The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life

by Richard Florida

The Washington Monthly 2002 Annual Political Book Award Winner

The Rise of the Creative Class gives us a provocative new way to think about why we live as we do today-and where we might be headed. Weaving 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. Just as William Whyte's 1956 classic The Organization Man 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. Millions of us are beginning to work and live much as creative types like artists and scientists always have-with the result that our values and tastes, our personal relationships, our choices of where to live, and even our sense and use of time are changing. Leading the shift are the nearly 38 million Americans in many diverse fields who create for a living-the Creative Class. The Rise of the Creative Class 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. The Creative Class now comprises more than thirty percent of the entire workforce. Their choices have already had a huge economic impact. In the future they will determine how the workplace is organized, what companies will prosper or go bankrupt, and even which cities will thrive or wither.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Sociology, Business, Urban Planning, Urbanism, Cultural

434 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2002

About the author

Richard Florida (born 1957 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American urban studies theorist.
Richard Florida's focus is on social and economic theory. He is currently a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management, at the University of Toronto. He also heads a private consulting firm, the Creative Class Group.
Prof. Florida received a PhD from Columbia University in 1986. Prior to joining George Mason University's School of Public Policy, where he spent two years, he taught at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College in Pittsburgh from 1987 to 2005. He was named a Senior Editor at The Atlantic in March 2011 after serving as a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com for a year.

Reviews

[Andrew]

Oh, Richard Florida. So close and yet so far. I think his heart is in the right place, but, as a member of Florida's vaunted "creative class," I must kindly tell him his theory is fucked. And here's why:

--It's written from an unbelievably myopic, elite perspective. Much like Thomas Friedman, Florida seems utterly incapable of seeing the world beyond the veil of privilege that protects him and his fellow business gurus from the real world.

--Everything is bolstered by spurious quantitative methods without any real qualitative perspective, and even then, the quantitative research seems contradictory, unreliable, and insufficient.

--Florida does acknowledge the arguments of those who believe that the current "creative economy" leads to marginalization, but doesn't give them any serious regard. Instead, he just tells a glossy anecdote.

--He has a complete misunderstanding of Bohemianism. Sorry, but liking the Beatles hasn't been considered "Bohemian" for a long time, but he seems to still think that the once-subversive is still subversive. This subsumption of subversion into bourgeois culture isn't a new phenomenon. See: Stravinsky, Picasso, Byron.

--When I do agree with him, it's because he just presents an obvious point in a slick way. And how appalled am I when he invokes thinkers I admire-- Daniel Bell, Jane Jacobs, Manuel Castells-- to buttress his limp arguments.

[Jimt43 · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is an example (and there are many) of someone who had an idea good enough for an HBR article (as Florida did write as I recall) but no where near enough info and interesting ideas to produce a 400+ page epistle. I stopped long ago at page 225 and have just decided to give up on ever finishing it. Hint, read his HBR article and you will have everything you need to know.

[Damian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had been hearing about and looking for this book for a long time, though my interest started to wane when I learned that the book dated all the way back to the ancient days of the early 2000s -- after all, if there was such a thing as a "creative class", then surely the last decade has been an important one, perhaps a definitional one, for it. So how relevant really would it be to read about Creatives in an age before the internet really got into gear?

So I was happy to find out that in fact an all new 10th anniversary edition had recently been released, with newer data, more chapters, and some coverage of the last decade.

So what is the "Creative Class"? This is how Florida (the author, not the state) came up with the idea: as an economist interested in the lifecycle of cities, he was looking for a set of factors that accounted for robust economic growth in some cities and stagnation in others. What most economists already knew was that much of the growth was taking place among the well-educated in progressive areas, and there already existed certain indices, such as the "Human Capital index" (essentially a measure of how much education has been invested into the population of a place) that already did fairly well at explaining growth. But Florida felt he could do better, and in putting together his "Creativity index" (which correlated better with economic growth than other indices) he began to think that the index provided clues to an important social, economic and cultural shift that is happening around us.

Here's the idea: the Working class has been on the decline in terms of population size and earning potential for a long time now. The Service Class, though huge, has also seen wages stagnate or drop. But offsetting these declines are a massive category of (often) new jobs that can't be automated or outsourced: these are, to paraphrase, jobs in which creative problem-solving plays a major role. These are the creative jobs, and the highly trained, (usually) highly educated workers who fill them are the Creative Class.

To contrast for a moment, with an index like Human Capital, which simply provides an accounting of the years of education collectively received by a population, for Florida it is the content of the job that matters, rather than level of education. Does it matter, in short, that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't get college degrees? Education doesn't matter. The job matters.

This aspect of the Creativity Index appears sneaky to me: in effect it allows Florida to "thread the needle", as it were, in deciding which jobs count as "creative" and which don't. After all, unlike education level, the "creativity content" of a job is subjective, and indeed, around the "creative core" of those jobs we would colloquially describe as "creative" (engineers, scientists and researchers, entrepreneurs, artists, writers, etc.) Florida wraps a layer of "supporting creatives", such as lawyers, medical practitioners, accountants, etc. This is the infrastructural support needed to get the core creative work done, and probably doesn't hurt Florida's Index as a correlative of economic growth that many of these supporting jobs are fantastically lucrative.

So what we're left with is some very dissatisfying semantics: is an accountant or lawyer REALLY "creative" in the same sense that a film-maker or graphic designer is? My feeling, personally is no, but what is clear is that "The Problem Solving Class" rings clunky next to "Creative Class". So we let Florida get away with his dubious semantics and his needle-threading and we see where he goes from there.

And where he goes is what makes the book really exciting.

