It's the Simple Things...

I had the rare pleasure of flying Lufthansa, classe primo.  What an amazing experience.  Not only was the food delicious and the cabin spacious but the flight attendants were not surly!  And the best part of all..every seat had a ROSE!

So typically after I fly, I rename the airlines.  For example.

United is U-FRIGHTED

Northwest= NorthWORST

Southwest = SouthWORSTEST

US Air = US SCARE

Air Canada- SCARE Canada

Continental - Conti-HELL-tal

Delta - Schmelta

Aeroflot - AeroFLOP

American - Ameri-CANT

So for now, Lufthansa gets to keep its name.  Please share your monikers for the airline carriers.

Geographic Inequality

This new study by the Economic Policy Institute looks at trends in state level inequality over the past couple decades (h/t: Alison Kemper). 

Being Herded Like Cattle

NPR ran a story this morning about the trend of airlines charging for inches of leg space.  Any way they can squeeze a nickle or dime out of you, they will.  Jet Blue and United are taking the lead to offer passengers 6-8 inches of extra leg room for $10-$20.  With measures like this, the airline industry is going to crash and burn just like the Big 3 - Rigid Fat Cats of Detroit's automotive industry. 

"The Fat Lady Bought a Bigger Dress"

London Heathrow opened a new terminal this week.  I love this quote from Saturday's Globe and Mail, "Until now, that is. Heathrow's controversial new Terminal 5, which opens to passengers on Thursday, is supposed to put a shiny gloss on the airport's reputation by relieving some of that congestion. The fat lady hasn't lost weight, but she has bought a bigger dress."

The Queen gave it her official blessing.  Italian Stone Floors, open airy terminal, 4.3 billion pounds on the buildout.  What do you think?

LGA is Living Hell

Just flying out of one of the nation's richest cities  with the worst airport, LaGaurdia  The amenities are a joke, the airport design is uglier than a bus terminal.  And when I asked the TSA agent his favorite restaurant he smirked and replied, "Not in this dump."  While JFK recently went over a major makeover with celebrity chefs, gourmet markets and martini bars, it's twin sister is in dire  need of a face lift!

Work, Live & Play for the Creative Class

JET SET - POSTED BY TRAVEL BLOGGER -RANA

Finally, It's here...JET SET.  I'm starting the Creative Class Blog on Travel.  In the past year of our global travels, I feel I must give you the down low on the best of and worst of the travel experience.  Post 9/11, the increase of low cost carriers, and airline budget cruches have turned the travel experience into a nightmare.  Long security lines, TSA new rules and flight delays add to the frustration.  The remaining hope for sanity is the airport itself.  Concessionaires like HMShost, Creative Host, and others are trying hard to capture the revenues of travelers who are spending much more time and money at the airport.  So with my past airport experience and my weekly global travel, I'm going to give you the inside scoop of the best restaurants, bars and shops. And where to go when you land.

So here's my first.  We connected through the nightmare that is London Heathrow last week on route to Copenhagen.  Although it was too early to dine there, I love the Caviar House.  Beautiful design, high end food and lots of space for luggage.

The Outsourcing of Consumer Services

(posted by David) Steve Lohr's piece, Hello India? I Need Help With My Math, in the NY Times (sub rq'd) uncovers the evolution of outsourcing as consumer services (often considered non-exportable) such as tutoring, tax and legal services, and personal valets are now available at much lower costs than local providers.

From the article,

The second wave, according to some entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and offshoring veterans, will be the globalization of consumer services. People like Ms. Yamaki and Mr. Tham, they predict, are the early customers in a market that will one day include millions of households in the United States and other nations.

They foresee an array of potential services beyond tutoring and personal assistance like health and nutrition coaching, personal tax and legal advice, help with hobbies and cooking, learning new languages and skills and more. Such services, they say, will be offered for affordable monthly fees or piecework rates.

To Work or Not To Work?

According to a Census survey from 2004, with a population of 227 million over the age of 15 in the U.S., almost 79 million of those people (35%) did not work for the prior 4-months.

The U.S. Bureau of the Census just released it's report Reasons People Do Not Work: 2004.

From the report:

At even the busiest times, a large number of working-age people in the United States do not have or want jobs. Whatever the state of the economy, many people, even those who want to work, have been outside the workforce for long periods of time. Whether their joblessness is brief or extended, nonworkers constitute a large and important pool of human resources. Much research has been devoted to studying the characteristics and behavior of workers. Less is known about nonworkers. This is the second report that uses data from the nationwide Survey of Income and Program Participation SIPP) to fill some of the gaps in this knowledge. It examines several key characteristics of nonworkers, the main reasons they do not work, and some of the connections between their characteristics and their reasons for not working.

