The Creative Class Backlash – ‘Creative Class’ author sets record straight

If Richard Florida didn’t know before, he has found out lately that no good deed goes unpunished.

The huge success of his 2002 book, "The Rise of the Creative Class," and its economic prescription for declining cities – technology, talent and tolerance – has brought a backlash from both the right and left.

Carolyn Jack
Plain Dealer Arts Reporter

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The one side accuses Florida, formerly an economic-development professor at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University and now on the faculty of George Mason University School of Public Policy, of having a "gay agenda" or an "arts agenda" and of undermining the Judeo-Christian foundations of our society. The other asserts that he has abandoned the working class in favor of promoting a group of elites.

Thursday at the University of Akron, an amused but clearly exasperated Florida spelled out exactly where he – and the national economy – stands.

Noting that he is neither gay nor an artist, but simply a student of economic development, Florida said the findings in his work are based on a reality that people are going to have to confront sooner or later.

"Our demography has changed. Like it or not," he told a UA Forum Series audience at E.J. Thomas Hall. "We are living through a demographic earthquake," in which only 8 percent of Americans grow up in a "Leave It to Beaver"-style family.

Women are breadwinners; singles, grandparents and gays are raising kids. A large number of American CEOs are immigrants and so are many of those earning graduate degrees in high-tech fields, including 50 percent in computer science, Florida said.

Tolerance – an "aggressive acceptance" of all different kinds of people – is now essential to economic success, he said, because every human being has creative talent. That talent is necessary to the changing U.S. economy, where creative-sector workers now represent 30 percent of the work force.

It won’t stop there, Florida asserted, saying that the economy is in the middle of changing from heavy industry to creative, knowledge-based work such as design, engineering, science, arts, law, medicine and business entrepreneurship.

The transformation is as great as the Industrial Revolution that took America from farming to manufacturing. To compete in this changing world, "You gotta create the talent. [Creativity] is the great growth engine of our time," he said.

Florida noted that some people have mistaken his findings to mean a city needs to turn itself into a "yuppie playground" for high-paid workers to frolic in. But that’s not the point, he said.

Yes, "the jobs are moving to the people" because creative workers tend to cluster in what they think are desirable places, such as Boston, Seattle, Austin and North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

But what makes those places desirable is not amenities first, he said. Instead, the primary draw is an atmosphere of acceptance, including creative freedom, moral support for new ideas and different ways of life, that leads to thriving arts, nightlife, intellectual stimulation and booming business.

Florida emphasized the role of universities in attracting and developing creativity and fostering tolerance. He also stressed the role of elected officials such as Vincent "Buddy" Cianci, the former mayor of Providence, R.I., who helped morph a dying rust-belt town into an economically exciting place by updating policy, investing in artists and other entrepreneurs and working with the gay community.

While drolly acknowledging that Cianci is currently on a 64-month "vacation" in federal prison for corruption, Florida said Cianci presided over one of the biggest-ever revitalizations of an American city.

"That’s the kind of leadership," he said.

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© 2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.