Go Jersey

Jersey is my home state and Newark my original hometown, so I was more than intrigued by this post by  Craig Schoonmaker over at Newark USA.  Craig is writing in response to my oped with Gary Gates in last Sunday's Daily News on how New Jersey's recent court decision on gay unions could tip the scales in the state's favor. Schoonmaker, creator of the term "gay pride"  is a transplant from Manhattan to Newark.

"Manhattan has long atracted gay men from all over the world. I myself left New Jersey for Manhattan in 1965, and stayed there for 35 years until the crammed-jammed, frazzled existence of that overcrowded and increasingly expensive island propelled me back to New Jersey, where I have SPACE and TREES and FLOWERS in a semi-suburban part of Newark a half hour car ride from the Village. Now, in addition to the push of overcrowding and high expenses of all kinds in Manhattan, New Jersey could also benefit from the pull of a society even more tolerant than New York, where they can actually marry and enjoy the economic security of being able to pool their resources to buy a house..."

Talent, spikes and firms

From the brilliant John Hagel at Edge Perspectives:

"In a perverse way, geographic spikes and firms face opposite challenges.  As spikes form and achieve critical mass, network effects begin to take over and a virtuous cycle emerges – the more people that participate in the spike, the more valuable the spike becomes as a source of talent development.  In contrast, the larger the firm becomes, the more difficult it is to sustain high growth rates and the more likely that inertial forces will take over and limit the potential for talent development, setting in motion a vicious cycle – talent tends to leave to seek out more hospitable homes and growth slows even further.  The winners in the global economy will be the firms that can find ways to break this vicious cycle and harness network effects for talent development both within and across firms." More

Class analysis gets classy

My "most outlandish critic" has a new post on her site which is mighty interesting. Seems like there might be room even for some common ground.

The heart of the issue seems to be this: How does my construct of the creative class differ from earlier, influential constructs like the "professional-middle class" outlined by social theorists like Erik Olin Wright among others? What do I add?  Let me start by saying my own work owes a huge debt to this earlier line of thinking as well as by constructs like Peter Drucker's "knowledge workers" and Robert Reich's "symbolic analysts."

As it just so happens, the debate over class has been at the heart of my own interests since my undergraduate days at Rutgers. I wrote my first essays on this in the late 70s.

Marx viewed class in relation to the means of production, while Weber saw class more as status groups. While I lean to Marx's view on this, I always found the canonical marxian duality of bourgeoisie and proletariat failed to capture the dynamics of modern "post-industrial" or "post-fordist" society.  In fact, even during Marx's time, he recognized these two classes, not as the only two classes, but as the ascendant and therefore "revolutionary" classes--the ones driving the progress of history. Marx, I should also point out, also noted in the Grundrisse that science can and does enter into the economy as a direct productive force as intellectual labor, which the great economic historian Nathan Rosenberg has written on.

I felt ever since graduate school that a new kind of economy or mode of production and thus a new kind of class structure was emerging.  It took me a while though, a long while to begin to put my finger on it. I was always interested in the schism between intellectual and manual labor, something that theorists like Harry Braverman had identified, though mainly in the context of the seperation of the two and the "de-skilling" of factory workers.   At the time and since, I was also very influenced by the European "regulationist" school of political economy whose leading theorists were trying to elaborate not just the "crisis" of fordist mass production, but what was likely to come after in the shift to "post-fordist" production structures. I wrote a lot on this with Martin Kenney as we tried to analyze and compare the US "breakthrough system" of Silicon Valley high-technology, which was and is very good at harnessing intellectual labor in the form of high end innovation, to the Japanese "follow-though" system which was and is very good at harnessing the intellectual labor of shop-floor workers ala the Toyota production system. 

All the while, I never found the simple-minded, un-economic, and ahistorical construct of the service economy very useful, mainly because it cannot specify an underlying source of value creation. Agricultural or feudal production was based on land and physical labor. Industrial production based on technology, raw materials and manual labor.  What is the service economy based on?  The concept of the service economy, as Kenney and I long ago argued, lumps together things like software production which can and does animate real production processes with activities like hamburger flipping. The professional-managerial class is the class analysis equivalent to the service economy. Neither specify where real value comes from--the driving force which animates the economy and society.

