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March 14, 2008

Is establishing a creative community like herding cats?

It's not easy, according to research findings in Richard Florida's Who's Your City?">Who's Your City?. The following excerpt from his book highlighting the findings of another colleague, Christopher Peterson Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, best explains the cloud problem of development a creative community akin to herding cats.

"Peterson's independent analysis of his strengths data and my own creativity measures found a direct relationship between character strengths - such as appreciation of beauty, creativity, curiosity, and a love of learning - and creativity index for cities. However, Peterson fond a negative relationship between creative cities and strengths that connect people to one another - such as modesty, gratitude, spirituality, teamwork, kindness, and fairness. It may very well be that creative cities have higher concentrations of people who basic personality makeup is doing their own thing. This jibes with my research team's findings which show that regional creativity and innovation are related to diversity and openness, but not to social capital of the sort Robert Putnam has written about. Putnam's most recent research has also found that diversity hinders social capital. This is all very troubling news for our sense of community and social cohesion. The very strengths that make places diverse and creative seem to damage our social capital and community commitment."

A solution. This is a very real challenge many cities have either recognized or yet to recognize, but one that CoolTown Beta Communities was designed to overcome. Read about the solution in more detail in the primer, Crowdsourcing Cool Places for Creatives, featured on the CoolTown Beta Communities home page.

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March 13, 2008

Happiness best reflected by the beauty of place

Continuing our look at Richard Florida's new book, Who's Your City?, one eye-opening study Rich's team conducted was their Place and Happiness Survey.

The survey received 27,000 responses on what things matter the most to U.S. Americans in their communities, which were later organized into five major categories: economic and personal security (jobs, perceptions of crime and safety); basic services (schools, affordable housing, transportation); leadership (business and civic, opportunity for participation); openness (tolerance, diversity); and aesthetics (physical beauty, amenities, cultural offerings).

The rankings?

1. Aesthetics - Physical beauty of our communities comes first, followed by outdoor parks, playgrounds, and trails. The bottom line? The physical beauty and aesthetics of place does not only matter to the wealthy (as the myth goes), it matters to everyone.
2. Basic services - Jobs and housing are paramount, as usual, but a surprising/not surprising second?
3. Openness - A close third, and the primary correlation with innovation, human capital, income and housing value.
4. Economic and Personal Security - Money and safety aren't overriding decision-makers.
5. Leadership - This may have something to do with the lack of connection between citizen participation and actual civic and business action, which is the underlying problem identification and solution provision behind the document, Remixing Cities.

Learn more at the Who's Your City? website.

Image source: Istanbul, Turkey by redxdress.

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March 12, 2008

Why the personality of your place matters

One of my favorite graphics in Richard Florida's new book, Who's Your City?, are the Personality Maps, based on the study, The Geography Distribution of Big Five Personality Traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness).

Two psychologists who worked on the study, Sam Gosling and Jason Rentfrow; Kevin Stolarick, responsible for much of the statistical analysis in Rich's work, collaborated with Rich through surveys and visual analysis to produce the personality maps you see here. So what personalities correlated the most with innovation, human capital, income and housing values? (which in turn are all associated with the creative class, and we know why they matter.)

Positive correlation
Openness to experience people - acceptance 'opens' the door to new ideas and diversity, and thus innovation and productivity.

Little to no correlation
Extraverted people - associated with management and sales (services).
Agreeable people - associated with manufacturing.

Negative correlation
Neurotic people - ultra-creatives tend to be emotionally stable, less volatile, more resilient.
Conscientious people - this is surprising, of course, but it's important to note that this rises to the top when associated with openness. Alone however, they tend to be rule-followers ('doing what's right' is often pre-defined) and struggle with being creative.

Graphic used with permission from the Creative Class Group, and viewable on the Who's Your City? website.

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March 11, 2008

The growing economic impact of the creative class

Richard Florida's Who's Your City?, profiled in the previous entry and available starting today, focuses on why place matters dearly in attracting the creative class. However, the book provides an effective visual (above) and an entire section among four on why the creative class matters in the first place.

Notice the rise in the creative class workforce along with services, and the decline in manufacturing and agriculture, especially to overseas. However, what's especially striking is the bar graphs in the lower part of the graphic, showing that while the creative class has 31% of the workforce compared to 45.7% for services, it produces 49.8% of wages paid compared to 30.6% for services. Even more compelling is that the creative class represents 70% of all discretionary income compared to 13% for services.

The good news for the local economy is that creative class jobs are not nearly as outsourceable as services and manufacturing, and they also add to the local arts, culture and entertainment scenes much more effectively as well.

Graphic used with permission from the Creative Class Group, and viewable on the Who's Your City? website.

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March 9, 2008

Richard Florida's new book, Who's Your City?

First there was the best-selling Rise of the Creative Class that introduced the creative class and the creative economy in the U.S., followed by Flight of the Creative Class which took a global perspective. On March 10, 2008, economist and author Richard Florida presents Who's Your City?, which is best explained by its tagline, How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.

The book is organized into four parts.

Part I. Why Place Matters - explains why place is best described in terms of mega-regions, of which there are 40 in the world.

Part II. The Wealth of Places describes why the creative class is a primary reason these 40 mega-regions are the economic and cultural engines of the world.

Part III. The Geography of Happiness - looks beyond jobs and identifies the primary factors (aesthetics, openness) and personalities cities possess that are much better predictors of attracting the creative class.

Part IV. Where We Live Now - identifies the three big moves we make in our lifetime - post graduation/career development; when we have kids; and when they leave/we retire.

Finally, Rich provides a final chapter with tools to help you find your ideal city. You can start with the place finder on the Who's Your City? website, which is a fundamental complement to the book.

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