Because having defined a "Creative Class" he goes on to characterize it, and to characterize the places where the Creative Class thrives. And what I found exciting about this part of the book is that he was very clearly talking about ME and all my friends.

We are a largely urban and urbane bunch. We are shockingly unmaterialistic. We chose location over square footage. We spend money on "experiences" not "stuff." We value "street-level culture" rather than "high culture". We value the creative ecology, the mixing of many disciplines and kinds of people. We are stimulated by change and variety and challenged assumptions.

One of my favorite and most telling examples from the book relates to the creative worker's decision-making around where to live. Two generations ago, if a factory opened up somewhere, or a research facility, a worker might be expected to move across the country, and settle down there (no matter how culturally desolate the locale) for a long career at that company. Today, by contrast, workers expect to spend no more than 1-2 years at a given workplace -- their loyalty is to their "personal brand", not a corporation. As they don't expect to be at any company for the long haul, they chose where to live based on lifestyle fit and job ecology rather than the presence of any particular job. Furthermore, once a critical mass of creative workers concentrate in a location, companies with the means will soon attempt to capitalize on it by opening up satellite offices. So attractive lifestyle and economic opportunity, far from being at odds as they might have been in previous decades, now seem to go hand-in-hand.

In short, whereas two generations ago workers moved to where the jobs were, today the jobs move to where the workers are.

This example is particularly interesting because it leads directly to the question that Florida might in fact be most interested in: from a policy standpoint, what can a city do to bring is Creatives and the jobs that go with them?

Florida's answer might be summarized with "Bike lanes, not stadiums". He is a big believer in "authenticity and lifestyle" as big selling points for the creative class. Let people live in dense, mixed-use neighborhoods, let them bike and walk and take public transportation to work. Let them eat good food, listen to live music, engage in public art and local activism. All of this constitutes the "street-level culture" he talks about so much in the book.

(It is somewhat suspicious that this all seems to reflect such straightforwardly progressive values. Indeed Florida includes "Tolerance" as one of his "Three Ts", three factors crucial for a city hoping to make it in the Creative economy (the other two are "technology" and "talent"). Are there really no significant examples of strong-growth American cities that DON'T look like a liberal urban nirvana? Does 21st century capitalist society really have so strong a liberal bias?)

This is particularly interesting because it contradicts much of the urban growth conventional wisdom that is still strongly reflected in city economic policy all over the country. According to conventional wisdom, the path to job growth is through tax incentives to large corporations (or entire industries) to try to entice them to open a local factory or office). According to conventional wisdom, cultural projects might include an opera house, or a new sports stadium. All of this is wrong, says Florida. The workers you want will be drawn by a job ecology, not a single large factory-like one-size-fits-all job provider. The opera is stultifying, old-fashioned and inauthentic. And sports stadiums DEPRESS urban vibrancy, creating large wastelands that gets lots of foot (and actual) traffic a couple times a week, but nobody wants to live there. What instead the city needs to sell itself on is the lifestyle. Get that right and the workers and the jobs will come.

(How true is that? I'm not sure -- could Seattle have become the out-sized cultural and technological force it's become without first Boeing and then Microsoft, two massive factory-like corporations, setting up shop there and providing great wages to vast swaths of the local middle class? Can a new urban center skip this "industrial creative" phase and jump straight to the "lifestyle creative" phase? Hard to know.)

Florida has prescriptions even broader than that: what do we do, in the end, about the many people who are being left behind by the creative economy, those in the working and service classes whose wages have been stagnating for decades? His answer is an intriguing one: make their jobs more creative! Bring them into the creative class by giving them more decision-making and problem-solving responsibility, more freedom to improvise. More opportunity to customize and adapt to local situations. Do all that, and you will have workers who are happier, more empowered, and more productive enough to justify their better wages.

By the way, if you want to get at the data that (presumably) back up all of Florida's assertions, you will find no shortage of it liberally sprinkled throughout the book, though I'll admit it takes a more rigorous statistical mind than my own to evaluate the thoroughness of his analysis. If you're someone who is more interested on the culture of the Creative class, all these charts and tables may well be overboard. As a technical discussion, I can't say that part of it is all that riveting.

Nonetheless. My pleasure in reading this book was one of self-recognition -- this book GETS me, and people like me. And maybe I'm part of something big that's going on right now all around us. And it's incredibly exciting -- maybe similar to the excitement of a teenager getting handed the car keys for the first time -- that cities might be starting to design themselves around my way of thinking and seeing the world, rather than my grandfather's.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

yeah, it was pretty bad. it was not as bad as it could've been -- it makes some critiques of precarity which I honestly wasn't expecting -- but ultimately it's a fairly nauseating celebration of the blending of bohemian aesthetics and bourgeois lifestyles. also LOL at the idea that a job in "high-end sales" is a "core creative industry". the creative class *is* the old professional class. there's no change there except in people's ideas of cool, which now arguably have a greater focus on the appropriative consumption of difference.

the central thesis of this book is so ridiculous and unsupported that it renders the whole thing useless. you should only read it if, like me, you're doing some kind of research into the influence of the concept of the "creative class" on urban and social planning and you need to check out this unfortunately rather influential primary source.

[Juli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my expectations from and about community and society. If there are enough freaks, there won't be a need to conform - and oh MY! There are certainly enough freaks to go around.
Seriously, I think the creative class is coming hot on the heels of the industrialized society - I only hope I live long enough to see it really affect the deep south.

