#Richard Florida

[edgeperspectives]

Insights from Richard Florida :  As the office recedes in importance, central business districts are transforming into spaces to live and socialize, not just work. It’s a process that began before Covid-19

[stoweboyd]

The office as we know it, a space to work, is dead. | Richard Florida gives a eulogy, but cities are trying hard to get people back in the office. https://t.co/JVD1XtawjX

— Stowe Boyd (@stoweboyd)

April 7, 2021

[piensoluegodiseno]

Durante mucho tiempo este fue el fondo de pantalla de mi escritorio. Lo había elegido simplemente porque me había gustado el contraste de colores, pero nunca había pensado en su real significado. Leyendo el libro de Richard Florida “The Rise of the Creative Class”, enseguida se me vino a la cabeza esta imágen y entendí en el fondo porque la había elegido para verla cientos de veces por día. El diseñador, está corriendo el telón de la realidad, para mostrarnos que hay un mundo mejor, un mundo del que todos podemos ser parte. 

“El arte puede salvar al mundo”, una frase un tanto trillada que tiene una parte cierta, pues los diseñadores y artistas tienen la vocación de otorgarnos herramientas para hacer del mundo un mejor lugar, pero de nosotros depende el utilizarlas o no. Me tomo, entonces, el atrevimiento de alterar un tanto la frase en cuestión: “El arte puede darnos herramientas para salvar al mundo, de nosotros depende el utilizarlas”

Por eso creo que no debemos “relajarnos” cargando todo el peso en los hombros de la clase creativa, sino que debemos además velar por aumentar la comunicación y la educación eco-consciente en cada habitante del mundo. Ya hay una revolución que está en marcha y va en aumento, por eso debemos hacerla lo más extensa posible!

[highlands11]

LA VILLE CRÉATIVE ET DÉCONFINEMENT

LA VILLE CRÉATIVE ET DÉCONFINEMENT : un plan en 10 points de R. Florida.

Le Groupe Coupechoux a réuni ses activités dans l’île de Nantes dans un immeuble réalisé par Tetrarc dont l’architecture exprime la créativité et l’éco-responsabilité, 2013

Temps de lecture : 4 minutes Mots clés : Richard Florida, villes créatives, plan,

Richard Florida est le chantre de la théorie de la vile créative et dont les principes énoncés au début des années 2000 sont maintenant…

[wwwdotideasnmoredotnet]

Map Locations of Creative Class Growth Meet Up with "Rise of the Rest." (Part 2)

Map Locations of Creative Class Growth Meet Up with “Rise of the Rest.” (Part 2)

Let’s face it: Economic growth is boring, though important. The better it is, the more resilient a community becomes. Out of this comes the culture and cultivation of the Creative Class. Houston may be the 4th largest city in the country but its creative class designation is, while on the upswing, crawling.

In this Part 2 blog post, I share some of the findings of Richard Florida, author of The…

[gravitascivics]

GLOBAL NECESSITIES?

Knowledge has been the subject of various conceptualizations over what it is and how it is structured.  There are a number of graphic representations of how experts have visualized that structure; for example, H. Lynn Erickson provides such a representation.[1]  In sharing this writer’s understanding, the elements of that structure are presented; they reflect one visualization of that structure.  People, at the most abstract level of thinking, harbor in their minds theories and models.  These represent knowledge at its most abstract level.

When people learn or develop a reliable explanation of some aspect of reality that is known as a theory.  A theory is not accepted as truth – it is subject to being disproved – but to justify the title of theory, there is ample evidence to support its viability in explaining its corresponding reality.  

Short of that level of reliability, there can be a good account of an aspect of reality that logically provides, given what is known or what other theories indicate is true, a reasonable explanation for some phenomena but there is not enough evidence to call it a theory. That is known as a model.

A good pair of examples, one of a theory and one of a model, can be cited by meteorologists in reporting hurricanes and presented on TV weather reports.  While weather reporters can boast having developed theories as to what causes hurricanes and why they appear during certain times – June through November – they can’t assuredly predict where they will go.

Instead they show off those “spaghetti” lines that “predict” various possible routes.  Which one is correct, if any are, only time will tell.  Why do they lack in predictive power?  Because they are based on models, not theories.  Through research, meteorologists aim to perfect those models so that only one or a few predictive lines emerge from the known data. When the number gets to one or two, then one can say a theory for hurricane paths has been developed or discovered.  

