What does the new U.S. administration have to do with creatives? A lot, according to Joel Kotkin, author of the best-sellers The City: A Global History and The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the American Landscape, and finishing a book on the American future. In his Forbes article, The Triumph of the Creative Class, Joel states,

“Obama’s triumph reflects a decisive shift in the economic center of gravity away from military contractors, manufacturers, agribusiness,

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If you’re looking for an effective precedent in how to jumpstart the creative economy in your city, you need to learn about CreateHere in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

On July 1, 2007 Helen Johnson and Josh McManus entrepreneurially initiated a three-month research and planning project focused on studying the engagement of creatives in the city with the intention of gaining a better understanding of how to retain and attract them, crucial to its transition to a post-industrial knowledge economy.

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While resources abound on who creatives are and the tremendous economic impact they have, what about how they think? What better wellspring than Psychology Today’s Ten paradoxical traits of the creative personality.

To summarize, the key personality traits have a common theme: complex, integrated, contradictory extremes, multitude, or how about bridging the line between order and chaos? In other words, creatives essentially tend to have a dual personality, but a complementary one. The ten

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If you’re a creative in Washington DC, then CreativesDC is just for you: “A beta community of free agents, entrepreneurs and creatives in DC, crowdsourcing places, events and scenes that inspire conversation.“

CreativesDC launched July 11, 2008 and its founding dozen members have already invited 100 of their fellow creatives (assume a 10% conversion rate) - that’s the power of community focused on a vision. By the end of July 15, the invite list will hit a thousand (again, a 10% conversion

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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

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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

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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

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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 -

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The most straightforward measure of the creative class in any city is by density; the number of creative class per square mile. You can download the
Creative Class Group’s rankings with each of their creative class densities here (it only consists of four top ten lists).  Below are the top three in each of the population range followed by their creative class members per square mile, with some unexpected cities outside of the usual suspects listed below.

Over one million
1. Los Angeles, CA -

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Who are the creatives?

Many of you in the know have heard about the Creative Class, the Cultural Creatives, and now, the Renaissance Generation. What is the difference between these groups, and if there is, how are they interrelated and what do they have to do with cool towns?

Cultural Creatives - 50 million in the U.S., aka the New Progressives, introduced by author Paul Ray in his book, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. These are the people who care, and

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It is happening in our cities now, and it rivals the Renaissance of the 1300s, according to author Patricia Martin in her new book, Rengen: The Rise of the Cultural Consumer - and What It Means to Your Business.

Who are the Rengens? Patricia says it’s more of a mindset than a specific demographic - “a thirty year swath of individuals who are living comtemporaneously”, fueled by a large group of boomers and a very large group of 16-28 year olds.

Why is there a renaissance happening now? At

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Some people have been wondering how the creative class relates to cooltowns and to Richard Florida, who coined the term, creative class.

True story: Back in 1999 while on a business trip to Pittsburgh, one of my contacts suggested I just had to go see a Carnegie Mellon economist professor named Richard Florida because we were speaking the proverbial ‘same language’. I literally dragged my business associate with me who happened to have a history of working in sports agencies, including the

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...and that’s an Eve Picker.  Trained as an architect/urban designer, Eve is probably Pittsburgh’s most innovative, entrepreneurial real estate developer with a reputation for transforming undesirable buildings into loft-oriented residence and office works of art.

She’s completed twelve developments from 2 units to 40,000 s.f. via her No Wall Productions real estate development company in Pittsburgh. Pictured is her 4920 Penn residential loft rentals, which has never had a lease vacancy since

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With all the press and writings on the creative class, what sometimes gets lost is the economic bottom line of its impact on cities.  These graphs, produced by Creative Class Group research partner Kevin Stolarick based on 2000 data, show it as clearly and succintly as anything out there.

The graphs show regional per capita income as it relates to % of the creative class workforce.  The top one represents all 331 Metropolitan Statistical Areas, and the lower one shows only regions with

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When looking for creative class benchmarks in culture, placemaking and policy, it’s becoming increasingly necessary to look overseas.  Two such countries that are on the creative rise are China and Great Britain.

