Florida, a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto,[1] maintains that the creative class is a key driving force for economic development of post-industrial cities in North America.
[5] In his 2002 study, Florida concluded that the creative class would be the leading force of growth in the economy expected to grow by over 10 million jobs in the next decade, which would in 2012 equal almost 40% of the population.
A number of specific cities and regions (including California's Silicon Valley, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Boston's Route 128, The Triangle in North Carolina, Austin, Seattle, Bangalore, Dublin and Sweden) have come to be identified with these economic trends.
[6] Florida argues that the creative class is socially relevant because of its members' ability to spur regional economic growth through innovation (2002).
Walter Grünzweig, professor for American Studies at Technical University of Dortmund, has shown that the origin of the term “creative class” does not lie with Florida, but instead goes back to a passage in Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Power" in his collection The Conduct of Life (1860).
It is composed of scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and architects, and also includes "people in design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or creative content" (Florida, 2002, p. 8).
Another sector of the Creative Class includes positions that are knowledge intensive; these usually require a high degree of formal education (Florida, 2002).
Members of the creative class may set their own hours and dress codes in the workplace, often reverting to more relaxed, casual attire instead of business suits and ties.
The Creativity Index includes four elements: "the Creative Class share of the workforce; innovation, measured as patents per capita; high tech industry, using the Milken Institute's widely accepted Tech Pole Index…; and diversity, measured by the Gay Index, a reasonable proxy for an area's openness" (2002, pp. 244–5).
Florida and others have found a strong correlation between those cities and states that provide a more tolerant atmosphere toward culturally unconventional people, such as gays, artists, and musicians (exemplified by Florida's "Gay Index" and "Bohemian Index" developed in The Rise of the Creative Class), and the numbers of Creative Class workers that live and move there (2002).
[13] Each year Florida and the Martin Prosperity Institute release the Global Creativity Index, an international study of nations, ranking countries on the 3Ts of economic development - talent, technology, and tolerance.
Street Level Culture may include a "teeming blend of cafes, sidewalk musicians, and small galleries and bistros, where it is hard to draw the line between participant and observer, or between creativity and its creators" (p. 166).
Members of the Creative Class enjoy a wide variety of activities (e.g., traveling, antique shopping, bike riding, and running) that highlight the collective interest in being participants and not spectators (Florida, 2002).
[27] John Montgomery writes that "what Florida has devised is a set of indices which simply mirror more fundamental truths about creative milieux or dynamic cities.
[32][33][34][35] Hoyman and Faricy, using Florida's own indices, find no statistical evidence that cities with higher proportions of Creative Class workers correlated with any type of economic growth from 1990–2004.
"[45] Other scholars have criticized the very basis for Florida's definition of "creativity" which many argue is conceived of narrowly and is only valued for the potential for financial and economic growth.
[48][49] Rather than validating Florida's causal logic that attracting the creative class will lead to economic growth, empirical research shows that successful regions pull and maintain human capital.
[53] The creative class thesis has also drawn criticisms for relying on inner city property development, gentrification, and urban labor markets reliant on low-wage service workers, particularly in the hospitality industry.
The group manages an online clearinghouse for information about creative city strategies and policies, publishes a newsletter and other materials, and works to engage the media and public in critical discussion.
[64] In June 2009, Creative Class Struggle and art magazine Fuse organized a public forum in Toronto to debate these issues.