In classifying a whole host of occupations as "creative," our leading pop economist overstates the influence of urban professionals.
By Karrie Jacobs, from Metropolis Magazine
Now cities are back in fashion, thick with new museum buildings, loft-style apartments, noodle bars, and boutique hotels. This trend naturally has its own pundit, Richard Florida, a professor of regional economic development at Carnegie Mellon and swami of the "Creative Class." Like Garreau, Florida has come along to codify and capture a movement already in progress. He seized on a process that's been playing out in American cities really since they hit bottom in the 1970s: the Soho phenomenon, where artists reclaim undervalued real estate, give it a new purpose and value, and make it appealing to the real estate industry again. The influx of artists, culture, and hipster enterprise has now remade so many urban places large and small that it's possible to forget that the Edge Cities and their denizens are still out there (except, perhaps, at election time). But we don't talk about them anymore. Instead we talk about the Creative Class. >LinkPosted by Admin at March 3, 2005 08:05 AM