[Yaroslav · Rating 4 out of 5]

сьогодні немає сил і настрою писати відгук (((
але він обов'язково буде, бо книга досить важлива

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been present in a "creative" field for the last 4 years, this book offered nothing new in terms of insight, but was nonetheless an excellent collection of ideas put forward in an enthusiastic and progressive form. There are flaws, as there often are with books written primarily for a business audience but from a (more or less) sociological perspective. A comment from another reader review is both correct and completely irrelevant:

"total lack of understanding of the human effects of globalization, almost entirely from an elite privileged perspective, almost completely worthless"

Florida's claim that that a growing creative workforce will alleviate perpetuating poverty through low-level service jobs is dubious. But the comment above seems to assume that Florida is a university trained sociologist/anthropologist with a responsibility to the subaltern community he is representing. Only he's not representing anyone but the elite middle class. And why not? He's an economist who is paid to consult with business groups and city councils on how to generate business using this creative class model. And in that he succeeds.

Florida is most convincing when he demonstrates that the United States is in a position where to not foster the creative class is reduce its role as a competitor in the global marketplace. Creativity and innovation are the driving forces in most of today's most profitable industries. The media industry, pharmaceuticals, computer, genetic and nanotechnology are all creative inductries that absolutely require creative, project-oriented individual. Florida makes a good case for encouraging this. I don't know about his statistics, but they certainly convinve a lot of people. His premise is sound, and as someone who sees the positive effects of a workplace based on generating creativity from is workers, I think his ideas should be taken seriously by American businesses.

[Oleh Dukas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Не секрет тепер, що успішні ті міста, які вміють використовувати свій людський потенціал. Найбільшим людським потенціалом є здатність творити, продукувати ідеї. Новий креативний клас це люди, які творять нову економіку у сферах ІТ-технологій, освіти, культури, мистецтва, мас-медіа і т. д. Ця книга для мене стала своєрідним узагальненням того, які умови повинні бути створені у містах, щоб у них міг успішно функціонувати креативний клас, який творить наступну після індустріальної епоху.

За Флорідою для успішного розвитку креативної економіки необхідні три "Т": технології (рівень інновацій), таланти (кількість представників креативного класу) та толерантність (сприйняття мігрантів та взагалі інакшості). Також він ще виділяє одну складову - якість місця, тобто дружнього до людини міського простору (парки, пішохідні зони,велодоріжки, тощо).

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

good god. richard florida presents the case that a new "creative class" is emerging in the u.s., which is going to usher in a new era of prosperity and creativity.

total lack of understanding of the human effects of globalization, almost entirely from an elite privileged perspective, almost completely worthless.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an educator, this book was the third I have read of a similar vein - starting with the World is Flat, then Pink's A Whole New Mind, and now - The Rise of the Creative Class.

I read the newer version with the updated stats - that raised Denver's place in the Creative strata. The Creative Economy is a definite topic of discussion in our state, how to grab it, use it, and feed it. I think about that as a K-12 educator - how do we keep in step with the trends so that we can fulfill the expectations of our communities - creating students that can be successful, strong thinkers, flexible in their approach and literate within a wide variety of genre, content, and context.

[Tamara]

Both smug and petulant.

Not, I guess, anything terribly objectionable as such, but so poorly, tone-deafly written, dripping with elitism and myopia, peppered with anecdotes and personal reflections so cliched and anodyne I don't believe they actually happened, even if they did, and buttressed - poorly - with extremely broad and very thinly analysed data that is largely unconvincing.

Makes one embarassed to recognize any shade oneself, which I suppose is as great a contribution to class consciousness as could be made here, if not in the way intended.

[moony]

i have not frankly read this book but i did read some parts for class and it was barely readable. the guy’s theories are way off and he gives a white guy who’s gonna simplify sociology for his own argument’s sake vibes. for your own good better just read Pratt’s (2008) critique on this lol.

[s · Rating 5 out of 5]

i liked what one reviewer said--"if only they didn't simply corroborate the well-established idea that the "creative class" is simply a gentrification tool, rather than a sound investment and long-term backbone of a civic identity."

the book is fantastic--although the data is soft if using it purely for academic purposes. however, it only goes to show that the "creative class" is a "class" and as such will work in powerful and cutthroat ways.

on a side note--i read this book several years ago and it seems ironic that now we have plunged into a horrid recession--go "creative class". don't get me wrong--i'm not blaming entrepreneurs or start-ups for the biggest failed real estate/banking deals of our time. creative does not equal ponzie scheme. but, we creative class folk (i'll include myself here) are often deluded into thinking that work/love/life/passion should be all-in-one. work is work--that's why it's called work.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

pretty horrifying. at its best it presents interesting statistics about the work and lifestyle habits of a radically changing work force. but rarely does it ever analyze the consequences or meaning of these figures. it describes the factors of gentrification without really recognizing the fruits of the “creative class” as anything but a productive foece

EDIT: I was immediately inspired to quit my creative class job after reading this book. this book has “changed my life.” I’m working a better job now I guess LOL

[Nathan Albright · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was an unmitigated failure on a variety of levels.  For one, in reading this book the author's agenda, especially his pro-gay and anti-family agenda, and even anti-working class agenda, was particularly evident, and something he hammered over and over again.  In reading this book I felt like the uncool but decent city leaders who would tell the reader to stop talking so much about gays and bohemians, because that is exactly how I felt reading this garbage.  On top of that, which would have made the book bad enough, the author engages in some fun lies with statistics where he tries to tie a self-created "creative index" with tolerance of gays and bohemians, when pro-gay and pro-bohemian attitudes are already included as half of his creative index, slanting the deck as to what counts as "creative."  And that is not even getting into the problems that the author's ideas of creative professions are not very creative at all, and many of them purveyors of very uncreative b.s. that simply happens to be the sort of jobs that are being made more and more commonly these days.  This book is a train wreck, something to stare in horror at but not something that is really worth taking very seriously.