What was the new production system that was replacing industrial/ fordist capitalism: what was its motor force, its inner dynamic? To answer this question, I found myself trying to come to grips with a new and more innovative post-fordist system based increasingly on the mobilization of intellectual labor in technological innovation, in design and on the factory floor as well. What was the driving force, what was the common unifying element across the board?

Then one day it hit me:  Marx had long said that what made the proletariat a universal class was its role in an inter-subjective or social production system--the fact that workers can't make stuff alone, they are all part of an extended division of labor. We all need one another to make things and survive.

But it is not manual labor that binds us together, really; it's our capacity to think, our capacity for knowledge, our intellectual labor. In fact, even Marx had said as much.  And then it hit me:  It's really something more. It's our creativity.

Thus the two core precepts of my theory. One, every single human being is creative. And two, creativity does not conform to the social categories our history has imposed on us. It is ubiquitous and comes equally in both genders, all nationalities and ethnicities, all sexual orientations. It really doesn't care about your skin color, or national origin, or gender, or how rich your parents are, or what kind of family you grew up in or care to create for yourself. It is creativity that is intrinsically human, that cuts across our imposed divides, that is the universalizing element so to speak. 

So that's the backdrop for my writing about the creative class. Don't get confused by the backs and forths about  artists and hipsters, amenities and sexual orientation, though those things can and do play a role.

At bottom, my theory is about the emergence of a new economic system and a new class who's fundamental relationship to the economy is human creativity. Creativity today, like manual labor and industrial production under industrial capitalism, is the primary generator of economic value.

All of this leads me to the great conundrum of the creative economy. Even though every single human being is creative, only about a third of the workforce works in occupations where they are expected and paid to use even a modicum of their creativity.  Thus, the great challenge of society is to expand the structures of the creative economy to tap and harness the creativity of much larger segments of the workforce in the service and manufacturing sectors alike. At bottom, all of us are creative beings and thus all are potential participants in the creative economy.  How to extend and include these creative talents, this creative energy?

And this in turn leads to an even greater contradiction.  The full flourishing of creativity comes smack up against the old and tired institutions of industrial capitalism--the nation-state, an outmoded industrial structure, rigid political institutions, corporate bureaucracies which treat people like machines or worse, an antiquated system of intellectual property protection. 

Thanks to my outlandish critic for bringing these issues to the fore.  How to ignite a broader conversation over these, the fundamental issues, of our time?

Creative Singapore, Creative China

Via our great friend Steve Dahlberg's Applied Imagination blog, this:

Creative industries forum kicks off in Singapore [27 November 2006 - People's Daily Online - China] "A global forum for creative industries, Beyond 2006, one of a series of events of month-long Creative 2006 programs to showcase and promote Singapore's creative sector, was kicked off in Singapore Monday. "Many countries see the creative industries as a key competitive advantage in the globalized economy. Ideas and imagination have become valuable assets and drivers of economic opportunities and growth," Lee Boon Yang, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, said at the opening ceremony of the forum. "Singapore cannot be any different," he said, adding "We must harness creativity and the power of innovation to forge ahead in a globalized economy." More

And this: Pressing need for creative economy [27 November 2006 - China Daily]
"First there was the "new economy," then there was the "knowledge economy," and now we have the "creative economy." Call it what you will, but the nation is arguably attaching more importance to "chuangyi" (creativity) to restructure its economy. In big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, massive material and political resources have been devoted to what leaders term "Chuangyi jingji" (creative economy) as a key strategic element for advancing the cities' development." More

Creative Barcelona

First Paris tries to woo the creative class, now this update on Barcelona's, arguably the world's most beautiful city, on its efforts to bolster creativity and innovation, via Bruno Giusanni's blog. Bruno writes: "Francesc Santacana is the coordinator of the strategic plan for the metropolitan area of Barcelona - a network of 36 cities with about 3 million inhabitants. ..."We have been shifting from an orderly structured and designed urban model of the industrial era to a more or less chaotic space, occupied in an erratic way, with a rather blurred logic and in which multiple economic activities, cultures and values coehixt", says Francesc. He and his colleagues have read Richard Florida, for their top goal is to "generate, attract and retain creative and innovative talent". Promoting infrastructures is only a part of this, of course. Much more important is to promote the right kind of infrastructures, to properly re-design both the city and the ways it can foster interaction and "fecundation"... "

Read the rest here.