That theory will be a theory because it will provide a reliable prediction of what a hurricane will do given the concurrent factors at work.  But until that day, meteorologists and, in turn, the public must rely on models.  In the natural sciences, the general public is used to the benefit of having theories explaining much of the observed reality modern humans observe.  Examples range from how and why things fall to surface of the earth to why injuries, untreated, can lead to degradation of organic material.

The social sciences have not been so successful. Human behavior has proven to be eluding reliable explanations or theories.  Therefore, social scientists are used to dealing with models.  For example, one model is why and where revolutions will erupt.  Davies’ J-Curve provides a model in which the factor of rising expectations emanating from improvements among a people followed by a sudden downturn engenders intolerable anger among a population.  That, according to this model, leads a people to be disposed to take part in revolutionary activities.[2]

With that short review of theories and models, one area of interest in the social sciences is the study of urban societies. One near theory in that field has to do with either the allure or unattractiveness of cities as places for people to live. What attracts people and what repels people to cities?  Those are questions demographers and urbanists have been studying.  

They are interested in them since a great many socially determined events and movements rely on whether cities are growing or not; on whether their growth or decline reflects other social/economic developments.  For example, a question related to this overall concern is:  How do employment opportunities affect not only whether cities become popular places to move to, but whether urban living encourages a more global, as opposed to nationalistic, bias among certain populations?

Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler share the urbanist Richard Florida’s view on these questions.  They write:

Do people really follow jobs?  Not anymore, [Florida] claimed.  Today, jobs follow people.  Because of the close link between growth and creativity, there is a battle for creative talent.  The winners of this battle will not be nations but cities and regions that can offer a combination of the “3 Ts” [Technology, Talent, and Tolerance] … We want to add another “T” to these three factors: Time Perspective.[3]

         Some of these factors, upon reflection, are obvious but to present this model, one should provide, at least, a general sense of what each of these qualities include.  So, technology functions to make the development of newer products possible.  Growth depends on that sort of development and, in turn, provides the new and attractive employment opportunities.

         Technology, as it becomes evermore sophisticated and reliant on workers to understand complex realities – mechanical, chemical, and/or organic – relies on workforces with highly developed talents.  These talents can be of various varieties such as those that are entrepreneurial, artistic and creative, and/or those that rely on programming skills.  They also depend on the ability to work within teams of such talented people.

         And to secure these pools of talent, localities need people who are open to working with people who come from various backgrounds and geographic localities.  Despite the claims of neoconservatives or nationalists, openness to alternative life views is essential for the newer technologies.  In turn, they emanate from different cultural backgrounds.  

Therefore, businesses appreciate localities that provide the kinds of skills and outlooks necessary to fill corresponding jobs.  They need to secure the sorts of talent from a variety of places – both domestic and foreign places.  In turn, to pull such diversity to the workplace, tolerance is mandatory.

         Finally, according to Jost and Mentovich, a productive time perspective needs to be applied in which all this accumulation of talent and the other qualities can come together in real, as opposed to virtual, places.  Skype conferences cannot substitute for real communities inhabiting real places.  Success depends on worksites where real relationships emerge and that development takes time, time to build the trust, creativity, and tolerance the other qualities either represent or upon which they depend.

         Is this true?  It makes intuitive sense.  It is presented in a logical order.  But is there enough evidence to say it is a dependable view of modern economic realities?  Given the rise of more nationalistic policies and politics both in the US and Europe, one will probably be able to observe a great deal of real time evidence as various nations today are looking inward and are shunning a global perspective and bias. Will such moves negatively affect economic growth?  According to the model described here, it should.

For example, Great Britain is attempting to drop out of the European Union and the US, in its foreign policy, seems to be similarly looking inward.  Will Britishers and Americans pay an economic price if they go and turn away from more global policies?  That will depend on the degree to which they abandon internationally organized economic activities and developments.  Stay tuned.

[1] See “What You Need to Know about the Structure of Process,” Corwin Connect, October 15, 2016, accessed October 14, 2019, https://corwin-connect.com/2016/11/need-know-structure-process/ .

