The Creative Class

So says Richard Florida in "Geography Is Destiny" in BusinessWeek. Richard is author of two books, The Rise of the Creative Class and Flight of the Creative Class.

In Rise, Richard observes that what he defines as creative workers--entrepreneurs, musicians, scientists, designers, and engineers--aren't evenly distributed across the United States, or even clustered proportionately in its largest cities. Rather, some cities have a higher concentration of creative people because they're more hospitable to the lifestyle elements these workers enjoy. These cities are able to foster what he calls the three Ts: technology, tolerance, and talent. These city rankings list the most creative US cities as San Francisco, CA, Austin, TX, and Boston, MA. (Of interest to me, the Raleigh-Durham area is #6. Nearby Charlotte, NC is #28; and if you've ever been to Charlotte, well, these rankings do make some sense! (Let's just say it's easier to find sushi in the Triangle than in Charlotte.))

In Flight, Richard compares the United States to other countries. He ranks the most creative countries as Sweden, Japan, Finland, and the US.

Attracting creative people is important because they produce a lot of business value and economic wealth (think of towns with dying steel mills vs. ones with dot-com startups). Also, when creative people concentrate in an area, a critical mass of creativity occurs (think of Silicon Valley, a perfect storm of technical ability, entrepreneurialism, and venture capital). City planners are paying attention to what Richard has to say and trying to design their communities to be more attractive to creative people; bring in the people and the employers, and your city has a much better tax base and quality of life.

So, do you live in a creative city? Should you? Can you make your city more creative?