Space Matters

Our first on-the-ground strategy comes from Denver, where the Mayor's Task Force on Creative Spaces released this week its plan for addressing the space needs of its very creative population. From our viewpoint, they did it right, realizing and addressing "the multi-faceted, complex subject of creative space - affordability, suitability, availability, sustainability and the development process" and seeking a variety of solutions. Check out the full report here.

Let us know about more on-the-ground strategies working in your community. Use the comment space here or send them to Amanda at Amanda@CreativeClass.org. We'll post new strategies for discussion each Wednesday.

It's working!

We know people all over the world are building creative communities. It's an organic process and...we're all learning. This space can be used to talk about strategies that really build on regional authenticity AND create sustainable results. So, let's hear what's working - from community projects to government policy to those magical coming together moments - and why.

Write in about strategies that are working in your community. Feel free to use the comment space here or send a note to Amanda at Amanda@CreativeClass.org. We'll post new strategies for discussion each Wednesday.

Universities, the real world, and public intellectuals

Dean Schmalensee's Business Week article has touched off a lively debate among scholars associated with the Sloan Foundation's Industry Studies Program. While I basically agree, the crux of the problem, to my way of thinking, runs far, far deeper.

Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Dean of the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations University of Illinois, argues that "it is no accident that we now see increasing debate around business schools taking more of a  problem-centered, interdisciplinary focus.  We are in what Mike Piore  and Chuck Sabel first called "the second industrial divide" -- a  period when key institutional arrangements are incompletely matched to markets, technology, and demographics."

I could not agree more. And I would add that just when we need scholars and the academy to generate the large scale ideas and public debate to facilitate and accelerate this "matching" of institutional arrangements to economic, technological and social trends, academe is focusing far too resources on these issues and problems.

These issues cross all manner of subjects and disciplines--from economics and business to urban affairs and geography, public policy and social, cultural and demographic factors. The workplace is being re-organized radically away from the old bureaucratic corporation Alfred Chandler wrote about. The relationship between workers and their managers and tasks is changing. What people expect at work is changing too. Work and production organization are being reshaped; design and creativity have entered the picture in a big way.  Production increasingly takes the form of globe straddling networks. Cities and communities are being reshaped, becoming more specialized economically, occupationally and demographically. We are in the midst of a great migration. Our culture is being radically reshaped. The family itself is being redefined: now more people are single than married, the rise of "urban tribes."  I could go on and on-- the list is endless.

One way I like to think about this is the decline of public intellectualism in our universities. Even up to the time Piore and Sabel wrote The Second Industrial Divide a good deal of conversation-setting analysis of social, cultural and economic trends was produced by engaged scholars and public intellectuals operating out of academe. In economics the names are well known; Galbraith, Friedman, Drucker and others;  in sociology people Dan Bell; in political science, Charles Lindbolm and many others.

Sure, there are still academics who are public intellectuals, doing serious research on important problems and writing in a style that engages people across the board. Jared Diamond is illuminating the relationship between nature and social behavior; Robert Putnam on civic engagement; Jeff Sachs on international development; Paul Krugman on macro-economics. But there could be, and should be, a lot more.

The shortage of public intellectuals, I believe, poses big costs for society. Stanford University's Paul Romer, one of our leading students of economic growth, paraphrasing Keynes a great public intellectual himself, always says that what really powers economic and social advance are meta-ideas. If academe is not producing enough public intellectuals: where will these meta-ideas come from?

The answer is simple: The vacuum is being filled by the rise of entrepreneurial journalists, the David Brooks and Tom Friedmans of the world. Great writers, able to pen compelling stories, but far less great on tracking large-scale social trends.  Virtually all of the serious non-fiction editors I know at big publishing houses have told me personally that they are seeing far fewer proposal from academics; that the proposals they do see are not nearly as compelling; and that their portfolios are shifting away from academics and toward journalists. Without the ability to track and parse long term trends (and dare I say data-sets), these journalistic public intellectuals that can provide compelling snapshots of the moment, but have far more difficulty shedding real light on the dramatic social and economic changes that face us. In fact, lacking these skills, they are likely to distort the picture and color the popular debate in ways that obscure important aspects of the problems facing society.

Why would this shift away from the university be taking place? The problems are big. And universities say they want more such people. So why aren't we producing more of the kinds of public intellectuals needed to produce these meta-ideas?