Retirement (38 percent) and school attendance (19 percent) were the most commonly reported reasons. Chronic illness or disability was the main reason for almost 1 in 7 nonworkers (15 percent). Taking care of children or others accounted for 13 percent. Around 6 percent cited an economic reason for not working––about 2 percent were on layoff, and 4 percent were unable to find work. Approximately 2 percent reported a temporary injury or illness as the main cause for being out of  work. The remaining 7 percent either were not interested in working or reported an “other” reason.

It's clear that the number of people actively looking for work is related to current economic conditions.  When times are difficult, many people give up and just stop looking for work and are then no longer counted as "unemployed".  Understanding everyone who is not currently in the workforce is a more meaningful undertaking.

The importance of understanding that every single person has creative potential and that ways to tap all that potential will be the true source of competitive advantage is reinforced by this study.  As my colleague in Sweden, Charlotta Mellander, points out, the real challenge is making jobs and occupations rewarding enough (and not just with money) so that people choose working over not working.

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Loyal Employees Stay Home

Andrea Coombes of the WSJ (sub req'd) wrote a piece last week highlighting a recent survey that found, "workers who telecommute from home or elsewhere, while still a very small portion of the work force, report the highest levels of satisfaction with their jobs and loyalty to their employers." The article has some great insights and mini-cases. Longer snippet below.

posted by David

Tallahassee Park and Ride Initiaitve Begins

Congratulations to our KCCI catalysts in Tallahassee on today's launching of their Park-N-Ride Community pilot program. The goal of the program, led by the Greenovation team and its partner StarMetro, and supported by some great sponsors,  is to "offer Tallahassee drivers a convenient, environmentally conscious option for commuting." Catalyst Bill Berlow is participating in the pilot program and writes about his motivations, expectations, and the program in today's Tallahassee Democrat. To sign up as a participant click here. Snippet from Bill's piece below.

posted by David

Car Sharing to Save Detroit?

In addition to seeing hybrids all over the place, I see a lot of Zipcars and Flexcars in metro areas. (To be honest, it bothers me that they get reserved spots with no meters in many towns, but I digress.) This new model of car ownership/use, the sharing model, seems to be taking off and many innovative organizations are getting on board.

Equity Residential Properties, a huge publicly traded apartment building operator, recently inked a deal with Zipcar to provide cars and spaces at some of its properties. Today's WSJ (sub req'd) features an article by Darren Everson highlighting how Zipcar is 'driving' into the college market by inking deals with Universities to put cars in and around campuses.

Perhaps Detroit's long suffering car makers should think about this new model of ownership in trying to revive US sales/revenues? With many of the user's of car share services in college and just starting their careers, this seems like a growing consumption trend that Detroit would want to take advantage of?

posted by David

Creative Class Queen Bucks Housing Market Trends

While many think that tattoos and piercings are typical of all creative class members, Martha Stewart and her empire embody many elements of the creative class theory -- from a focus on design and supporting the creativity of customers to building a career  that allows for one's passion to play a central role. According to a new WSJ article (sub required) by Michael Corkery, creative class Queen, Martha Stewart has been very effective in using her creativity to sell homes in a weakening housing market. From the piece...

"All across the country, home builders are gasping for air as sales plunge, inventories rise and profits disappear. But in one small corner of the housing market, the sales picture is a little brighter: There is steady demand for houses designed in part by Martha Stewart and built by Los Angeles-based KB Home.

Here in the Atlanta area, where new-home sales dropped 20% in the first quarter of 2007, traffic at Martha-KB new-home developments has been steady. The largest Martha-KB Home development has been outselling the average Atlanta subdivision 2 to 1, according to SmartNumbers, a real-estate information and analysis firm, based in Marietta, Ga."

While some core creatives may never be interested in a Martha Stewart home, there are other members of the group who are clearly interested in letting her design a warm, welcoming home for them. (A longer segment of the article is available after the jump).

Posted by David

CNN's In The Money...

Check out this short article and video clip from CNN this weekend.

Tune in this weekend to CNN's In The Money with Richard Florida, on the effect of gay neighborhoods on cities.

Read more: There Goes The Neighborhood

Posted by Abby.

Have They Seen the Price of Gas??

New numbers on getting to work from the Census Bureau.

(Full press release with data links here).

