Richard Florida’s the Rise of the Creative Class: and How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life

Introduction

This book gives us a challenging new way to think about why we live as we do today and where we might be heading. ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’ weaves a storytelling with masses of new and updated research. Richard Florida traces the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing role of creativity in our economy.

It chronicles the ongoing sea of change in people's choices and attitudes, and shows not only what's happening but also how it stems from a fundamental economic change. It now comprises more than thirty percent of the entire workforce whom the choices have already had a huge economic impact.

Just as William Whyte's 1956 classic, ‘The Organization Man’ that showed how the organizational ethos of that age permeated every aspect of life; Florida describes a society in which the creative ethos is increasingly dominant.

He explains the rise of a new social class that he labels the creative class. Members include scientists, engineers, architects, educators, writers, artists, and entertainers. He defines this class as those whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology, and new creative content.

In general this group shares common characteristics, such as creativity, individuality, diversity, and merit. The author estimates that this group has 38 million members, constitutes more than 30 percent of the U.S. workforce, and profoundly influences work and lifestyle issues.

The purpose of this book is to examine how and why we value creativity more highly than ever and cultivate it more intensely.

Criticisms

Richard Florida's ‘The Rise of the Creative Class and How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life’ is at the forefront of an influential meme that's being taken quite seriously by regional economic planners around the nation. The magic formula at the heart of Florida's book is that planning communities that will attract the creative type leads to economic prosperity. (Brayton, 2003)

According to Florida, the creative class is one of two major economic classes of the new economy. It is the super-creative core that constitutes 12 percent of the American workforce. The core of this class in 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 content. Join to these are the creative professionals in business, finance, law and health care who engage in complex problem solving that involves a great deal of independent judgment and requires high levels of education or human capital. However, he neglects an essential line of demarcation: who owns the rights to innovation. It is the topic that Florida never tackles. (Brayton, 2003)

On a conceptual level, , it's hard to accept Florida's claim that the undeniable shift from an industrial economy to an information and services economy implies a parallel shift from productivity to creativity since according to him, the creativity that defines the common interests of intellectual-property lawyers and freelance writers is strongly associated with the Bohemian lifestyle preference of the bourgeois-bohemian. Thus, if the creativity has replaced productivity as the measure of a worker’s status in new economy, then the economic power of the new economic elite rests on monopolistic control of intellectual property. (Brayton, 2003)

It is also argue that while the creative class is unquestionably a blessing to the economy as a whole; at the regional level the picture is hardly so rosy. Florida says that they choose cities for their tolerant environments and diverse populations as well as good jobs. This is where gays and bohemians come in. Towns that have lots of them, as Florida argues, are more likely to have creative-class workers, high-tech industry and, as a result, strong economic growth. Not because there are disproportionate numbers of gays and bohemians in high-tech jobs, he explains, but because their presence signals an open-minded and varied community of the sort that appeals to software engineers and entrepreneurs. Most economists would agree, but that doesn't mean they buy Florida's creative capital theory as the explanation. (Brayton, 2003)

Richard Florida has effectively linked the concepts of a lively arts community and economic development. He shows with a great deal of statistics, that those cities with the greatest percentage of artists also have the greatest rates of economic growth. He attributes this to the creative class looking for a community in which they find an active arts community, a lively street environment, diversity and tolerance. These above average earners then move to those communities that offer these assets and the opportunity to participate in outdoor activities. Only then do they look for a job. However, ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’ is not a blueprint for the redevelopment of a city but it is a good guidepost to determine the direction. (as cited in Cheapest Textbooks.com, 2006)

Point of View

‘The Rise of Creative Class’ is very bold and seductive. It challenges our current orthodoxy. In classical thinking, all things being equal, people migrate primarily to places where they can find jobs, rather than to a liberal city with only a blind faith that they will find employment. Jobs exist because highly creative people built them. It is this elite group that is the strongest magnets pulling other creative people to them, rather than to the city per se.

Florida's book is extremely well written. His theories are tightly argued, and backed up with a wealth of research data. However, I don’t believe that the creative class exists. . His idea of a creative class is encompassing since he is just redefining middle class professionals. What he studied are just changes in interests and values of the growing middle class.

The creative class, according to Florida is people in occupations which require high level of training and education. Many people are in these types of job at present. My point is that people can be found in all occupations and walks of life. We cannot equate the level of difficulty in performing a job to the element of creativity in it. There are creative workers but there is no creative class.

Take for example the case of Hong Kong. It is seen that there is no such creative class here since Hong Kong people tend to seek for money returned quietly. They did not develop creative industries but merely enhancing technology and innovations. People are just creative workers.