This book of a bit more than 300 pages is divided into four parts and 17 chapters.  The author begins with a preface, and the first chapter posits a transformation of everyday life that has been accompanied by a group of supposedly "creative" professions including IT and media professions which have gotten a lot less creative in the past few decades (1).  After this the author looks at three aspects of a supposed creative age (I), namely, the creative ethos (2), the creative economy (3), and the creative class (4), where the author largely praises the lack of loyalty even as he notes some of the anxiety about job security that haunts many young people.  The author spends five chapters looking at work (II), comparing the machine shop and the hair salon (5), looking at the horizontal labor market (6), looking at the white collar workplace (7), discussing the management of creativity (8), and discussing a supposed time warp (9) that affects some areas.  The author spends a couple of chapters talking about life and leisure (III) in looking at the experiential life of many young people (10), as well as a rant on the big morph (11).  Then the author closes with a series of chapters on community (IV) where he discusses the power of place (12), looks at the geography of creativity (13), discusses technology, talent, and tolerance (14), discusses social and creative capital (15), looks at how creative communities are built (16), and what happens as the creative class grows up (17).

Overall, this book is a disaster.  Rarely has an author's bias made him so unable to deal critically with his own cant about creativity and supposedly creative classes.  The author fails to deal with some fundamental and basic questions regarding his thesis:  are the people he writes about actually creative or not?  The same professions the author defines as being a creative class are slammed by other writers as being bulls*** jobs with some justice.  On top of that, the author seeks to defend his thesis by some illegitimate statistical analysis by which he confounds the factor he is looking for (namely the elusive creativity within communities) with some of the social factors he wishes to promote (like the presence of various artsy and immoral populations).  The fact that many of the cities he slams for their lack of openness remain economically viable cities whose job growth drives a great deal of America's economic success only indicates that the author is a blind and biased guide whose agenda gets in the way of any insights he might provide.  If you're not part of the choir that the author is preaching to, this book is definitely worth skipping altogether.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carnegie Mellon University professor, Richard Florida provides an astute and extensively researched explanation of the massive cultural shifts in U.S. society over the last 30 years that have caused an entirely new social class to develop: the Creative Class. Numbering close to 40 million people, the creative class consists of workers whose intellectual energy is primarily applied to innovation, problem solving, and development of new products or services. A creative class member is distinguished from a working class or service class person by the fact that he or she has to figure out how to do something as opposed to just doing something that has already been figured out. The primary premise of Florida's book is that creative work brings the greatest economic benefit to society and distinct geographical regions with superior economic climates are forming around the creative workforce while leaving other areas stuck in the past and struggling to sustain their economies.

Creative workers occupy many fields like engineering, architecture, medicine, law, art, entertainment, design, media, education, and the sciences. Because the demands of creative work do not necessarily fit into a traditional regimented work day with precise start and stop times, employees have been needing and often getting flexible schedules, homier work environments, and lax dress codes. The growth of the creative workforce is also changing society. The recreational needs of creative workers are much different than shift workers of previous generations. Creative workers like individual sports like bicycling far more than team sports because they want to do something on their schedules, which are often erratic.

Creative workers deliver so much economic benefit to society because of the innovation that they are capable of producing. Whole new massive industries like personal computing emerged from passionate creative entrepreneurs. Creative workers can enable any business or industry to rise above its competitors by creating superior manufacturing systems, better management systems, better customer service, and of course brand new products that energize marketplaces.

Florida makes the point that the creative professionals of today are vastly different than the professionals of a few decades ago when the organizational model prevailed. During the organizational age, massive companies controlled their workforces with strict command and control models that eventually stifled innovation. However, the workers, if they towed the company line, could realistically expect lifetime employment and promotions as they climbed the corporate ladder. The ethos of the organizational age dissolved during the 1990s when companies across the board decided to downsize and outsource. Gone was the expectation of lifetime employment, and many workers, especially creative workers, quickly learned that loyalty to a company was a waste of time because they could get the sack at any moment regardless of doing good work. As a result, creative workers of all types have shown a great tendency, as documented by Florida's research, to congregate in regions that offer many job opportunities related to their chosen fields so they can find new jobs as necessary. Creative workers are also very finicky about where they live because they want to live in culturally stimulating environments with robust music scenes, theater, street festivals, and so forth. They also crave nice outdoor recreation areas like bike paths and green spaces as opposed to organized entertainments like theme parks. In fact, tasteless things like box stores and chain restaurants, which Florida labels generica, are anathema to creative workers.

Creative workers in general also crave tolerant societies in which to live. They need environments that easily welcome their quirky and often downright nerdy selves. This is why they tend to be attracted to enclaves of Bohemian style people like artists, writers, and musicians. Such tolerant areas, like the obvious example of San Francisco, almost always have strong gay communities too. Florida found a significant correlation between flourishing gay regions and the presence of creative economies. This was not because all gay people are creative, but gay people face a lot of discrimination and hatred and therefore congregate in tolerant regions. Therefore social tolerance was a leading indicator of a strong economic climate when compared to socially intolerant regions.

In addition to tolerance, creative economies also need access to technology, which is usually promoted by the presence of research universities. Talent was the final requirement for creating a strong creative economic region. Studies strongly showed that talented creative workers were likely to move to regions that had both tolerance and technologically innovative universities and companies. If one element was missing, then a break away creative economy could not come fully into bloom.

As a result, whole industries are starting to relocate to the robust centers of creative workforces so they can have talent pools from which to draw. Major examples of such regions cited by Florida were Austin, Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle.