[2] John T. Jost and Avital Mentovich, “J-Curve Hypothesis,” Sociology and Political Science, n. d., accessed October 14, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/J-curve-hypothesis .

[3] Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler, The Change Book:  How Things Happen (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015).

[worklabournewsresearch]

Factors Tethering People to Places

"Mobility in the United States has fallen to record lows. ... Declining mobility contributes to a host of economic and social issues: less economic dynamism, lower rates of innovation, and lower productivity. By locking people into place, it exacerbates inequality by limiting the economic opportunities for workers."

Federal Reserve Bank of New York study

"... [A] new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests that other, more emotional and psychological factors may be at work. The study uses data from the bank’s Survey of Consumer Expectations to examine the degree to which people’s attachment to their communities affects their willingness and ability to move. ... The survey identifies respondents’ most recent move, their probability of moving in the next two years, and other data related to moving including job opportunities and income prospects, housing costs, the distance from current home, costs of moving to various locations, crime rates, taxes, community values and norms, and proximity to family and friends."

"A significant reason for the decline in mobility is that many of us are highly attached to our towns. Nearly half of those in the survey (47 percent) identify as rooted. The rooted are disproportionately white, older, married, homeowners, and rural. Their reasons for not moving are more psychological than economic: proximity to family and friends, and their involvement in the local community or church. Another 15 percent identify as stuck, lacking the resources or ability to move. The stuck have less formal education, are in worse health, and are less satisfied with their jobs, the survey finds. In addition, they are more likely to live in cities and live relatively close to family members. Their reasons for not moving are mainly economic: the costs of moving, the affordability of housing in other locations, the difficulty of qualifying for a new mortgage, and the perception that there is less opportunity for them elsewhere."

"America is not just split between expensive cities of opportunity and 'the rest.' Moving is about more than finding a job or a more affordable home; it’s a highly personal decision with deep psychological costs."

City Lab, May 30, 2019: "Why some Americans won't move, even for a higher salary," by Richard Florida

Federal Reserve Bank of New York, April 2019: "Understanding Migration Aversion Using Elicited Counterfactual Choice Probabilities" [86 pages, PDF]

[edgeperspectives]

The Uncertain Future of Corporate HQs

The new geographic pattern of corporate headquarters reflects the rise of a spiky geography dominated by giant superstar cities and metro areas. Richard Florida expects that Covid-19 is unlikely to dramatically overturn this pattern

[zwischenstadt]

The contemporary intellectual influence of Jane Jacobs towers above that of her fellow urbanists in much the way New York, London, and Tokyo exceed the economic reach of the second-tier global cities.  New urbanist architects invariably cite Jacobs as a principal influence.  Many of the most admired planning initiatives of the Richard M. Daly administration have reflected the street-conscious, micro-planning tenets initially articulated by Jacobs in the 1950s.  Nevertheless, contemporary Jacobs worship routinely suppresses the considerable gap between the particulars of her vision and those of “Jacobsian” planning as currently executed.  Even by the 1950s Jacobs’s model metropolis, Manhattan, was an outlier among American cities.  Contemporary new urbanists never propose developments that approximate mid-twentieth-century Manhattan’s population density, mass transit dependence, or neighborhood-level mixed uses. Apart from and of considerably greater importance than the ‘density gap’ between Jacobs and the new urbanists is a more subtle ‘contextual gap.’  As discussed in the conclusion to the preceding chapter, the residents of Jacob’s block on Hudson Street may not have hungered for social intimacy, but as a matter of course- so various of Jacob’s local narratives demonstrate- they assumed a rough equality of local statuses, if not of incomes.  As recognized members of an unobtrusive street neighborhood community, individually self-interested behavior was attuned to collective considerations.  This version of ‘self-interest properly understood’ was an outgrowth of the block’s collective norms even as it reinforced these norms through efficacious, typically noncoercive practice. Jacobsian design precepts implemented in the absence of these underlying social assumptions and behavioral prompts will not produce the Hudson Street of the 1950s.  This, in turn, reveals the particular flaw in Richard Florida’s neo-Jacobsianism.  While correctly perceiving the attractions of Jacob’s urban design menu- and just as correctly observing how many young, middle-class Americans have internalized these design preferences- Florida fails to apprehend the limits of Jacobs’s urbanism in the context of contemporary social realities.  In the absence of a physically decentralized retail economy (baldly put, a shopkeeper’s consumer economy)- and given the highly stratified income structure of the contemporary United States- the ‘lively streets’ philosophy of urban design will, at best, produce Jacobsian enclaves in the vicinity of universities, bohemian districts, and historic neighborhoods.  For contemporary Chicago, as well as a number of other American cities, Jacobsian neighborhood development of this sort can, in fact, make a substantial mark, but only in the rarest of cases will it be sufficient to jump-start economic rejuvenation on a city- or region-wide scale.

