Top Quotes: “The Rise of the Creative Class” — Richard Florida
Background: Florida is a sociologist who wrote this book back in 2002, seeking to explain the rapid growth of (back then) unexpected cities like San Jose by connecting the development of high-tech region with acceptance of differences, vibrant public areas, and art innovation. He outlines characteristics of what he deems the “Creative Class” and compares these high-skilled workers to the Service Class (those who work in the service industry) and the Working Class (manufacturing workers). Some of the book’s points seems obvious reading it in 2019 (like millennials want to live in fun, exciting cities more than they care about the company they work for), but it was packed full of fun facts and surprising insights.
Intro
“Spanning science and technology, arts, media, and culture, traditional knowledge workers, this new ‘creative class’ makes up 1/3 to 1/2 of the U.S. workforce.”
“The rise of this new class and creativity as an economic force were the underlying factors powering so many of the seemingly unrelated and epiphenomenal trends in the way we live and work.”
“’Creative’ is the most common word LinkedIn users use to describe themselves. The term used to mean artists and writers; today, it means job stability.”
“The Creative Economy is driven by the logic that seeks to fully harness — and no longer waste — human resources and talent. The old Fordist industrial system was premised on the exploitation of workers and nature. Workers performed the same boring, exhausting tasks until they burned out.”
“Every human being is creative. The essential task before us is to unleash the creative energies, talent, and potential of everyone. Prosperity in the Creative Age can only be fully realized when each and every worker is recognized and empowered as a source of creativity — when their talents are nurtured, their passions harnessed, and they are appropriately rewarded for their contributions.”
“A great stumbling block in the United States has been the bifurcation of the labor market between highly-skilled, higher-wage Creative Class workers and lower-skilled, lower-pay Service Class jobs, which make up 45% of the labor class. Manufacturing workers are 28%. The only way forward is to make all jobs creative jobs, infusing service work, manufacturing work, farming, and every other form of human endeavor with creativity and human potential.”
“There were many more technological changes from 1900 to 1950, but much broader social change from 1950 to 2000. To a time traveler from 1950, people today would seem like they were always working and yet never working when they were supposed to. They would strike him as lazy and yet obsessed with exercise. They would seem career-conscious yet fickle and caring yet antisocial. What caused this transformation? We value creativity more highly and cultivate it more intensely than we ever have before.”
“Creativity is the act of bringing something useful, that works, and is non-obvious into the world, the conjunction of novelty, utility, and surprise.”
“The most successful and prosperous metros excel at technology, talent, and tolerance.”
The Creative Economy
“Creativity is a matter of sifting through data, perceptions, and materials to come up with combinations that are new and useful. It requires the combination of passion and confidence— breaking generally accepted rules, or even stretching them, takes confidence. Creative work is often downright subversive, because it disrupts existing patterns of thought and life.”
“We should not think of the myth of ‘creative geniuses,’ but rather that creativity is based in the ordinary abilities that we all share, and in practiced experience to which we can all aspire.”
“What made Greenwich Village of the ’60s so fertile to creative ideas was it combination of physical and social environments. It had short blocks that generated the greatest variety in foot traffic. It had a wide diversity of people from virtually every ethnic background and way of life. It had broad sidewalks and a tremendous variety of types of buildings — which meant that there were always people outside and on different schedules. Public characters like shopkeepers and community leaders connected and catalyzed people and ideas. Similar urban neighborhoods are today reviving across the country.”
The Creative Class
“40% of the members of the Creative Class do not have college degrees. Being in a Creative Class job boosts income by 16%, the equivalent of 1.5 years of education.”
“As the economy has become more specialized, the Creative Class has increasingly outsourced functions that were previously provided within the family to the Service Class. Many have no way out; they are stuck for life in menial jobs.”
“Working Class and Service Class members do engage in creative work; when they do, it results in higher productivity and higher wages.”
“One-half of Asians work in Creative Class jobs, compared to one-third of whites, one-quarter of blacks, and 18% of Hispanics. 40% of whites and Hispanics do Service class work, compared to 48% of blacks and 37% of Asians. 40% of Hispanics belong to the Working Class, compared to 28% of blacks, 25% of whites, and just 16% of Asians.”