The author also seeks with this book to make creative workers conscious of their emerging and distinctive class. They have in general been very self absorbed, but Florida entreats them to play a more active role in the shaping of the country because the old school forces of the organizational age persist and tend to pursue ill-conceived and outdated projects that do not help the economy and sometimes even make it worse. The author basically harps on the wasted billions of dollars that governments and economic development corporations slather onto sports stadiums and shopping malls, which are proven to do nothing to enliven local economies. A successful economic future for the country is dependent on creative workers hauling the rest of the country into the twenty first century. Florida wants creative class members to push society toward a more creative model so that the vast untapped creative resources of people in other classes can be nourished instead of wasted. This would make people happier and improve the economy.

This book is tremendously well written. The author has an engaging style that is supported by abundant facts, statistics, and anecdotes. All creative workers should find that it rings very true with their personal experiences, beliefs, and tastes. I know it did for me. After reading this book, I consider myself enlightened to a reality that I felt but was not aware of intellectually or consciously. For anyone interested in understanding systemic problems with the U.S. economy and social trends, The Rise of the Creative Class is highly recommended and truly fascinating.

[Miguel Gonzalez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Out of date thinking about Millennials that may be revived with a solid update (2018).

[Mark Pemble · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every Mayor, city councilperson, City manager, and Economic development specialist should read this book. .. But start about halfway through.

[Hossein Nasrabadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

در فریلند معرفی شد که فریلنسینگ یک موضوع اجتماعی است

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had read Florida’s theories in various Citylab articles and so thought he would be a good writer to end my Econ list with. As a whole, the book I chose had much to offer, but it was also quite familiar to me, full of standard educated thinking of the past twenty years: diversity good, city good, etc. And much of the book seemed to be Florida pushing his theory on everything. It reminded me of how some scholars will create a theory and then write book after book using said theory. It becomes a personal industry. Despite my interest in the subject and Florida’s easy style, I found myself not as enthralled as I would have thought. What follows are my loose notes as I proceeded chapter by chapter.

Businesses move to where the talent, tech, and tolerance are. They don’t move to where there are ample office parks and infrastructure. Where the kind of people you want to employ live or want to live is where your company wants to be. Creative jobs make up a large portion of economy and tend to be best paying. We moved from manufacturing to service but it’s creative where the real growth is happening.

What goes into creativity? There is a contradiction between creativity and organization. The latter stifles the former, but without the latter creativity can’t progress far. It takes more than one person usually to make an idea successful, but often just the one person provides the spark. Creativity flourishes in open and diverse societies. It is often the product of a person’s focus—or ability to do so. Groups can take away from that focus. When organization is too strong, creativity ceases. But the stability of organization also provides the opportunity for creativity to thrive.

The creative class has grown as a percentage of the workforce over the past century. Its wages are higher than the working class or the service class. Its openness, however, is set back by the way it is dominated by Asian and white ethnicities. During economic crisis it experienced fewer job losses than the working class or service class. But what is the creative class? Florida’s definition is a bit hard to figure out. Anyone who has to think or make decisions, it seems, is creative class. Obviously someone who packs boxes all day based on a form denoting where each item should go is service sector; however, if someone has to figure out how best to pack those boxes, is that creative?

Motivating factors in work are less money and more the challenge, stability, and flexibility. So is the claim, based on surveys. That’s why professions like machine operator lacked skilled employees but we have a surplus of hairdressers, which is considered more rewarding. But some of Florida’s statistics seem not to match his claims as much as he makes them out to be. He makes the point that money is less a motivation for type of work than a motivation for dissatisfaction. Highest paid employees tend to enjoy work more. As such, I’m not sure I completely buy his point.

Next is a chapter on flexibility and security and the way creative jobs offer the former but sometimes at the cost of the latter. Companies and employees both seem less inclined to partner for as long as in the past. People move around a lot. Often these are lateral moves rather than hierarchical ones. Bosses no longer know the jobs of their employees. Businesses are flat, with various experts who move from company to company.

Company cultures have changed to allow more flexibility and casualness in aiding creative types. Gone are dress codes. Offices are open, to encourage collaboration. But sometimes such changes are merely for show. Adding ping pong might be a way to make things casual, but if the office isn’t truly flexible and expects long hours, it’s not really conducive to long term creatives.

Time has become the most difficult resource to maintain. Creatives work more hours. And they merge work and home more. In that sense, the old factory worker often ends up with more leisure time than the so-called leisure class. Beyond that people in creative professions often multitask, making time seem even more scarce.

The creative class prefers active leisure to passive. They run, hike, rock climb. They stay in shape. They aren’t big on spectator sports. Passive activity is more the domain of the working class. The creative values experiences. They’re more likely to go to small clubs than huge concerts, which demand too much time and money and don’t mix experiences. (I couldn’t quite figure out Florida’s reasoning for why this is so. Personally I’d venture that many of the creative class jobs are sit-down jobs, whereas working class is more physical labor. Different kind of rest in one’s leisure time.)

The creative class is a strange mix of Protestant work ethic and bohemianism. In the past these two were antithetical. But the two categories have merged in the modern world, such that neither category really exists. The creative antisocial tech person is also the hard worker. Geekiness has gone hip.

Florida turns next to place, noting that while technologically the world has become flatter, places are actually becoming more specialized and less egalitarian. Cities keep growing even though tech allows for rural resourcing. Why? because people of the same creative sort like to be together to bounce ideas off in person. A diverse city offers more ways to get ideas and to work with others in similar fields. (This seems to contradict itself. If all musicians slowly gravitate to Nashville, then in some ways Nashville becomes less diverse—it’s all musicians, whereas writers go to nyc.)

