THE VISIONARY & THE FUTURIST

American Demographics, Oct 1, 2004

IT'S SURPRISING AND THRILLING WHEN A demographer gets famous, and seriously famous at that. Richard Florida's book, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, (Perseus Books Group, 2002), catapulted the H. John Heinz III School of public policy and management professor into the national spotlight last year. Florida's star rose as he wove a social and economic cautionary tale from a fundament of data on what people value. His work focuses on insights that more and more people's evolving self-image and identity - some 40 million of them in this country - is a creative one, putting intellect, judgment and esthetic sensibility into action as they pursue their livelihoods. This evolution changes basic value propositions underlying local, national and global economies - present and future. Central to Florida's compelling theory of the "Rise" and, imminently, the "Flight" of the creative class - a new book due in January - is the notion that true diversity is essential for organizations and places to attract cultural creatives.

Now, we know many of our ways of thinking about multiculturalism, and the models built to negotiate the space, are outdated - even obsolete. What Florida tries to tell us is that organizations, cities, regions, nations face challenges today, challenges that are critical to their ultimate health and well-being. Self-recognition, stripped of bureaucratic rhetoric, seems to be the best way to see what people really value.

When it comes to taking steps to be more a part of the "Rise" of the creative class and less a part of the "Flight," Florida's loath to paint a panacea. "Trying to attract the biotech engineer by offering everything from cash incentives to latte bars - that's not going to work," he says. "'It's not sufficient to go after just the high-end workers, just us,' one of these engineers once told me. 'In order to attract people in general, and especially people from foreign cultures and foreign countries, all classes need to be welcomed and to feel actively engaged in a place, because that's when a community is created.' He went on: 'People like us [referring here specifically to Indian-born engineers] want to live in a community where there are lots of immigrants of lots of classes and lots of skill-levels, from all walks of life. We want thriving churches and restaurants, music and groceries, schools where kids can meet other kids. We don't want to be seen just as a group of software engineers - that's elitist and racist at the same time - we want everyone welcomed.'"

We asked Richard Florida to join in conversation with American Demographics' resident futurist, Andrew Zolli. Simple questions. Straightforward responses. And, yes, some really challenging conclusions.

ZOLLI: To ground us, how big is the creative class? How do we measure it? What is the size of its economic contribution, domestically and worldwide? Is that contribution growing?

FLORIDA: In the U.S., the creative class is roughly 40 million people, or 30 percent of the workforce. The term "creative class" itself refers to idea- or innovation-based occupations, such as artists, engineers, designers, lawyers, knowledge-based professionals, health care, law, etc. Kevin Stolarick of Carnegie Mellon University estimated the economic impact of various class groups on U.S. wages and surprised us with his finding that the creative class accounts for just about half of all U.S. wages and salaries, or $1.7 trillion. That contribution will only grow in the near and distant future. According to Stolarick's predictions, which are based on extremely reliable Bureau of Labor stats, the creative class - which added 20 million jobs over past couple decades - is projected to continue at an equally rapid pace.

As for worldwide, that's a much harder thing to really get a grasp on. There are all kinds of problems with the way stats are collected, translating - or I should say, not translating - across borders. Nonetheless, we estimate that the creative class amounts to anywhere between 20 percent and 40 percent of a nation's workforce in most advanced, developed nations. This is a huge proportion, bigger than in the U.S. in several cases, which I'll dive more deeply into in my next book, The Flight of the Creative Class. [More on that below.]

ZOLLI: How do communities attract the creative class? Or do they home-grow? Do cities need a creative class strategy? If so, what elements are part of that?

FLORIDA: Of course certain things will always attract creative people: strong music and film scenes, good architecture, a high quality of life in general. But the point is not just to attract [some sort of] creative saviors from other regions. It's to make the place itself more creative, which will do two things: One, organically grow a city's or a region's own creativity and, two, serve as fertile ground for those who do wish to transplant there.

Strategies and planned amenities are rarely wholly successful at creating this kind of environment. Now, they help, of course. But they help in more subtle ways than we usually think of. By being a more socially, politically and civically open place, where anyone feels comfortable getting into public affairs. By not squelching what organic talent does exist, but instead giving it venues to express itself, whether in auditoriums, bars or parks. Education is, of course, a key component. Every place needs good K-12 and a good university or community college, the kind of places that constantly enrich both the lives and the labor skills of their communities.