisure to passive. They run, hike, rock climb. They stay in shape. They aren’t big on spectator sports. Passive activity is more the domain of the working class. The creative values experiences. They’re more likely to go to small clubs than huge concerts, which demand too much time and money and don’t mix experiences. (I couldn’t quite figure out Florida’s reasoning for why this is so. Personally I’d venture that many of the creative class jobs are sit-down jobs, whereas working class is more physical labor. Different kind of rest in one’s leisure time.)

The creative class is a strange mix of Protestant work ethic and bohemianism. In the past these two were antithetical. But the two categories have merged in the modern world, such that neither category really exists. The creative antisocial tech person is also the hard worker. Geekiness has gone hip.

Florida turns next to place, noting that while technologically the world has become flatter, places are actually becoming more specialized and less egalitarian. Cities keep growing even though tech allows for rural resourcing. Why? because people of the same creative sort like to be together to bounce ideas off in person. A diverse city offers more ways to get ideas and to work with others in similar fields. (This seems to contradict itself. If all musicians slowly gravitate to Nashville, then in some ways Nashville becomes less diverse—it’s all musicians, whereas writers go to nyc.)

Creative class regions often have higher wages than working or service class, which lends to inequality.

Creative class cities have high levels of technology, talent, and tolerance. But Florida talks mostly about the latter. Where foreigners, homosexuals, and bohemians are tolerated, creativity excels. His comments on foreign born were particularly interesting in our current state. Twenty-five percent of patents are made by foreign born, even though they make up just twelve percent of the population. In other words, hard immigration policies contribute to the brain drain and less economic development. communities that are open to people of all types make for more openness to new ideas as well—to creativity. Want to know where houses will go up in value? Follow where the artists go. They are the first step to gentrification. The one exception to tolerance and diversity? Integration. It seems that that works opposite to these other factors, which is strange, but shows the persistence of racism. My bet would be that a truly tolerant and integrated place would do even better economically through willingness to embrace new ideas, but the continued presence of racism means deep integration doesn’t lend to prosperity.

Florida spends half a chapter defending his theory versus others, most especially the human capital theory, which dovetails closely. But while that one measures raw wealth, creative class theory takes into account where that wealth comes from and thus better measures productivity. If all wealth is inherited it is not really producing anything versus if wealth is coming from wages. The latter is what creative class theory values.

Next, Florida looks at creative class around the world and which countries score high. He also addresses social inequality and notes that the United States is more an outlier than standard because many creative class economies are actually quite egalitarian, much more so than the United States.

Where do people want to live and what sort of relations do they want to have? Florida claims that modern society isn’t about independence and accompanying loneliness. Most people don’t want close communities. They want loose communities—only a few close friends but lots of acquaintances. Loose social ties actually provide more opportunities for work.

He then looks at what makes places attractive and lists these features: a thick job market (many jobs in a profession available, since few expect to stay with the same company), third places to hang out, dating opportunities, diversity, authenticity, and “scenes.” Basic services are important, but people want more than that. They want cultural opportunities and nice scenery.

If a city sets out to attract creative types and to thus grow, what should it do? Attracting a business isn’t enough. It needs to make itself attractive to a diverse set of people, including the less stable young and single. They may not stay, but they are not likely to return with families if there was nothing for them before.

There’s talk of the move back to the city that is common now—or was until COVID. And there’s discussion of the need for density and the advantage of big population. Where density kills is when it starts to kill off variety at the street level. Question: if dense city cores are best for creativity and bold economy, how did suburbs take over for a time and why? I’ve got to think there was an economic advantage for such a system that it would become common for a while.

My question was almost immediately what Florida turned to next—namely by looking at why so many people actually like suburbs and what those suburbs bring to the creative class. His point seems to be that suburbs are an integral part of large metros, and the best suburbs actually find ways to mimic the advantages of that dense core within the suburb.

Next, Florida turns to inequality, which he notes tends to be greater in creative class areas, but then he makes the argument that even so, lower class people are still overall better off in such areas generally. This seems to be variation on the rising tide argument of conservative economics. But the anecdotes at the start of the chapter seem to weigh against it. When a city becomes too expensive for its artists, that creative core becomes the plaything of only the most successful. I mean I guess there are still creative scenes in those places, but I’ve never understood how those scenes hang on. Do they? 

I would think they don’t, or they somehow transform. I think of Deep Ellum in Dallas. It was a hip area when I lived in Fort Worth twenty-five years ago, but I’m told it’s all gone now, full of high cost businesses. It seemed headed that way even when I lived close by, wherein the funkiness was getting priced out and the hipness fading.

Florida seems to believe creative, working, and service class is more important than high, middle, and low class. Yes, those with money are generally happier, but once a base level is reached, creative class are happier than working class. Areas with more creative class are healthier, have lower gun violence, better dental care, and are less likely to drive to work (versus walk, bike, or use public transport).

In his conclusion, Florida makes the case for the creative class to become politically active and notes that we are in a process of revolution not unlike that of the Industrial Revolution. He provides various suggestions, including helping working and service class jobs pay more by making them more creative, making education emphasize creativity more, making cities denser,  encouraging diversity, providing better means to make workers more mobile with health care and retirement not tied to jobs, and recalibrating how we measure growth.