Creative class regions often have higher wages than working or service class, which lends to inequality.

Creative class cities have high levels of technology, talent, and tolerance. But Florida talks mostly about the latter. Where foreigners, homosexuals, and bohemians are tolerated, creativity excels. His comments on foreign born were particularly interesting in our current state. Twenty-five percent of patents are made by foreign born, even though they make up just twelve percent of the population. In other words, hard immigration policies contribute to the brain drain and less economic development. communities that are open to people of all types make for more openness to new ideas as well—to creativity. Want to know where houses will go up in value? Follow where the artists go. They are the first step to gentrification. The one exception to tolerance and diversity? Integration. It seems that that works opposite to these other factors, which is strange, but shows the persistence of racism. My bet would be that a truly tolerant and integrated place would do even better economically through willingness to embrace new ideas, but the continued presence of racism means deep integration doesn’t lend to prosperity.

Florida spends half a chapter defending his theory versus others, most especially the human capital theory, which dovetails closely. But while that one measures raw wealth, creative class theory takes into account where that wealth comes from and thus better measures productivity. If all wealth is inherited it is not really producing anything versus if wealth is coming from wages. The latter is what creative class theory values.

Next, Florida looks at creative class around the world and which countries score high. He also addresses social inequality and notes that the United States is more an outlier than standard because many creative class economies are actually quite egalitarian, much more so than the United States.

Where do people want to live and what sort of relations do they want to have? Florida claims that modern society isn’t about independence and accompanying loneliness. Most people don’t want close communities. They want loose communities—only a few close friends but lots of acquaintances. Loose social ties actually provide more opportunities for work.

He then looks at what makes places attractive and lists these features: a thick job market (many jobs in a profession available, since few expect to stay with the same company), third places to hang out, dating opportunities, diversity, authenticity, and “scenes.” Basic services are important, but people want more than that. They want cultural opportunities and nice scenery.

If a city sets out to attract creative types and to thus grow, what should it do? Attracting a business isn’t enough. It needs to make itself attractive to a diverse set of people, including the less stable young and single. They may not stay, but they are not likely to return with families if there was nothing for them before.

There’s talk of the move back to the city that is common now—or was until COVID. And there’s discussion of the need for density and the advantage of big population. Where density kills is when it starts to kill off variety at the street level. Question: if dense city cores are best for creativity and bold economy, how did suburbs take over for a time and why? I’ve got to think there was an economic advantage for such a system that it would become common for a while.

My question was almost immediately what Florida turned to next—namely by looking at why so many people actually like suburbs and what those suburbs bring to the creative class. His point seems to be that suburbs are an integral part of large metros, and the best suburbs actually find ways to mimic the advantages of that dense core within the suburb.

Next, Florida turns to inequality, which he notes tends to be greater in creative class areas, but then he makes the argument that even so, lower class people are still overall better off in such areas generally. This seems to be variation on the rising tide argument of conservative economics. But the anecdotes at the start of the chapter seem to weigh against it. When a city becomes too expensive for its artists, that creative core becomes the plaything of only the most successful. I mean I guess there are still creative scenes in those places, but I’ve never understood how those scenes hang on. Do they?

I would think they don’t, or they somehow transform. I think of Deep Ellum in Dallas. It was a hip area when I lived in Fort Worth twenty-five years ago, but I’m told it’s all gone now, full of high cost businesses. It seemed headed that way even when I lived close by, wherein the funkiness was getting priced out and the hipness fading.

Florida seems to believe creative, working, and service class is more important than high, middle, and low class. Yes, those with money are generally happier, but once a base level is reached, creative class are happier than working class. Areas with more creative class are healthier, have lower gun violence, better dental care, and are less likely to drive to work (versus walk, bike, or use public transport).

In his conclusion, Florida makes the case for the creative class to become politically active and notes that we are in a process of revolution not unlike that of the Industrial Revolution. He provides various suggestions, including helping working and service class jobs pay more by making them more creative, making education emphasize creativity more, making cities denser, encouraging diversity, providing better means to make workers more mobile with health care and retirement not tied to jobs, and recalibrating how we measure growth.

[Stephanie H · Rating 3 out of 5]

The basic thesis of the book is that diverse, tolerant, creative urban centers attract people of the same disposition. It is those people who are the driving force of the economy and their desired lifestyle dictates their choice of city and ultimately their choice of occupation. Their lives are no longer dictated by their jobs like in the days of the Organization Man in the Grey Flannel Suit.

At the beginning of the book, I found myself agreeing with Florida's every word. Yet as the book progressed, he presented the same tired argument over and over. Not only that, but he presented the same graphs over and over. Or, they weren't the same graphs, but they looked exactly the same aside from the labeling of the x and y indexes. Now I have a thorough understanding that members of the creative class have been increasing over the last 40 years. I also understand there is a correlation though not causation between tech companies, homosexuality, bohemians, and immigration in major cities.

For an academic book, the facts were arguably quite soft. I will usually overlook soft science for a book that is accessible to the public at large. However, I would not even call this book accessible because even though it says "National Bestseller" on the title, I doubt this book received high readership outside of those core creative cities he already praises so highly. I doubt the book had high readership in Stockton CA, Amarillo TX, Yuma AZ or Myrtle Beach SC. (Note: these cities were taken from Appendix B table 1 listing cities and their ranks on the creativity index compared to tech sector, tolerance level and wage gap. These cities were listed among the lowest, and therefore, most lame).

