Jon Talton
Arizona Republic columnist
Jul. 22, 2004

It's not often that a professor achieves rock-star status, but Richard Florida essentially went platinum two years ago with his book, The Rise of the Creative Class. He was lionized as the leading interpreter of a sea change in the economy. And he faced roaring critics, as any audacious thinker does.

Something else was at work: Florida's ideas appeared to undermine a generation of consultants, economic-development experts and business professors. For example, he says someone who's been in a rock band or the theater has learned more entrepreneurial skills than the typical business student.

Florida was back in Phoenix this week (he was a star attraction at a New Times downtown forum last year) speaking to a group at the Rodel Foundation. His new book, The Flight of the Creative Class, is due in March. But this was also a time to clear up misconceptions about Rise that even Florida groupies may hold.

He has neither an arts agenda nor a diversity agenda, he says. Rather, he's a self-described student of how we generate wealth and economies. It so happens that the cities best at generating wealth also have abundant cultural assets and are welcoming of all kinds of people, including gays and minorities.

The Creative Class? "It's not about artsy-fartsy, everybody's a poet," Florida says. And it's not just tech jobs. "It's about the nature of your involvement in work."

The class is not exclusive. "Every human being is creative," he says, and in the book 38 million Americans who work in jobs where the value-added comes from their minds. Creativity is becoming the primary engine of wealth creation. Florida argues it is as profound a shift as the move from agriculture to industry.

This has critical implications for cities. Florida's research shows that 90 percent of the places in America are exporting top talent. The winners, such as San Francisco, can sustain such stresses as high housing prices because these workers want to be in a creative center. Healthier examples to study are Seattle and the Twin Cities, he says.

Technology and university research are not enough.

Florida offers the example of Pittsburgh, where he lived for 17 years. The city was the world capital of steelmaking technology, as well as the dynamo of Westinghouse and a host of major companies and other sectors.

"Now it's lost it all," he says. "It's smaller than Mesa." Its two universities would seed companies - Lycos is one - that would move.

Nor do low taxes or low business costs alone make the difference.

"Creativity is the new raw material and the source is human beings. How to grow, attract and nurture talent is the thing."

Since writing Rise, Florida says he's more clear that the trend is no panacea. It won't solve social problems, and may make some worse, such as income disparity. His big worry is that America is too distracted to realize that the worldwide competition for creative talent is "the greatest economic threat we've faced in our mature history."

Two remedies are a dramatic expansion of higher education, and improving the quality of lower-end service jobs so workers can get a ladder into creative fields.

For Phoenix, he warned that we can't see our competition as merely Austin or San Diego (much less between city and suburbs), but cities around the world. And, creativity needs density.

Or, as he put it, "You sprawl, you die."

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