“The three fundamental values of the Creative Class are individuality, meritocracy (hard work, challenge, and stimulation), and diversity/openness (a sign nonstandard people are welcome).”
Work
“To students I talked to, the content of the job and the nature of the work environment matters much more than the compensation — a factor in why beauty profession jobs are more highly sought than machinist jobs. Students see hair salons as more creative, exciting, and satisfying places to work.”
“Although young college graduates are burdened with substantial student loans, they are much less likely to be saddled with large mortgages or have children to support than in the past — making them less concerned about having a safe, stable, long-term job.”
“A survey of 20k IT workers in 2000 found that challenge, flexibility, job stability, and compensation were the most important job factors (in that order).”
“The best ideas in any workplace arise out of casual contracts among different groups within the same company. Ideal interactions occur among people whose roles are different enough to give them different perspectives, but who have enough common knowledge and common interest to know what would be mutually useful.”
Life
“At the end of each workday, there are usually problems remaining to be solved or decisions waiting to be made. These things may not occupy the foreground of your time off, but they linger in the background.”
“Time-deepening fools people into thinking they can avoid sacrificing one activity for another. In effect, time has become a commodity, and time viewed as a commodity seems to have made people’s lives shorter and less tranquil. The four key elements of time-deepening are speeding up of activities, substituting a leisure activity that can be done quickly for one that takes longer (like ordering takeout instead of cooking), multitasking, and detailed time planning.”
“In the 1960s, grown men simply did not exercise in public; doing so entailed the risk of appearing frivolous. The Boston Marathon has grown from 225 runners in 1964 to a cap of 18,000 today. Health-club memberships grew from virtually nothing in the 60s to 15 million by the 80s to 45 million by 2009. Active sports and exercise registered the largest percentage increase of all free-time activities, tripling between 1965 and 1995. 67% of all Americans participated in active outdoor recreation on a monthly basis in 1999, up from 50% in 1994.”
“18 to 44 years olds earning more than $75,000/year were more than twice as likely to participate in recreational activities.”
“Creative Class subjects are not especially interested in conventional spectator sports; they prefer to participate directly. An obsession with spectator sports tends to be a marker of Working Class status because of a need to identify with winners and they sanction a flux of record-keeping and pseudo-scholarship usually associated with the ‘decision-making’ or ‘executive’ classes.”
“The Creative Class obsession with fitness goes beyond a concern with health. With marriage often deferred and divorce more common, Creative Class people spend a lot of time on the mating market. Physical display is a key aspect of mating: you are more marketable if you look your best.”
“An activity like climbing encourages creativity, while a sport like baseball is highly structured. Game sports are competitive: it’s you against the opponent. Adventure sports are you against the task; against nature; against your own physical and mental limits.”
“Street level culture — clustered along certain streets with a multitude of small venues in multiuse urban neighborhoods — is more popular and considered essential among the Creative Class than traditional cultural venues like the symphony or the art museum because they come with the sense that you are entering a cultural community, not just attending an event, a chance to experience the creators along with the creations. This kind of experience is essential to the creative process. We humans are not godlike; we cannot create out of nothing. Creativity for us is an act of synthesis, and in order to create and synthesize, we need the stimuli of new experiences — bits and pieces to put together in new and unfamiliar ways, existing frameworks to deconstruct and transcend.”
“When the old markers that distinguish one type of person from another begin to fade and blur (like CEOs in a grungy rock band), it’s a clear sign that profound social change is afoot. The Big Morph is an evolutionary blending process of bourgeois and bohemian, alternative and mainstream, work and play that flowed first and strongest in certain enclaves and is now gradually filtering through the rest of society. It originates from the workplace and moves outward to inform new cultural forms and lifestyles. Changes in taste and lifestyle that at first glance seem superficial and unrelated are in fact rooted in a deeper economic change.”
“At the heart of the Big Morph is a new revolution of the centuries-old tension between two value systems: the Protestant work ethic (“It’s our duty to work hard”) and the bohemian ethic (“Value is found in experiencing and appreciating what life has to offer”).”
