Florida
Back in the day (you know, two or three years ago) when I was still running about Greensboro on more regular basis than I do now, I heard a lot about Richard Florida and his idea that if you foster the creative class your community will thrive, etc... As I recall, the man himself spoke here a few times and some of Action Greensboro’s work at the time was organized around some of his ideas.
So when I got my copy of South Now in the mail this morning, I was struck by a story that contained this passage:
While a more detailed description of our findings for the U.S. South will be presented in a future issue of SouthNow, preliminary results do suggest a strong, positive relationship between economic growth and the more traditional measures of human capital, innovation and industrial diversification. (Ed note: emphasis mine. The author is talking about Florida’s theory in this next graph.) In contrast, creative population indicators demonstrate little or no additional growth effects. In fact, in the case of one measure, the melting-pot index, per capita income levels decline as the share of foreign-born in U.S. cities rises.
Here’s a link direct to the PDF file. (Go to page 10 once it’s open.)
Basically, the argument from this article seems to be that the things Florida argues are most important are things that come along after more basic bits of the economy are nailed down.
I believe our crack business team is delving into this further.
Comments (4)
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What's your business team doing on crack?
I often wondered where the money came from within the 'creative class'.
It always seemed to me the those folks tended to create a healthy 'vibe' for a town, but the real economic development (aka making money) had to come from those who sweat and stuff.
Posted on August 31, 2006 5:44 PM
Biz writers get all the good pharmaceuticals...don't ask me why.
My own thought is that this could be a classic case of confusing causation and correlation.
Posted on August 31, 2006 6:11 PM
Good point, Mark, that focusing only on the "creative class" as an economic development effort won't result in the growth we would want to see. That has always been the attitude of Action Greensboro -- that Florida's ideas are complementary and supportive of traditional economic development.
I think that Florida's central point, although he might not say it this way, is that a more open and innovative community will foster a more exciting quality of life, making the community more attractive to traditional companies.
We also think too narrowly about what the "creative class" is. It isn't just poets, writers, and what we immediately think of as creative. How about architects, software designers, inventors -- I think David Hoggard is an example of a creative class person in the way he thinks outside the box.
Posted on September 1, 2006 8:07 AM
I'm blushing here Skip... but you are too kind.
Truth is, I was just never able to locate that damn box in the first place
Posted on September 1, 2006 10:47 AM