Richard Florida says small towns can’t go it alone anymore

Large, densely populated metropolitan areas have just about all the advantages in an era when economies increasingly are driven by innovation and creative people, says author and economic development guru Richard Florida.

By:
Norm Heikens
Indianapolis Star News

http://www.nasvf.org/web/allpress.nsf/pages/8648

Cities like Boston, San Francisco and New York indexed high in concentrations of creative people in Florida’s 2002 best-seller "The Rise of the Creative Class."

So, do small Indiana towns like Windom and Winchester have a chance? Can they produce their own creative people and attract others?

"It’s a tough one," Florida said in an interview. "It’s going to be very hard for rural towns to rebuild their towns if they just look inward. They’ve got to connect with a major metro."

The Carnegie Mellon University professor and Brookings Institution visiting scholar is scheduled to speak at 8 p.m. tonight at Butler University’s Atherton Union Reilly Room.

The key to survival will be making their communities so attractive that they lure creative people from large cities, Florida said. Invest in basics like good roads, he advised. But also improve quality of life with bed-and-breakfast inns and restaurants with good chefs; and don’t chase Wal-Marts and chain restaurants like Olive Garden that add nothing distinctive to a local environment.

"It’s, how do you want to develop your town?" Florida said. "I would start by making my town as beautiful as I could."

People living in cramped quarters in urban locations like Chicago increasingly will want to spend weekends in spacious second homes in small communities, he predicted.

Eventually, some of those people will escape the rat race and start businesses in their adopted towns and create jobs.

Towns too small to be considered metropolitan statistical areas receive little mention in his book. But they’re important in Indiana.

Nearly 10 percent, or 576,899, Hoosiers live in towns of 5,000 or fewer, according to Carol Rogers, a demographer at the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University.

Florida said smaller towns can tap into academic communities if they are close to college towns.

They also can leverage their wits to make expensive glassware, specialty cheeses and other boutiques products.

Tonight at Butler, Florida will discuss how the United States must make known to the world that it welcomes immigrants and tolerates alternative lifestyles in order to attract the creative intellects necessary to maintain an economic edge.

His book argues that nearly a third of the nation’s work force not only derives its identity from creativity but also toils in creation-driven occupations ranging from architecture to design to engineering, and that that class must be encouraged by appealing to its interests.