“The same basic pattern can be found in almost every high-growth tech region. Before these regions were high-tech hotspots, they were places where creativity and eccentricity were accepted and celebrated — Boston, Seattle, Austin, the Bay Area, and New York. All of these places were open, diverse, and culturally creative first — then became technologically creative.”
“Exactly as in rock music, you could hack away in your basement or garage with a couple of friends and dream of hitting it big.”
Community
“Place has replaced the industrial corporation as the key economic and social organizing unit of our time.”
“Cities aren’t just containers for smart people; they are the enabling infrastructure where connections take place, networks are built, and innovative combinations are consummated.”
“Cities are host to a wide variety of specialties and talents, the broad diversity of which is a vital spur to creating things that are truly new.”
“Practically every new thing that happens is a differentiation of a previous thing that already existed — from a new shoe sole to changes in legal code.”
“When talented and creative people come together, the multiplying effect is exponential; the end result is much more than the sum of its parts. Clustering makes each of us more productive.”
“The larger a city’s population, the greater the innovation and wealth per person.”
“Zipf’s law says that the distribution of virtually all cities within a nation follows a simple power law: the second largest city is roughly half the size of the first; the third one-third of the first, and so on. It applies to cities, not metro areas, and doesn’t apply to former capitals of empires like London or highly planned economies like China. But it accurately describes the U.S. over the last century and other advanced industrial nations as well.”
“A model of how cities form based on preferential attachment — skilled and productive people attract more skilled and productive people and increase each other’s creativity. Then, these creative agents form larger economic units which grow and develop.”
“In the course of the past 2,500 years, a small number of relatively large cities have functioned as hotbeds of revolutionary creativity — such as Athens in 400BC, Renaissance Florence, Enlightenment London, and turn of the century Vienna.”
“What early artistic and technological leaps in human development had in common was the growth of local population density beyond a certain threshold. Research shows the close relationship between tool making advances and population size.”
“Creative development usually requires mentors and role models during adolescence and young adulthood as well as early exposure to ideational diversity and conflict — both of which are much more likely to happen in urban settings.”
“When a solution to a problem is not forthcoming, a creative person will put aside temporarily and resume the tasks of ordinary life. During this time, they are exposed to a host of stimuli that prime associations, which can lead to a eureka moment.”
“U.S. cities with larger working class concentrations are becoming economically stagnant; some are in grim downward spirals. Those with large service class populations — such as Las Vegas — were attracting people and creating jobs at a rapid pace, but they were not really prospering. Many Sun Belt metros added population like crazy but improved neither their productivity or wages. Some built entire economies around the housing bubble and fell victim to ‘growth without growth.’”
“For large metros, the working class’ largest concentrations are found in Memphis, Louisville, and Houston, in all of which the working class accounts for one in four jobs. Just one in five in Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh belong to the working class today — equal to the national average. In only 2 metro areas are production workers over 20% of jobs.”
“There are more production workers per capita in Napa and Asheville than Gary, Dayton, Detroit, Allentown, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh — the industrial-era stalwarts.”
“The service class make up more than half of workers in 50 metro areas — including some that are a far cry from tourist meccas — Shreveport, Sioux Falls, Chico, Lubbock — making their economic and social future difficult to contemplate. These places have among the least resilient and most vulnerable economies.”
“The Creative Class has three core skills: physical (hand eye coordination, strength), cognitive (process information and solve problems), and social intelligence (communication, leadership, awareness).”
“Jobs requiring physical skill cluster in small and medium size metro areas — industrial centers where land for factories is relatively inexpensive. Jobs featuring analytic (and especially social) skills are scarce in these places and heavily concentrated in the largest metro areas. The new geography of class may be giving rise to a new form of segregation — perhaps even threatening to national unity.”
“There’s a strong correlation between places that are welcoming to immigrants, artists, gays, and socioeconomic and racial integration and places that experience high-quality economic growth.”
“Even though immigrants make up just 12% of the U.S. population, they generate more than 25% of its global patents and account for half of its science and engineering workers with PhDs.”