China

The best place to start understanding China’s impact is in Fast Company magazine cover story, China’s New Creative Class, “You can sense it in the trendy restaurants and slick boutiques popping up in major cities - and in the gritty ex-warehouse and factory districts where

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The question for creative businesses is not if a cool place becomes popular and gentrified, but what to do when it is.

One answer is to join an artists cooperative and work with a group like Artspace that provides such attainable housing.

Another is to establish your own cooperative of sorts via a beta community, where you decide with a group what kinds of residential and commercial tenants to have, along the same lines as artist cooperatives do.

The best individual answer for your business

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You’ve all heard the qualitative stories about how artists and creatives move into a neighborhood and the property values start rising (then unfortunately, get priced out). However, we finally have quantitative evidence, as you can see by the chart above.

The hard proof comes as a result of a study released just this month by no other than Richard Florida, along with Charlotta Mellander, called There Goes the Neighborhood: How and Why Bohemians, Artists and Gays Effect Regional Housing Values

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We’ve gone through a series of very practical, tangible descriptions, profiles and case studies of the creatives, open source communities, and placemaking, but what’s missing perhaps is a more philosophic, abstract description of what kinds of communities this all represents.

For that I present the definition of open creative communities by Mark Kuznicki, a researcher, writer and strategy consultant in the areas of creative industries, economic development, innovation and cultural policy. 

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Who are the people that want to live in a ‘cool town’?  What are people in the creative class like?  If you’re a city official or business leader looking to attract creative entrepreneurs to spur job growth and grow a vibrant cultural scene, what mindset should you have when reaching out to them?  Rather than provide emotionless statistics, here are some values questions to be aware of to ensure you’re empathizing and not sending the wrong subconscious messages:

- Are you a regular visitor to

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People often ask me what I read on a daily basis as far as keeping on top of the industry.  I’ll tell you what exists, and what should exist.

Daily Sources that Exist:

The Creativity Exchange: This is Dr. Richard Florida’s blog on the creative class, and it’s fairly new. If you want to understand the market, this is where to go.
Planetizen: This is the portal for any news pertaining to visionary placemaking, cities, development and planning. It’s a bit comprehensive, so you still have to

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Did you know Paris, unlike New York, London and Tokyo, is not a 24/7 city? Most restaurants close on Sunday and do not serve after 10:30 pm in the evening; supermarkets close at 9 pm; long working hours are unheard of; the subway closes between 1 am and 5 am…

Does that make a difference? Tremendously, according to Christian Sautter, the deputy mayor in charge of economic development and finance, “When we came into office in 2001, we had a city proud of its history, its beauty, its tourism,

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Being that New York City is the pinnacle of urban living in the U.S., ever wonder what it’s current creative class strategy is?  The answer is provided by Beth Siegel, president of Mt. Auburn Associates where she provided a creative sector economic development strategy for NYC.  She also headed evaluations for the U.S. Economic Development Administration.  You can listen to her via her Smart City Radio interview.

Beth’s major accomplishment may be motivating Mayor Bloomberg in establishing a

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Because of the name, creative class, many perceive it to consist of those only in the arts, music, design and entertainment.  Not true at all.  Here’s the official definition from the author that started it all with Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida:  “I define the core of the Creative Class to include people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or new creative

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Continuing our look at yesterday’s entry on Maine’s Midcoast Magnet group of proactive creatives and entrepreneurs, here’s a look at where they perceive things are, where they’d like it to be, and how they plan to get there.

First, 400 of them were surveyed, and below are percentages of how many of them felt the particular asset was important to whether they stayed or left, followed by what’s actually there.  You can see why people flee.

Cost of living:  90%
- Perceived as above average: 

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The creative class population of Maine’s northern MidCoast region longed for more of the kinds of jobs, housing and entertainment/nightlife they felt was necessary to retain them and attract others to Maine, so they took it upon themselves to make that message clear and established Midcoast Magnet, “a non-profit organization of people dedicated to vibrant culture, entrepreneurship, and bringing people together socially and professionally”.  The governor was so impressed that he had the state

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