There are many, many reasons. Believe it or not, it's hard to fund meta-ideas.  Public funding organizations like the National Science Foundation focus the bulk of their resources on science and engineering, funding in the social and behavioral sciences tends to go toward smaller-scale, disciplinary problems in the social sciences. Large philanthropy has its hands full making practical impact, and finds it harder and harder to justify large grants for intellectual capital.  Universities tend to spread their own money around.

Another part of the problem is that being a public intellectual is difficult work. Getting an oped published in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, I have come personally to understand, is hard slogging, harder at least for me than publishing in leading academic journals. Writing a compelling book for a trade publisher, that has a strong narrative argument that can appeal to relatively large numbers of people, is also more difficult, again for me, then writing research findings aimed at professional peers.   

This is made all the more difficult by a university environment which tends to look askance on public intellectualism. Despite what is said, there are sizable obstacles in front of academics who would like to do public intellectual work. Too many departments continue to suggest that public intellectual work is "journalistic," "shallow" or worse; direct graduate students away from them; or say it's more important to stay on campus and engage with peers and students than it is to travel to engage public audiences.

How to solve the problem?  Let me venture some ideas.  One possibility is that universities make better use of the division of labor in their use of personnel--some are better teachers; some better researchers; some better engagers. Why not adjust their workloads and expectations?

A Carnegie Commission report redefined what academics do as discovery, learning and engagement, as opposed to the traditional, research, teaching, and service. Why not give academics credit for "engaging" broader audiences? Why not "teaching credit" for educating beyond the university? Why not use distance learning and new educational technology to disseminate their ideas? The idea of making public intellectuals Deans and administrators is simply ludicrous; their value is in their ability to generate and focus energy around meta-ideas.

Still another is that we build new capacity around nimble institutes that engage across disciplines and  capacities around pressing problems. The model I have in mind here is the National Institutes of Health, which bring science to bear on diseases. This could enable some serious massing of resources around pressing social and economic issues. But these institutes need to provide real support for public intellectuals who are working on big problems and meta-ideas. The funds can't be used to promote business, or should I say research, as usual.

Most of all the universities have to commit to supporting public intellectuals, and by this I mean more than just paying their salaries. We need to actively leverage, not isolate, them and their activities. 

It also means building real programs around their real-world interests. Take my own area of regional and urban economic development. Most universities say this is an important problem area. Most say they are in fact active contributors to regional development through technology innovation, technology transfer, spinoff companies and what not. But how many have tried to build real academic programs in this area-- programs with real support, real financial backing and aimed to generate new knowledge. Many of the truly great universities lack any such programs. But what better laboratory to understand social, economic and cultural change, and the role of the university in it.

I'll end with a comment from Jane Jacobs, one of the leading public intellectuals of the 20th century. When I asked her why she never joined a university, despite many offers, she said simply: "How could I do work on interesting real-world problems there?"

I would love to know what you think about this, and what might be done?

Putting the B in B-schools

This Business Week piece by MIT Sloan School Dean, Richard Schmalensee is very, very interesting:

"To our critics, including many successful  managers, business schools have become little more than exercises in ticket punching for would-be consultants, taught by faculty who are more interested in impressing their academic colleagues than in confronting real-world business problems. Although overstated, this caricature has a grain of truth. ...[M]anagement school faculty often focus on academic fields such as game theory or econometrics, not on management practice, and their work may have little to do with real business problems. ... Critics charge that such faculty (some who may not even know or care much about business) can teach business students little or nothing about how to actually manage--in other words, to accomplish things with and through other people. ...Unfortunately, under the current academic reward system, what matters most is having an impact among peers, mainly by getting specialized research published in influential journals. ... Even after faculty get lifetime tenure, if they veer from the traditional academic path, they will likely lose stature within the academy. Few have a strong enough ego not to care. At the core of management school criticism, then, is a fundamental mismatch: the academic system's current methods for hiring and rewarding professors don't necessarily attract or encourage the kind of practitioner-oriented faculty we need to make business-school research and MBA education much more attuned to meeting today's and tomorrow's management challenges.... Many are willing and anxious to solve this problem, but, like me, are not quite certain how to do so. ... [B]usiness schools' research agendas must become primarily driven by real-life management problems. But in order for this change to happen, problem-driven research must become recognized and honored as a great way to advance, not jeopardize, an academic career."

The gastronomic index

I had an interchange today with Zachary Neal, managing editor of the terrific journal, City and Community, and it reminded me of his fascinating paper on "Culinary deserts, gastronomic oases: A classification of US cities" published in January in Urban Studies.