Larry Bennett, The Third City. University of Chicago Press

[stoweboyd]

Amazon's Departure from New York City Is a PR Fiasco | Richard Florida comes out strongly against the sort of incentives that Amazon received from Di Blasio and Cuomo:

Despite being a trillion-dollar enterprise, Amazon has refused to pay for its freight in communities, including Seattle. Instead of reacting reasonably to opposition to the HQ2 deal from state Senator Michael Gianaris, city council members, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and neighborhood activists, Amazon decided it only wants to play its game on its own terms.

But how big companies enter communities shouldn’t be handled like a ploy directed at gaming the system and extracting maximum incentives from cities. Amazon should not treat cities with tactics of exploitation and abuse.

The right thing for Amazon to do would have been to be a true partner for New York City: stay, make it work, and hire people in support of New Yorkers. Instead, Amazon has decided to leave New York City behind in favor of other regions it considers to be more hospitable. (Amazon has announced that it will not re-open the search process and will proceed only with northern Virginia and Nashville.)

As I have written before and will say again, it’s past time for city leaders across the country to stand up to Amazon, demand much-needed tax revenues instead shying away from taxing big businesses, and show support for the people in their neighborhoods. In New York, this movement has started in earnest. In a new proposal this week, state lawmakers are asking their fellow states to join them in an interstate compact to oppose incentives races like the one for Amazon. I would add to that call an ask for the mayors and former mayors considering running for president to stand up against incentives.

[brandondonnelly]

The geography of gyms

Richard Florida and Patrick Adler recently looked at the geography of gyms across the United States. They analyzed 17 different fitness chains, over 10,000 gyms, and nearly 5,000 zip codes. Full article over here at CityLab.

The findings probably won’t surprise you, but it’s still interesting to see some of the data. Gyms and fitness studios tend to concentrate themselves in affluent neighborhoods with a high number of college graduates.

The median household income of the average zip code with a gym or fitness studio is $72,720. This is compared to $56,694 for all zip codes. And when it comes to zip codes with an Equinox, SoulCycle, The Bar Method, or Town Sports Clubs, the median income jumps to over $100,000.

Above is from the second post in the two part series they are doing on “the geography of fitness.” For the first one, click here.

[chut-psat]

Brief #113

Vast numbers of Creative Class people are concerned mainly with building their résumés, building their bodies and aquiring the status kit of our age. … They naively assume that if they take care of their own business, the rest of the world will take care of itself and continue to provide the environment they need to prosper. Time and again, I find such people complaining that traditional forms of organized politics or organized anything “aren’t for us.” This is understandable. The old forms are relics of the past age; they often leave much to be desired. But here’s the catch: Unless we design new forms of civic involvement appropriate to our times, we will be left with a substantial void in our society and politics that will ultimately limit our ability to achieve the economic growth and rising living standards we desire.

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

[highlands11]

BID (Business Improvement District) OU LA SMART CITY STANDARDISEE : L’ERREUR DES MODELES

BID (Business Improvement District) OU LA SMART CITY STANDARDISEE : L’ERREUR DES MODELES analyse critique d'un modèle urbain actuel et piste de réflexion.

Temps de lecture : 5 minutes Mots clés : BID, smart cities, ville partagée, ville accueillante, Michael Labbé, sidewalk Labs, Google, villes créatives, Landry, Florida

le mobilier Cadmen, anti SDF, anti, vieux, anti passants, anti s’asseoir tout simplement. source : Usbek &Rica, 2019

Je vous le répète assez souvent : la ville intelligente est l’un des enjeux majeurs de la ville de demain…