I find it quite likely that this book was well received in Austin TX, San Francisco CA, Seattle WA and New York NY (some cities he lists as creative centers for their music, ethnic diversity, youth oriented culture, public outdoor spaces, acceptance of alternative lifestyles, etc. i.e. cities that are awesome). Perhaps I only agreed with this book's thesis because I work in an industry on the cusp of service and creative class (I'm a chef, you tell me) and live in the city he lists as a harbinger of the new age and economic system. No matter what, I could only read this book with a biased eye.

"Fuck yeah the Mission District is awesome!" I thought.

"Fuck yeah OpenSource software!" I thought later.

There was no way to turn a blind eye to the bias presented in the book. The author is from Pittsburg (which ranks 90 on the index and is ultimately more lame than San Francisco or Austin). Though he offers necessary advice that cities need to reform as creative centers first in order to attract talent, youth and economic vitality, he does so in a way that expresses what can practically be described as contempt for the unwillingness to deviate from traditional middle class values and suburban lifestyles. "Your sports teams and symphonies and opera won't bring in needed revenue for the city because that's not what people actually care about anymore" he states. "You need to invest in public parks, research based universities and all the best local culture."

I was accepting of this idea, but I'm pretty sure that's because I live in an area where it is cool to be alternative. But this book shouldn't be written for me or anyone who tries to foster the ideas of this book in their own lives. This book needs to find an audience in areas where the ideas are unpopular and counter-intuitive. I fear it will never find an audience in those areas where it is needed most.

Even though this was a necessary argument, it did not need to be made in a book. It could have been more effective magazine article for brevity is indeed the soul of wit.

[Dmitry · Rating 2 out of 5]

(The English review is placed beneath Russian one)

Книга такого профиля рассчитана на тех, кто либо увлекается социологией, либо работает в этой области. Для остальных она, возможно, и стала бы интересной, если бы не дата публикации. Т.е. мне кажется, что книга нуждается в обновлении. Тогда она действительно станет актуальной.
Нужно сказать, что первая половина книги относительно интересна. Автор рассматривает новый появившийся класс работников, который пришёл на смену «синим воротничкам» (о которых не перестают говорить политики, как в ЕС, так и в США). Как пишет автор, никто из молодёжи не желает работать на прежних специальностях, на тех, что были популярны раньше. К примеру, быть работником на заводе Ford. Как пишет автор, люди готовые даже пожертвовать зарплатой, нежели пойти на работу, которая была «обычным делом» в середине XX века.
Конечно, автор сделает небольшой экскурс в историю, начиная аж с аграрного общества быстро дойдя до общества XX века, которое затронет более подробно, чтобы перейти непосредственно к рассматриваемому вопросу, к белым воротничкам и иным современным (или новым) профессиям.
Автор будет описывать поведение этого нового класса. Т.е. мы тут увидим их привычки, как например, движение в сторону здорового образа жизни, увлечение фитнесом и пр. Или возьмём такое свойство «креативного класса» как гибкий график работы или как я сказал выше, предпочтение комфортной работы, даже если за неё будут платить меньше. Т.е. мы видим, что на первое место выходят не материальные вопросы, а комфорт, удобство, самореализация, вопросы социального окружения и так далее. Так что мы можем сделать такое предположение: молодые люди, какую зарплату им не предположи, не пойдут на определённые виды работ по принципиальным соображениям. Далее, это отказ от дресс-кода (галстук и костюм) в пользу Casual стиля. Это особенно ярко заметно, когда мы смотрим на такие бизнес-иконы как Билл Гейтс, Стив Джобс, Марк Цукерберг и так далее. Т.е. что мы видим? Мы видим, что высшее руководство отказалось от дресс-кода, а это значит, что и все подчинённые, автоматически, также переходят на соответствующий стиль. Отмену дресс-кода инициировали самые знаменитые люди мира бизнеса. Как обычные, или лучше сказать менее знаменитые компании, могут этому сопротивляться? Как говорится в маркетинговой профессиональной литературе, завоюй сердца/умы лидеров мнений и ты завоюешь если не миллионы, то тысячи потенциальных потребителей.
Я отметил лишь несколько моментов (из первой части книги), которые мне показались интересными. Знал ли я о них раньше? Конечно, знал. К сожалению, книга не открыла мне ничего нового, чего бы я и так не знал. Так что, я не думаю, что найдётся хоть кто-то, кто воскликнет «Вот это да! Ну надо же!». Это, во-первых, а, во-вторых, книга-то написана для американцев, использовалась информация, связанная с гражданами Америки, с американским бизнесом. Вот и возникает вопрос, а насколько выводы применимы ко всем остальным народам? Ну, описываемый креативный класс очень похож на наш средний и/или выше среднего класс в России (в особенности в Москве и Санкт-Петербурге). Я бы даже сказал, что это хипстеры, молодые люди 20-40 лет. Но всё это лишь мои ощущения, а значит, вопрос остаётся открытым.
В любом случаи, как я уже сказал, я бы рекомендовал книгу только тем, кто интересуется социологией. Даже маркетологам эту книгу можно пропустить, т.к. она не содержит не то что полезной, но даже новой информации. Как я уже сказал, люди, которые работают на передовой, уже давно знают (или обязаны знать) всё то о чём пишет автор. Каких-то внезапных открытий автор не совершает. Да, для XX века, для работодателей из XX века книга могла быть революционной. Но мы-то живём уже в XXI.