The study looked at all sorts of restaurants from fast food joints, coffee shops and casual dining to ethnic restaurants, elite restaurants and "eatertainment" venues and more across some 245 cities. His findings: cities cluster across two dimensions: some are "Urbane," while others are "McCulture." "Urbane oases" have a wide and diverse mix of restaurant types. Place like DC, LA, and San Fran, they correlate closely with locations of the creative class. "McCulture oases" are places where the chains outnumber the unique--Phoenix, Columbus, Houston and at least two well known creative centers, ahem.... Raleigh and Austin.  These places Neal says are mainly "nerdistans." Then there are places which either have a few ethnic restaurants or a few fast food joints. "Urbane deserts" are heavy on older, rebounding suburbs like Arlington, VA; Oakland CA; Bellvue, WA; and Naperville, IL. McCulture deserts (there are lots of them) include Detroit, Little Rock, Kansas City and many, many others.  They are strong social capital communities in the main. A PDF of the paper is here.

Download neal_2006.pdf

Changing shape of the city

Brookings' Robert Puentes has a new report on the four major forces affecting cities in the US and worldwide. It synthesizes the growing body of evidence on America's spatial sorting and its effects on cities.

1. Resurgence of urban downtowns: notably Chicago, lower Manhattan, San Francisco and Seattle, driven by young couples and empty-nesters.

2. City growth is uneven:  While some cities are thriving, others are not. The ability to attract immigrants is a key differentiator here, especially among smaller cities.

3. Diversity:  While many urban downtowns are more diverse racially and ethnically than two decades ago, the locus of immigration is shifting to the suburbs. Nearly half (48 percent) of immigrants live in suburbs.

4. New geography of poverty: Thirty percent of the poor live in cities, compared to 31 percent in large metro suburbs, 20 percent in smaller towns and 19 percent in rural areas. Poverty rates have declined somewhat in central cities over the past decade, while increasing in suburbs, the trend for high-poverty rates is even more pronounced. Cities are losing their middle class and becoming more polarized economically.

The immigration advantage

Openness to immigration has long been the core competitive advantage of the United States. Now a new study provides new data on just how much immigrant entrepreneurs have added to America's high-tech edge.  Sponsored by the National Venture Capital Association, it found that immigrants started 25 percent of the new venture-backed companies in the U.S. over the past 15 years,  with a market capitalization of more than $500 billion, and nearly half (47 percent) of venture-backed companies. Two-thirds of the immigrant founders surveyed said that current U.S. immigration policy hinders the ability of future foreign-born entrepreneurs to start American companies.

A story on CNN.com quoted Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, who came to this country from Taiwan at the age of ten, as saying: "Yahoo would not be an American company today if the United States had not welcomed my family and me almost 30 years ago. We must do all that we can to ensure that the door is open for the next generation of top entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists from around the world to come to the U.S. and thrive."

Read the full report here.

Urban dynamics

Lot's of great stuff over at planetizen:

Gays and gentrification: "Once a force of gentrification themselves, gays and lesbians are increasingly being displaced from once queer urban enclaves that have become popular and upscale." The full article is here.

Artist displacement: "From Soho to the Lower East Side to Williamsburg, the story has been more or less the same – artists move in, eventually helping to cause the neighborhood to go through sweeping changes, which results in hardship for local families and businesses -- as well as for the artists themselves." More here.

And a lively debate over Joel Kotkin: "Pay no mind to Kotkin...All he is attempting to do is to bash liberal, socially-conscious planners, many of whom congregate on the coasts. By contrast, he is attempting to shine a supposed bright light on all the "hard-working" Americans who have fled those coastal urban environs for cheaper real estate in places like California's Inland Empire and San Joaquin Valley and the Rocky Mountain states. Keep in mind, those are the very same places which are experiencing the highest rates of bankruptcy and foreclosure given the current real estate decline. ... Mr. Kotkin, in his defense of suburban sprawl and decentralization of urbanized areas, is serving as nothing more than an advocate of "white flight" to intensely conservative, and racially/ethnically homogeneous places such as Salt Lake City, Phoenix, and Reno. And Kotkin intentionally does not acknowledge the political and economic forces at play which have historically segregated our cities and led to suburban flight in the first place, such as redlining, low interest FHA mortgages, and the interstate highway system.... His is not an intelligent critique of urban spatial patterns in the United States any more than it is a reflection of his own intensely partisan and conservative think tank political ideology. " See the rest here.

