Richard Florida is a very smart man and he, quite rightly, receives accolades from both the business-oriented community as well as those working in social theory.
One of Florida’s most widely known theories is that of the rise of the Creative Class. I won’t go in-depth into that idea, as I’m not an expert in his work, but one notion that has always bothered me is that we should be gearing our cities for this class of people by making physical mobility as easy as possible. In our new economy, that of industrial decline, Florida argues that some places are simply un-salvageable. Logically, then, the Creative Class would leave these places.
But what about those places that can no longer retain these creative folks? Josh Leon writes at Next American City:
“Not everyone can afford to move and the poorest are left behind amidst urban blight and neglect. What do we do about the immobile? What do we do with cities that are net losers of the “creative class”? For this so-called creative brand of capitalism, the uncreative are someone else’s problem. As Florida says, “We need to be clear that ultimately, we can’t stop the decline of some places, and that we would be foolish to try.” I would say that this is not at all clear. There is an inherent inhumanity in leaving people and their cities in the dust. Besides, the cost of finding ways to get so-called obsolete classes of workers gainfully employed where they live is looking preferable to the social costs of managing huge ghost cities and permanent spatial inequality.”
What will happen with these places? Will we see thousands of Flint, Michigans dotting the new urban landscape? Where will these “uncreative” people go?
Perhaps we should rethink the way we organize our economies. While Florida is right in predicting that the Creative Class will become mobile and move where and whenever they like to “reach their potential” (ie high-paying corporate jobs with a lot of income), is this what we really want? Perhaps I am biased by a love of tradition and a connection to a specific place. I’ve always lamented the lack of familial traditions and local cultural habits. Maybe it’s my inclination towards communitarian ways of thought.
We should think about ways that we can limit mass migrations. After all, mass migration is usually an indicator of severe social stress–both on the places that are left behind (talented folks leave, family and social ties are severed) and the destinations (large influxes of the unemployed, infrastructure stress, increased costs of living). Florida’s Creative Class really isn’t as free as they would like to think because they are forced to move from place to place to find economic stability. Rather than an economy that caters to people, it forces people to cater to their economy. Think Newfoundlanders piling into planes to come to Alberta for jobs, while their local economies are pillaged by multinationals like Wal-Mart.
The new economy should be built around the needs and desires of people, rather than the opposite. Places like Detroit and depressed areas of Ontario still have plenty of infrastructure and one hell of a lot of people that need jobs and lives beyond the ones afforded by the mobile economy. Rather than simply abandoning these people and places, there may be a tremendous opportunity to shift these places to sustainable living, with local, vibrant economies. They may be based on agriculture, again this time locally. They might rotate around retooling old plants to make ecologically responsible products. Hell, they might even be based around services performed by citizens for each other. They might even be economies that allow people to be creative in previously un-creative professions, turning manufacturers back into artisans and “associates” into community members.
We’ve tried it the other way. Why not try something different and use what we have in new ways, where stability is the key to success, rather than “creative destruction“?
(H/T Mike Soron)
