Richard Florida, who’s like the Bono of urban philosophies, has become synonymous with his Creative Class theory: that cities of the future will only be successful if they attract and retain knowledge-based workers. When he moved to Toronto a couple of years ago, the creative-city-in-training was thrilled by his arrival—our national newspaper even gave him a column—but according to this article in The Star, the curtain has been pulled, and Florida is now being accused as being elitist by the very creative class he wants to cultivate.
I saw him speak about five years ago, and while it’s definitely compelling stuff, every cultural and bureaucratic meeting I attended for about a year afterwards was layered with annoying Floridese. Sadly, few cities have the kind of visionary leadership (other than perhaps former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray) to actually turn this philosophy into reality.
That said, I am optimistic about the fact that Florida’s Creative Class Group, his Washington-based consulting firm, will be helping to select the architectural firm for the new central library at Spring Garden and Queen. Look for a decision soon, followed by public consultations.
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2010.
It would be great if his firm could help with the new library but even he says that “…attracting and retaining high-quality talent, versus a singular focus on infrastructure (such as sports stadiums, iconic buildings) would be a better primary use of a city’s resources for long-term prosperity.”
We need to invest more money in the large arts community that Halifax has, which is much larger then most cites our size. The library is a good start.
Open your minds and think for yourself.
Professionals in Ec Dev know his philosophies to be no more than observations and bears no basis in fact – there is not a single example of his creative class nonsense ever working.
Why don’t we focus on using the abundant talents of the local “creative class” to make a good selection? We have an architecture school, an art college and lots of local expertise in visual culture. HRM now has policies in place for the operation of professional selection committees for public art, so we have models for running an architectural competition. I hope that the competition casts a wide (national, international) net for the winning proposal, but do we need to hire consultants from away to manage the competition itself?
RICHARD FLORIDA est un grand géographe qui a pu analyser l’importance de la classe créative dans les grandes agglomérations car d’ici 20ans tous sera jouer sur l’innovation et la créativité qui seront la locomtive de developpement des pays , mais qu’en est-il pour les pays en voie en developpement?