An urban agenda for a spiky world

Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution makes a compelling argument that new policies are needed globally and nationally for a spiky world centered around city-regions. "Before the international Urban Age conference in Berlin, Bruce Katz argued that if cities are the organizing units of the new global order, then a broad range of policies and practices at the city, national, and supra-national levels need to be reevaluated and overhauled around new spatial realities and paradigms." A PDF of the entire speech is here.

You are where you talk

I typically despise on-line quizzes but when I saw this one  Virgina Postrel's dynamist blog, I had to give it a try. It's been more than 20 years since I lived in the New York-New Jersey area, certainly my accent had to change.  Much to my chagrin, my results turned out like this:       

               

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast   Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak. The Inland North   Philadelphia   The South   The Midland   Boston   North Central   The West

Give it a try, here.

"In praise of chain stores"

That's the title of Virgina Postrel's new Atlantic column (link good for three days), which "defends the virtues of chain stores and restaurants against critics who complain that 'every place looks the same.'"

Hmmmm....What do you think?

Gay ghettos

"Whether or not you subscribe to Richard Florida’s “creative class” theory, where the gays go eventually so do higher property values, less crime, better schools, ethnic diversity and growth.  ...GayGhettos.com in partnership with GayRealEstate.com, the leading resource for gay-friendly real estate transactions, has announced its inaugural list of the nation’s top up-and-coming “gay ghettos.”   

Hell’s Kitchen, NYC
Near Northeast, Syracuse
New London, CT
South End, Boston
Canton/Highlandtown, Baltimore
New Hope, PA
Rehoboth Beach, DE
Shaw, Washington, DC
Washington Square West, Philadelphia
Midtown, Atlanta
NODA—North Davidson Street, Charlotte, NC
Oakcliff, Dallas
Uptown,Tampa Bay
Andersonville, Chicago
East Side, Madison, WI
Third Ward/South Second, Milwaukee
Wicker Park, Chicago
Hilltop, Tacoma, WA
Northeast Broadway,Portland, OR
Oakland, CA
Stapleton, Denver

The full list (hat tip: Jesse Elliott) is here.

What do you think--any others you'd add?

Office design for the creative class

I was google searching for something this morning and came across this interesting paper by Thomas Davenport. BTW, I strongly recommend checking out tomdavenport.com if you haven't already

Why Office Design Matters

You want to concentrate and collaborate, but how can you get the best of both worlds in your current office set-up? An excerpt from Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performance and Results from Knowledge Workers.

by Thomas H. Davenport

One factor that affects knowledge worker performance that isn't well understood is the physical work environment—the offices, cubicles, buildings, and mobile workplaces in which knowledge workers do their jobs. There is a good deal said about this topic, but not much known about it. Even more unfortunately, most decisions about the knowledge work environment are made without seriously considering their implications for performance.

In 2002 I and my then-colleagues at Accenture Bob Thomas and Sue Cantrell undertook a study of this issue.1 We interviewed forty-one companies that had some initiative under way intended to improve the performance of high-end knowledge workers, or those with particularly high levels of expertise and experience, who were critical to the organization's mission. We were interested in all the factors that affected knowledge work performance, but the topic most commonly addressed by the companies was the physical work environment (the other common ones were information technology and management). […]

The introduction of a new workspace was most often the catalyst for a broad redesign of the knowledge work environment in our study. Because it is so tangible, a new or alternative office can be both the symbol and a key part of the reality of new ways of working. For example, Pharmacia recently built a new pharmaceutical research building outside of Chicago that was intentionally designed to encourage more interaction among its R&D staff. The new workspace was intended not only to attract top research scientists to the company, but also to promote a more collaborative culture. Particular designs can encourage certain types of behavior, although they will never guarantee it. Of course, office space is also expensive, and savings resulting from decreased or alternative space often serves as a rationale for change.

Workspace design is a somewhat faddish phenomenon, in part because no one knows exactly what factors affect knowledge worker performance, and how those factors interrelate. In the absence of knowledge, vendors of office environments, architects, and developers are free to make all kinds of claims about what works. But we do know some things from the limited amount of research on this topic, and in the next section I'll provide a list of what is generally agreed to be true with regard to the physical work environment. Then I'll describe a framework that will help managers think about the physical environments for knowledge work in their own organizations.

