Down on the District: Daddy, How Come I'm Named
Char-Lanta and My Brother is Named Greater Tokyo?

A review of Who's Your City? by Dr. Richard Florida

by Mike Plunkett

As globalization amalgamates the world and redefines community and neighbor, the changing reality insists that rooted stability in a singular location is no longer necessary. Technology enables work to be completed anywhere at any time, as physicality is reassigned value in the hierarchy of needs and replaced by more pertinent skill sets. Therefore, place is immaterial.

Paradoxically, the opposite is true. The anthropological coalescence of regional entities into an urban and urbane cluster generates a reconstruction of the relationship between the essence of place in the identity self-context with the spatial external environment.

Translation: Who's your city? I'm your city, biatch!

Who's Your City? How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life, by Dr. Richard Florida, emanates from this paradox. His central thesis is a plea to add one more component to the ever-pressing subcategories of the meaning of life: Location, location, location. With the freedom to choose where to live blooming in a digital and creative economy, that decision is just as important as picking a career or a lump in the bed.

Dr. Florida, known to Stephen Colbert fans as the guy who Colbert surmised just wants him to follow gays around, is an apt researcher and scholar, who conveys the advent of what he calls the Creative Class in his work The Rise of the Creative Class, as well as his blog. 

In Who's Your City? Florida strives to get people to think more seriously about where they want to live and base the decision upon several factors, such as which life stage one finds his/herself smushed in, as well as where certain personality types and sunbathers are. In the end, the book posits good news for some and worst news for others, particularly for those looking for affordable housing in a decent city.

To retranslate the above paradox, the main argument made by fans of globalization is that global is the new local. Due to the way things work for most creative types, the 9-5 and the felt cubicle are now fermenting in the La Brea Tar Pits. So, it doesn't matter where one is in terms of living and working because work (at least the work that pays in a currency that's better than the U.S. dollar these days) is shifting from a construction posture to a creative posture. However, Florida argues that isn't true and, in fact, it's the reverse that's correct. Where one chooses to live is more important in a globalized world because the world is not Tom Friedman-esque flat, but rather Max Headroom-esque spiky.

As Florida writes (pg. 32-33):

For some, the world today looks flat because the economic and social distances are often more connected to each other, even from half a world away, than they are to people and places in their own backyards. [...] While the world itself is far from flat, the dense network of interconnections among its peaks can make it appear that way to a privileged minority.

What are causing these spikes are not just individual cities, but rather what Florida calls mega-regions. These swaths of cities and towns offer resources and opportunities in various industries that are unique to themselves. For example, the area from Charlotte to Atlanta houses leading financial markets, while Greater Tokyo is the largest and most profitable mega-region on Earth. According to Dr. Florida, these regions are now the real catalysts of economic and cultural growth. In addition, each mega-region seems to cater to specific personality types and to offer all the categories of neighborhoods desired in the different aspects of human development. Consequently, this entire rearranging means that global isn't the new local, but that local is still local. In Florida's purview, it's more important to find the place that best suits a person than finding a perfect job or perfect corner Starbucks.

Granted, there might be a good chance that the great job will be in a great city that caters to a great tan. Nevertheless, if the job ends and the next Ice Age convenes exclusively on your block, the region has to hold opportunities for something better. By asking key questions (Who's your city? Where's the beef?), one can make a sound decision on where to live.

All of these elements are fine and dandy, and Dr. Florida does encapsulate the need to be mindful of finding a good place to live quite well. Yet, this promising paradox has a poisonous pill that is hard to swallow.

First, the talk of the Creative Class, the transition from the construction mindset to a creative one, and the rise of the mega-region (pretty much globalization in its whole) operates under one giant assumption: There will be people left behind and, further, more people have to be left behind. Not left behind in the kicking it with Jesus in the clouds way, but left behind in the understanding that while more opportunities are created for more people, fewer people will have the capacity to capitalize on these opportunities. All the promising new jobs touted in an otherwise languid economy are only available to those with more education (and more advanced, specialized education at that), more experience, and more flexibility to move. Because of this, these mega-regions that are promoting ridges of creative activity also are causing gaping valleys of inequality.

This is best shown in what Florida calls "the means migration." Demographically speaking, the areas that are producing the most in economic value are the regions most successful in recruiting the talent. Silicon Valley is used several times as a prime example. Why is San Jose all the rage? It's not the town (apologies to San Jose natives, but I've been there and I had to spend time in Santa Cruz to recover) but rather the people integrated into the industries located in the area. The cluster of high-end skilled workers means a higher education level and a higher median income. In 2006, the average household median in Silicon Valley was $80,638, compared to a whopping $27,672 in Brownsville, Texas. "Increasingly, the most talented and ambitious people need to live in the means metros in order to realize their full economic potential," Florida writes.

Indeed, indeed. There's the rub though: Silicon Valley and regions like it are too expensive and, for the "non-ambitious" or "non-talented" people that try to live in the area, the odds dim. Also, not everyone has talent. In this case, talent is defined as the creative skills Florida says dominate the Creative Class. In other words, only those with non-construction, non-manufacturing skills, along with quality drunken karaoke skills can thrive in Tor-Buff-Loo-Mon-Tawa.

Individuals working in one factory for the crux of a career isn't just a sob story Democrats tell to straddle the labor vote come election time. It is the remnant of a bygone, yet still prevalent aspect of work. Those towns that are dying because they cannot compete with other cities in attracting smart and creative people, let alone those that grew up there and moved to the big city to live out Sarah Jessica Parker's dream (coming soon to a creaky single-screen theater near you!), are left to wither in the dust. Also, some of these towns are dying because it's too cold, but let's just blame that on global warming for now.

All of this leads directly to housing and what Dr. Florida calls "the big sort."  If people are clustering to one region because like-minded people and like-minded businesses take up residence there, then odds are that two things are happening. One, clusters become cliques and any engagement with difference is unappreciated and not sought out. Two, those who cannot afford to stay in a popular area, even if it is their native home, are falling down and moving out. Florida writes:

Now, more and more, we are segregating across virtually every economic and social dimension. It's not just rampant gentrification and the "blanding" of our cities that worry me, it's that the big sort is wreaking havoc on our social fabric, dividing and segregating societies across class lines.

Dr. Florida goes on to say that for every young professional who moves into a new development in a gentrified section of a city, a lower-income family has been driven out. In this phenomenon, it's those with the lowest incomes that bear the brunt of the burden. Compounded with the cultural assumption that if something or somewhere is expensive, then it must be better, the lure of mega-regions can easily squelch the need for affordable housing and sensible development, if we let it.

Ultimately, Who's Your City? is a good exercise in thinking through life decisions and a mixed commentary on the shifting grounds caused by globalization. To his credit, Florida doesn't belittle the alarming flip side of a spiky world, yet he doesn't set out to provide assistance to those left behind. However, this book still doesn't answer the big money question: What makes a city? Is it those who move there or the people that came from there? Is it the history or the future? Cool buildings and nice buses? I'm hoping that the answer incorporates a space to live, congregate and drink strong coffee while sitting on the front porch and, hopefully, includes finding a hot girl who will giggle like an oddly excited urban planning student when you say, "I'm your city, biatch!"