“In 1980, just 19% of immigrants ages 25–64 held a BA and nearly 40% hadn’t completed high school. By 2020, 30% of working-age immigrants held at least a BA and only 28% lacked a high school diploma. But compared with their U.S. born counterparts, low-skilled immigrants have higher rates of employment and lower rates of poverty.”
“12 of the top 20 Gay Index regions rank among the top 20 high tech regions, because acceptance of gays is a leading indicator of a place that is open to many different kinds of people.”
“The presence of gays and bohemians signals that a location has the very characteristics that drive innovation and growth (good amenities, openness, and high self-expression), driving further innovation and growth.”
“People with a high ‘openness to experience’ personality type cluster and shape the character of their metro areas.”
“The U.S. ranks 27th out of 82 nations with data for its share of the Creative Class. Singapore, Australia, and European countries like the Netherlands and Switzerland comprise the top 10.”
“People, especially the Creative Class, choose to live based on what’s there (built and nature), who’s there, and quality of place — street buzz, ability to be part of the scene, ability to be involved in the community.”
“People have become increasingly disconnected from one another and from their communities. The decline is evident in everything from loosening bonds between family, friends, and neighbors to declining participation in organizations of all sorts — churches, neighborhood associations, political parties, and recreational leagues. This social capital deficit is in turn rattling many aspects of our society, weakening our neighborhoods, making us less happy, damaging our education system, threatening the well-being of our children, and eroding our democracy. There are four key factors behind this civic malaise 1) longer working hours and increasing pressures of time and money means we have less time to spend together 2) rampant suburban sprawl keeps us farther from family and friends 3) TV and other media take up more of our time 4) The generational shift from the civic-minded WWII generation to the me-oriented Boomer and Gen Xers.”
“In 1950, 10% of households lived alone; today it’s 28%.”
“Where we choose to live as opposed to what we do has become our main element of identity.”
“The three most important decisions most of us will make in our lives: where to live, what to do, and with whom to do it. Place is the first leg in the triangle of a happy and fulfilled life.”
“Cities need a people climate perhaps even more than a business climate, a general strategy aimed at attracting and retaining people, especially creative people. Whereas companies and sports teams that get financial incentives can pull up and leave at a moment’s notice, investments in broad amenities like urban parks last for generations while benefiting a broad swath of the population.”
“Suburban human capital is the key factor in metros with fewer than 1 million people…there is less congestion and less pressure for central locations. But center city human capital places a bigger role for metros of over 1 million.”
“Zappos’ CEO moved its headquarters from an outlying suburb to the old City Hall building and has the goal of creating a vibrant urban district for Vegas.”
“Zappos’ base pay for unskilled workers is well above the average and a week after a new person starts, they are offered a $1,000 bonus to quit — proving they don’t have the commitment that Zappos demands.”
Contradictions
“Metros that rank highest on the Creative Index also tend to have the highest levels of inequality.”
“In 1970, most metros had equal numbers of college grads. By 2010, three metros had more than 50%, 19 had more than 40%, and others had less than 10%.”
“The least skilled and lowest paid workers are actually economically better off in more affluent and knowledge-based regions, even if the wage gap is higher.”
“While rich people trend conservative, rich states trend liberal. In 2011, Mississippi became the first state with over 50% of residents identifying as conservative. Class is a key driver of the rising conservatism — conservative affiliation was strongly positively correlated with the working class. It has become the default ideology of those left behind.”
“While rich people are much happier than poor people, rich societies are only a little happier than poor societies and countries don’t get happier when they get richer. Class plays a more fundamental role in happiness than income — where the working class is larger, happiness levels are lower.”
“The healthiest metros in terms of smoking and obesity rates are San Jose, Santa Cruz, Boulder, Napa, Bend, and San Francisco.”
“Sedentary professionals are much more likely to pursue vigorous exercise in their free time.”
“Class plays a much bigger role in the rate of cycling or walking to work than density, weather, or climate.”
“Firearm deaths are far more likely to occur in working class states, high poverty states, and states that voted for McCain in ’08.”