What have your experiences been with your office space?

Most outlandish creative class critic of the year

Or maybe the decade..... My ideas have always generated heated debate and criticism, but this takes the proverbial cake. From the folks over  at "Bitch/Lab.com" ("where lefties and feminists have dirty minds too"), we have ..."5 minutes Bitch Hate for Richard" ... "piny is probably pretty irritated with my outburst about Richard Florida’s work on ‘the creative economy.’ Let me take a stab at an explanation...."  You have to read the whole thing here.

The mathematics of talent and where hipness began

Over at Abstract Nonsense, Alon Levy has interesting posts on both. Check them out.

More immigrants and cities

Here's a copy of a terrific power-point on immigrants and US regions by Audrey Singer of the Brookings Institution (hat tip: Tian)

Download audrey_singer_immigration.pdf

University and the creative economy

Download university_and_the_creative_economy.pdf

Here's a newly revised version of my paper in this subject with Kevin Stolarick, Gary Gates and Brian Knudsen.

Immigrants and cities

The always thoughtful Greg Zachary, author of  Endless Frontier  (on Vannevar Bush and science policy) and The Global Me (on global immigration and blurring racial categories) has penned a new essay on immigrants and cities. More on the intercultural city project here.

Great creative class debate

Spirited and thoughtful debate on the creative class and politics going on over at Pandagon.

Rooting for the Garden State

Here's a piece by me and Gary Gates that ran in today's New York Daily News.

Some New Yorkers take New Jersey for granted. Sure, it's a great place to go to the beach, shop at Ikea or see a football game. But take people, money and buzz away from the Big Apple? It'll never happen.

Yet the Garden State may finally be on its way to turning the tables on its big brother - thanks to, of all things, a court decision.

Last month, of course, New Jersey's Supreme Court paved the way for giving same-sex partners equal rights, giving lawmakers 180 days to rewrite marriage laws to either include same-sex couples or create a new system of civil unions for them.

This will be a big deal - not just for same-sex couples, but for New Jersey's economy.

Why? Because, despite some rumblings in Albany, New York is likely to be years away from allowing same-sex marriage or civil unions. That will give Jersey a serious competitive advantage in attracting gay couples and the economic benefits associated with their calling a place home.

A forthcoming study by UCLA's Williams Institute finds that revenue from weddings and wedding tourism alone (if the Jersey legislature approves marriage, not civil unions) would add nearly $103 million per year in business to the state for at least the next few years.

But the economic impact could go way beyond that. Our research on what makes cities and regions grow shows that urban economic vitality today turns on openness to new ideas, new people and different lifestyles. Artistic, technological and cultural innovators and the more than 40 million workers who are part of what we call "the creative class" are drawn to places that are diverse and tolerant.

And when they settle somewhere, these people, who tend to have disposable income to spend in restaurants, bars and coffee shops, attract more of each other and fuel all kinds of economic activity.

Yes, Manhattan has long been seen as a powerful beacon of tolerance and a magnet of artistic and cultural innovation. That's what enabled the city's rise and resurgence as a world center of not just finance but art, design, fashion and entertainment.

But success has also brought its costs. Housing and rents have skyrocketed, and a growing numbers of the foot soldiers of the creative class have been forced out of Manhattan. Now, people are getting priced out of Park Slope, Williamsburg and Astoria, too. Neighborhoods are in a quiet contest, jockeying to be open, vibrant and affordable alternatives in which this creative class can live and work.

As we speak, much of the shift has benefited Brooklyn, the new creative hot spot of New York. But what about the next center? Could theaters, music clubs and Internet startups cluster in Jersey City or Newark?

With its coming leap ahead of New York on gay rights, the smart money just may have moved to New Jersey.

War for talent

ATLANTA, Nov. 24 — Some cities will do anything they can think of to keep young people from fleeing to a hipper town.

In Lansing, Mich., partiers can ease from bar to bar on the new Entertainment Express trolley, part of the state’s Cool Cities Initiative. In Portland, Ore., employees at an advertising firm can watch indie rock concerts at lunch and play “bump,” an abbreviated form of basketball, every afternoon.

And in Memphis, employers pay for recruits to be matched with hip young professionals in a sort of corporate Big Brothers program. A new biosciences research park is under construction — not in the suburbs, but downtown, just blocks from the nightlife of Beale Street.