The book is rather intended for those who are either keen on sociology or working in this field. For others, it might have been interesting if it had not been published in 2002. In other words, it seems to me that the book needs to be updated. Then it will really become relevant.
It should be said that the first half of the book is relatively interesting. The author considers a new class of workers, which replaced the "blue collars" (which do not stop talking about politicians, both in the EU and in the U.S.). As the author writes, none of the young people do not want to work in the former professions, i.e., those that were popular before. For example, to be an employee at a Ford factory. As the author writes, people are even ready to sacrifice their salaries rather than go to a job that was "commonplace" in the middle of the XX century.
The author will make a short excursion into history, starting with the agricultural society. Then it will quickly reach the society of the XX century, which will describe in more detail, after which it will pass directly to the question under consideration, i.e. to white collars and other modern (or new) professions.
The author will, I would say, describe the behavior of this new class. That is, we will see their habits here, such as the movement towards a healthy lifestyle, fitness, etc. Or let's consider such a characteristic of a "creative class" as flexible work schedule or, as I said above, preference for comfortable work, even if it will be paid less. In other words, we see that comfort, convenience, self-fulfillment, social environment issues, etc., come first. So we can make the following assumption: no matter what salary we offer to young people, they will still not agree to some professions for fundamental reasons.
The next question is to refuse the dress code (tie and suit) in favor of Casual style. This is especially noticeable when we look at business icons like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and so on. So what do we see? We see that the top management has refused the dress code, which means that all the subordinates are also switching to the appropriate style. The cancellation of the dress code was initiated by the most famous people in the business world. How can ordinary, or better said, less famous companies resist this? As they say in the marketing literature, if you can win the hearts/thoughts of opinion leaders, then you will win if not millions, then thousands of potential consumers.
I have noted only a few points (from the first part of the book) that I found interesting. Did I know about them before? Of course, I knew! Unfortunately, the book did not reveal anything new to me, which I already did not know. So I don't think there's anybody who can exclaim, "Wow! Wow!
Secondly, the book was written for Americans, using information related to American citizens and American business. So the question arises: how much of the conclusion applies to all other nations? Well, the creative class described by the author is very similar to our middle and/or upper middle class in Russia (especially in Moscow and Saint Petersburg). I would even say that these are hipsters, young people aged 20-40. But these are only my feelings, which mean that the question remains open.
In any case, as I said, I would recommend the book only to those who are interested in sociology. Even marketers can skip this book, as it does not contain anything useful, but even new information. As I said, people who work on the frontline have long known (or must know) everything that the author writes about. The author does not make any sudden discoveries. Yes, for the XX century, for employers from the XX century, the book could be revolutionary. But we already live in the XXI century.

[Jacobmartin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever since the fateful day I enrolled in that Society And Culture course in high school where I was tainted with a love of sociology forever while other students were saddled with boring business studies classes, I knew I wanted to read more actual sociological works instead of relying on my understanding of social scientists as depicted by the movie Cannibal Holocaust, which is a far more informative movie about social sciences than its title suggests.

I adored this book and was pleased it mentioned data to do with my own country Australia at all, and freely admits that the author is more familiar with American data rather that shoehorning American solutions to foreign problems. I really dug it.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging book if you have interest in social movements and cultural preferences. From that angle it is particularly effective in describing what has happened in America and other developed world cities. Regarding the more far reaching forecasts and calls to action, the book becomes weaker and more easily susceptible to criticism.

In this version he spends a number of pages (especially at the beginning) defending his record, which underlies the point of Florida's seeming need to be respected and something of a leader to the creative class he, more than any other individual, claims to have defined.

While his frequent defenses and citing his critics was annoying at the outset of the book, he tapered off considerable in the last 2/3 portion of the book.

[Ahmed Abdelhamid · Rating 4 out of 5]

I might not have enjoyed some of the analysis of “shifts” in the book, but, indeed it changed my personal view and made me conscious of many economic changes, life style shifts, cities growth or decay, clustering the contemporary community and talent management issues. Given all these numeric facts in the book, about the technology, talent and tolerance in various cities it was very pleasant and a true added value (to me).

2008
كتب تعليقا مطولا بالعربية هنا:
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2011

[AJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Completely devoid of content, arrogantly a study of Pittsburgh the city Florida is from rather than any city which actually speaks to the issue, the citations are all books an educated person will have already read and often it is evident that Florida has not read or understood specifically the economic texts he cites. All in all while his ideas may be somewhat true, they have been said numerous times before better than he is saying them. Flip through this book, don't waste your time reading it.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Florida does a complete re-write of his 10-year old 1st edition. The original hypothesizes the shift from proximity to natural resources and trade to creative and intellectual resources. Companies are redefining what is important relative to location.

The re-write has the benefit of reflection. He closes the research with observations of what was right, amendments to theories that were close, and discards the hypotheses that failed to play out.

Not the best writer but interesting from a social/urban/geographic perspective.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting argument pursued around the idea of creativity being just as important as technology and tolerance as a key driver of regional growth. Fatalistic about globalisation leading to manufacturing production jobs going offshore and emphasis is on creating a creative class to attract advanced manufacturing. Potentially overlooks therefore the paradox of periphery regions in former Eastern bloc regions with authoritarian traditions.

[Chanelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, I enjoyed this book and wish I could give it a 3.5. Though, as others have noted, it is quite tedious in parts. Florida is thorough in his definition of the Creative Class (which I found insightful and personally validating) and examination of aspects related to this group. The section on Community (particularly the chapter on Place) was well written. This "revisited" version does spend a bit of time addressing detractors - which can generally be skimmed/skipped.

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't actually read the whole thing, but was impressed and intrigued by a chapter on my hometown Pittsburgh and its inability to rise above its industrial culture and attitudes. I see that, always have, and could never put my finger on why Pittsburgh just never felt like the kind of place I wanted to live as a free adult. Of course I still love and long for it...