The Reading Room

Who’s Your City - How the Creative Economy is Making
Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life

Jon Linton

Richard Florida
Random House, Canada, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-35696-3

Just to explain the rather unusual title of the book, Richard Florida is saying that cities have personalities, and that people are most comfortable when they live in a city that embraces their own personality type. For many of us, this means cities in which we feel creative; where we are able to meet our potential; where we are provided with lots of opportunities; cities that are exciting for us to be in, etc. In short, people feel most comfortable where there is a psychological fit between the character of the city (“who it is”) and that of the individual. So, a hip young software developer like my nephew Kenny feels right at home in a hip young town like Seattle. His more settled father, who runs an established seed business, fits right in to the more traditional and elegant lifestyle offered by a smaller city. In a highly mobile world, where creative types have a wide variety of options as to where to live, the choice of the type of community that suits them is increasingly an issue. So, if you’re a city, this is important stuff if you want to attract creative types. It has implications for development, marketing, branding … well, you get the idea – if you’re reading this you’re likely an intelligent creative type yourself.

If you don’t know Richard Florida by now, chances are that you’ve either been in a coma or are from the planet Pluto.¹ In case you don’t, he is the newly-minted Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI), a global think-tank located at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. His previous books The Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class (the latter reviewed in this journal) presented the concept of the “creative class” – those individuals who are particularly adept at generating new ideas and starting new businesses. Florida is the inventor of the much-touted “bohemian index” and “gay index,” which measure different aspects of this creative class. He has drawn some interesting correlations between these measures and above-average performance in economic growth and development (essentially saying that areas that are known for being more diverse, interesting, and tolerant attract more creative types, who then contribute economically). These ideas have generated some controversy, but the underlying thesis makes intuitive sense and his theories have pretty much held their own.

Which brings us to this book. There are five sections. In the first, Florida presents the idea that the world is “spiky” – that when one looks at certain indicators of economic growth and prosperity like “patents applied for,” there are certain clusters or spikes worldwide where this occurs. North America has huge spikes in major cities, as do Asia and Europe. Africa and South America have none. He is at some pains to point out that this is in direct contradiction to what theorists like Thomas Friedman (author of The World is Flat) are saying. Technology has not proved to be the great leveler, enabling businesses to be run from anywhere across the globe. In fact, place is increasingly important, and new businesses tend to cluster in areas of innovation and economic activity as never before. (He calls this the “clustering force.”) Friedman’s message is about the death of distance, and the unimportance of place; Florida’s is the exact opposite – place is perhaps more significant than ever.

“It’s a compelling notion [the idea that the world is flat] but it’s wrong. Today’s key economic factors – talent, innovation and creativity – are not distributed evenly across the global economy. They concentrate in specific locations. It’s obvious how major new innovations in communications and transportation allow economic activity to spread out all over the world. What’s less obvious is the incredible power of what I call the clustering force. In today’s creative economy, the real source of economic growth comes from the clustering and concentration of talented and productive people. New ideas are generated and our productivity increases when we locate close to one another in cities and regions. The clustering force makes each of us more productive, which in turn makes the places we inhabit much more productive, generating new increases in output and wealth.”(p. 9)

Having established the significance and importance of “place”, the second part of the book charts how certain places offer more economic opportunity than others in particular sectors – music in Nashville, filmmaking in Hollywood, high finance in New York, and so on – and discusses the mix of factors that give one area an edge over another. In this regard, housing, the single largest purchase most of us will ever make, is a key factor in particular. Here, Florida introduces the notion of the “mobile” and the “rooted.” The mobile (who, he infers, are more likely to be the sorts of creative types that will really help to foster and create development and investment in a community) are motivated more by economic opportunity and learning potential, and the “rooted” more by family connections and obligations and, to be blunt, inertia. Clearly, communities want to attract those valuable mobile types.

Part three of the book – entitled intriguingly, “The Geography of Happiness” – presents the results of a large-scale survey of 28,000 individuals, called by Florida the Place and Happiness Survey. The basic conclusions of this are that place (i.e. where one chooses to live) was just about as important to a person’s overall happiness as their job, personal finances, and choice of spouse or partner. And, in a remarkable chapter entitled “Cities Have Personalities Too,” he identifies five personality types among mobile people. These are (1) neuroticism; (2) agreeableness; (3) extraversion; (4) conscientiousness; and (5) open-to-experience (meaning willing to try new experiences, take risks, etc.). People are drawn to the type of city that matches their personality type – but it is those cites that attract the open-to-experience types that really do well:

“The more I consider these results the more I am convinced that the clustering of open-to-experience personalities is a driving factor in regional innovation and economic growth. Openness is a key factor in the ability to attract and capitalize on diversity. At the bottom, regional economic growth requires two dimensions – depth and breadth. Depth comes from specialization and developing deep experience in certain key fields. Breadth comes from diversity and open-mindedness required to accept, generate and convert new ideas. Places that are innovative and that can sustain themselves over the long run – places like London, New York, or the San Francisco Bay area – are those than can constantly develop and capitalize upon breadth. Their resilience stems from more than the level of education, skill, or technology in those areas. It is part and parcel of their personality profile – their ability to attract open-to-experience people.”(p. 212)

Part four of the book tracks how the ideal place for an individual will change as they move from stage to stage in their lives. The “psychological fit” mentioned above will inevitably change as individuals require and seek out different amenities and challenges to suit the different stages in their lives, so different types of communities are appealing to different people at different stages of life. Here, Florida identifies the major stages as moving away from home to go to college or find a job (or a mate), having kids, becoming an empty nester, and moving into retirement. Each of these major stages can trigger a relocation decision. An appendix in the book maps communities in the US that are rated as ideal for each of these stages.

Finally, part five of the book is essentially a “self help manual” describing a process that an individual can follow in order to find out the most suitable community for their particular interests and stage in life. It builds on all of the findings and conclusions in the previous sections of the book.

So, in summary:

• the “creative class” is the key segment in society that generates innovation and investment;
• individuals in the creative class tend to be highly mobile, and many will gravitate towards those communities where they feel most personally comfortable and that affords them economic and cultural opportunity;
• where they live is as important to them as their job, their spouse, and their overall financial situation, so they give serious thought to where they will live; and
• this preference for a place to live may (likely will) change as they go through various stages in life.

As with his other books, there are extensive appendices that present charts of data comparing various cities and regions on a number of dimensions of attractiveness.

So, there are clear implications for municipalities in terms of appealing to and attracting the creative class, and in projecting the “personality” that will attract them. (Think of how your municipality “brands” and promotes itself to the market.) As with Florida’s other books, Who’s Your City? is simple yet fascinating: an entertaining and enlightening read. MW

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Footnotes:

¹ Oops, sorry, Pluto isn't a planet anymore, is it?

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From the February 2009 issue of Municipal World

Check out Jon’s bio on the Municipal World website.