This was the final part of Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class, so I was
left with thoughts about the part in particular and the book as a whole. This
part was about how cities form and what attracts the more creative people to
them. Through all his lists and statistics, Florida explained that towns with a
creative environment attract more creative people. He describes that the towns
need 3 things to attract and keep creative class people: technology, tolerance,
and talent. As I’ve said in previous reactions to the previous parts, I really
look forward to a move for all towns and cities to have these three things. And
I know that Richard Florida is right about these things becoming a priority
because I’ve seen it happen in my own city. In his list of different indexes,
Florida cites Atlanta as one of the lesser-ranked cities, but I think that it
has all three.
With my neighborhood specifically, I have seen it grow into
the type of artistic community that will attract and retain creative minded
people. Originally, it was a scary neighborhood to live in, with a high crime
rate and not very nice neighbors. In the city of Atlanta where there was
already technology, the neighborhood needed some more of the other two Ts to
become was it is today. At some point, people of all types began moving in.
This increase in tolerance led to an increase in creative people moving the
neighborhood. They were the talent. These talented, tolerant people turned the
community into the type of community the creative class wants. They started
their own business in the center of the community. Instead of giant concert
venues and movie screens, which Florida says is something people are beginning
to turn away from, family-owned restaurants with a stage for local musicians to
play on formed. The safer streets where people could leave their individual houses
and run in to people that they know became the “quasi-anonymous” community that
the new class of people looks for.
While Florida talks of this rise of a new class, he
belittles the purpose of the other classes. Towards the end of this part, he
even says that having a working or service class is a waste. He says that
creativity shouldn’t be honored in one person served by a bunch of other people
who don’t get to be creative. I disagree with this. Everyone needs help. If
everyone is coming up with new ideas, how can we feel anything but overwhelmed?
Products become popular and useful because they are special. Yes, one creative
person comes up with this idea. But those serving them creatively come up with
ways to help this idea become a reality. What more, those serving the creative
people are learning. The fashion mogul’s assistant is learning about the world
and business of fashion as he/she gets coffee and answers phone calls. The
assistant stays at their job until they learn enough, gets a better job that is
more demanding of their creativity, and someone replaces them.
In terms of the book as a whole, I found it to be a bit
long. He uses four parts to basically say the same things, only varying in some
further explanation or citing another source. There is a new class that is
forming, a class of people who prefer being creative in life and their work to
being practical and bored. They want to work and live with creative people and
live and work in places that foster their creativity. This is the whole point
of Florida’s book, summarized in a few sentences.