These measures reflect a hard demographic reality: Baby boomers are retiring and the number of young adults is declining. By 2012, the work force will be losing more than two workers for every one it gains.

Cities have long competed over job growth, struggling to revive their downtowns and improve their image. But the latest population trends have forced them to fight for college-educated 25- to 34-year-olds, a demographic group increasingly viewed as the key to an economic future.

Mobile but not flighty, fresh but technologically savvy, “the young and restless,” as demographers call them, are at their most desirable age, particularly because their chances of relocating drop precipitously when they turn 35. Cities that do not attract them now will be hurting in a decade.

Read the rest of today's New York Times front page story here (most e-mailed story at the Times today).

Who's your city: Boston

Over at Davewrites.com, more from Dave Atkins on how and why he chose the neighborhood he did in Boston.

Last week, I posted the story of how we returned to Boston. Here's a link to the story of how I first came to Boston. When I read stories about how young people today are choosing where to live first, then finding a job, I'm not sure it completely applies to me. The same is true of settling into a particular neighborhood.

As we planned our move from San Jose, CA to the Boston area, we were fortunate to have a relative here who was a Realtor. She sent us photos and listings by email in the weeks prior to our whirlwind weekend of house hunting. This helped us narrow down the choices.

When I first thought of moving back here, I wanted to live in Jamaica Plain or the South End, because those areas of Boston have a reputation for being "up-and-coming," trendy, artsy, areas full of young people. And yes, true to Richard Florida's analysis, they are the "gay enclaves." I wasn't looking to specifically live in a neighborhood full of gay people, but I was thinking I wanted to live in a cool part of the city.

Read the rest here.

Vulture capitalists

Interesting story today in theTimes on the age-old conflict between entrepreneurs and vulture capitalists. The piece makes much of entrepreneurs who are self-financing or going to independent angel investors to get around traditional venture capitalists. This has been going on for a long time.  But venture capitalists bring asssets that go way beyond money and can be critical to building thriving high-tech enterprises--just ask Apple, or google, or virtually any of the successful enterprises that define the landscape of American high-tech. My work with Martin Kenney on the subject leads me to believe that insitutional venture capital, along with perhaps America's system of research universities and openness to foreign talent, is a key cornerstone of US economic performance.

The great day of fanatical consumption

Shoppers Mob Malls for Holiday Discounts

 

At 6 a.m. this morning in Times Square, a line of shoppers several hundred deep burst through the doors of Toys “R” Us and promptly formed a second, equally long line to buy the season’s must-have product: T.M.X. Elmo.

The standard, morning-after-Thanksgiving retail behavior ensued — pushing, shouting, grabbing — until the dolls sold out and a frustrated crowd of Elmo-less consumers fanned out across the store in search of a substitute.

“Complete madness” was how 16-year-old Ray Robinson, who snatched one of the last Elmos, described the scene.

Across the country today, millions of Americans mobbed malls, swarmed discount stores and filled downtown shopping districts in an annual retail ritual that marks the start of holiday shopping season.

Eager to attract large crowds, merchants opened their doors even earlier than last year, testing the limits of sleep deprivation.

CompUSA let customers in at 9 p.m. last night. A dozen malls, from Utah to Maine, experimented with a midnight start. And Wal-Mart, Best Buy and J.C. Penney began ringing up sales at 5 a.m. (A 6 a.m. opening at Target seemed downright quaint.)

And come they did. At 6 a.m., the lines outside Macy’s Herald Square store in Manhattan spanned several blocks. “I have not seen a crowd this size in years,".... The rest is here.

Times catches up to the blog-sphere

Important topic, certainly. Sure would be nice they made even a passing reference to the  original report.

November 23, 2006

Editorial

Public Colleges as ‘Engines of Inequality’

Creative Class graphic

I came across this terrific graphic by Peter Durand of Alpha Chimp Studios today.  It's based on a talk I gave some time ago at PopTech.  I have two of Peter's graphics hanging in my office.

Global creative economy conference

More than 70 countries will gather in Brazil this week for a summit on the global creative economy. The meeting is sponsored by the United Nations and spearheaded by the great Gilberto Gil, Brazil's Culture Minister and one of the most interesting musicians of our time.Ponder for a minute what it might mean if say Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen or Lou Reed served in a similar capacity in the USA.  More here (hat tip: Brian Knudsen)