Some interesting items to note, among the 50 largest cities, Portland Oregon deserves some special attention.  3.5% of the workforce bikes to work (#1); 5.3% work from home (#2); 4.3% walk to work (#12); 13.3% take public transporation (#10).

The top ranked cites by percentage of the workforce:

• Biking - Portland OR - 3.5%
• Working from Home - San Francisco - 6.3%
• Walking - Boston - 12.5%
• Taking Public Transportation - New York - 54.6%

At least 22 of the top 25 cities in each of the four non-driving categories are in the top 100 (out of 368) Creative Class cities.

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Do Nothing Index

Ben Casnocha asks: "I wonder if there's a connection between the number of residents who "do nothing" and the overall creativity level of a city?" and sends along the link to this story.

Who are these people? At any given hour on any given workday, well, it turns out it's not a workday at all. Not for these hordes roaming free, anyway. By rights our parks and movie theaters and stores should be minor ghost towns between 9 and 5 -- chanced upon by the occasional tourist or late-night bartender but otherwise peaceful. Instead, they're inexplicably packed. I didn't doubt that the packers had sound explanations. I just wanted to hear them.It occurred to me last night that you can learn as much about a city from what its people don't do as you can from what they do do. So I drove to as many parts of San Francisco as I could and interrupted as much leisure as possible to find out.

I often walk the streets of DC, NY and other places and wonder the same thing. You?

Millions of British Hate Their Jobs

While cruising around the Chief Happiness Officer blog I read an article that finds that 2 of 3 of British workers are unhappy in their current jobs and more than half of them would gladly take less money to work a job that makes them feel better about themselves. "Two in three people said they were "unfulfilled", "miserable" or "drifting" in their jobs and more than half claimed they would happily earn less money in a role that made them feel better about themselves." Some are calling this ideals driven job 'Zenployment.'

Do you feel like the Brits? Would you give up salary for more meaning and fulfillment? Have you done it already?

posted by David

Hip Hop Historic Preservation

The New York Times writes:

“This is where it came from,” said Clive Campbell, pointing to the building’s first-floor community room. “This is it. The culture started here and went around the world.”  O.K., Mr. Campbell is not just anybody — he is the alpha D.J. of hip-hop. As D.J. Kool Herc, he presided over the turntables at parties in that community room in 1973 that spilled into nearby parks before turning into a global assault. ... Mr. Campbell thinks the building should be declared a landmark in recognition of its role in American popular culture. Its residents agree ...They want to have the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places."

The full story is here (subscription required).

Bike Friendly Cities

If cycling and support for cyclists are important to you and your choice of place, check out this story on bicycle friendly places and the list of Bicycle Friendly Cities. (Hat Tip: Fitsugar). Only one city won the Platinum Award (Davis, CA) while 43 won the Bronze designation. Here is the entire list. Short pdf reports are available for many of the cities. "These cities have an awareness of bikers, and many of their roads have bike lanes. When roads feel safe for riding, MORE people ride their bikes."

posted by David

Extreme Marketing?

PR Week asks:

The FDA has just pulled your edgy (read: irresponsible) product from shelves for being a little too edgy (read: dangerous). What do you do?

Posted by Rana

Map of the Week: Coke or Soda or Pop?

What do you call it? BTW, here is a great site for ordering your favorite soda, I mean coke, I mean pop, I mean sugar-water, I mean soft-drink. Ughh! 

posted by David

Money and Happiness

What does this ranking tell you?

Find the Best City for You

Our ranking of Best Cities (for every stage of your life) with Kiplinger's is on-line at their site.  The whole thing will be published in their June issue.   It ranks metro regions according to five life-stages: young singles, professionals (single or married but without kids), married with children, empty-nesters, and retirees. Kevin Stolarick developed the indicators and data for the rankings and built the calculator. You can also use a tool to see where your city ranks.

Read the story, and find your best city. There's also a great calculator and a webcast of me and Kiplinger Sr. Editor Robert Frick. Enjoy!

Invasion of the Empty Nesters

A fascinating and fun piece in the WSJ by Ben Casselman titled Animal House Meets the Empty Nest describes the clash of culture occurring in downtown condos throughout the US. New condos developed and targeted towards young, urban singles (with video game lounges etc.) are actually attracting empty nesters. This has led to generational power struggles over pools and condo boards!

Just Because...

Who doesn't like a good design moment every now and again??

Full information and great examples of creativity in practice here.

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Bloggiest Places

Here's a list of the top neighborhoods with the most bloggers (via Stephen Johnson via Outside in).

Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
Shaw, DC
Downtown LA
Newton, MA
Rogers Park/North Howard Chicago
Pearl District, Portland, OR
Watertown, MA
Harlem, NY
Potrero Hill, SF
Coconut Grove, FL

The detailed list is here.

Johnson says it's heavy on gentrifying places. What kind of pattern do you see?

Second demographic transition

We are going through a “second demographic transition," according to the demographer, Ron Lesthaeghe of Belgium's University of Ghent. The first demographic transition occurred during the early to mid 20^th century and brought with a golden age of marriage and family life. During this period, more people were married, divorce rates were low, and the age of first marriage actually declined for both men and women to the lowest levels since the Renaissance. The second demographic transition which began in the 1960s and accelerated during the 1980s is marked by declining rates of marriage, rising divorce rates, falling fertility, and a sharp rise in the age of marriage for both men and women. In a fascinating, data-rich analysis with University of Michigan researcher, Lisa Neidert, published this month in Population and Development Review, Lesthaeghe lays out how the second demographic transition is shaping politics, economics and culture in the United States (hat tip: Bill Bishop).

Download the article.

Maps for the second demographic transition.

Second demographic transition website.

Too much city?

Jeremy Rifkin, one of the smartest social and economic commentators around, has a fascinating new piece on cities in the Washington Post. He's rightly  concerned about the impacts of increasing global urbanization on energy and the environment.  But the forces of concentration and spikiness acting on our economic world are too strong to be reversed. It seems to me that the great challenge of our time is to build more livable and sustainable cities while protecting the natural world.

The coming year marks a great milestone in the human saga, a development similar in magnitude to the agricultural era and the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, a majority of human beings will be living in vast urban areas, many in megacities and suburban extensions with populations of 10 million or more, according to the United Nations. We have become "Homo Urbanus." ... In the great era of urbanization we have increasingly shut off the human race from the rest of the natural world in the belief that we could conquer, colonize and utilize the riches of the planet to ensure our autonomy without dire consequences to us and future generations. In the next phase of human history, we will need to find a way to reintegrate ourselves into the rest of the living Earth if we are to preserve our own species and conserve the planet for our fellow creatures. The rest is here  (sub req).

What do you think?

The biggest redevelopment opportunity of all time

What the heck are we going to do with all those big box stores and strip malls being left behind. have a look here. Check out the Spam Museum, a former K-mart in Austin, Texas. I mean... Austin, Minnesota (thank you, Charlene).

Can I have a book with my espresso

Why are places from Starbucks and Anthropologie selling books? That's what a front page story in the NYT (sub)asks today in a front-page story "Selling Literature to Go with Your Lifestyle". Seems to me something much bigger is going on here, you?

WaPo Feature on Pittsburgh's South Side

Nice travel write up by Christine H. O'Toole in the Washington Post (sub required) about time spent in Pittsburgh's South Side Neighborhood. From the cultural, economic, and ethnic history of the 'hood to its current development and residents, O'Toole offers a bunch to think about. (BTW, tell us about your favorite hood or hoods).

Here's a nice slice of the piece to start with...

"As the rain began and the evening winds shivered across the Monongahela River, the zombies appeared.

Stiff, bloody and pale, they massed along East Carson Street. Three hundred pairs of sunken eyes found a Prussian-accented aristocrat with a bullhorn in an arched tavern doorway who ordered them forward on a recent chilly Friday evening: "Begin . . . shambling!"

With a low moan, the crowd lurched slowly into character during Pittsburgh's first Zombie Walk. As they moved west, some stumbled into the One Stop Hookah Shop or stared into the Silver Eye photo gallery. Others pawed the plate-glass windows at Nakama, where sushi eaters dropped their chopsticks. A few shuffled, trying not to laugh, toward the retro Rex Theatre, where the walk culminated at a local TV horror-show taping.

East Carson, a flat 30 blocks on Pittsburgh's South Side, was an appropriate setting for a mass tribute to secondhand bodies: This riverfront neighborhood has come back to life, too.

Fans of George Romero's 1968 horror classic "Night of the Living Dead," perhaps the city's most famous contribution to cinema, flock to the neighborhood's 70 bars and restaurants. Nineteenth-century churches have turned condo, factories house gritty lofts, ethnic clubhouses blare Northern Soul instead of Slovenian folk, and steel-mill sites sprout sleek shops.

At its peak, the South Side was home to nearly 40,000 immigrants who walked to jobs in steel mills along the river. That industry and population collapsed in the 1970s, but the feel of old Europe lingers. Onion-domed churches, brick facades and staircases that spiral uphill crowd together on the southern bank of the Mon.

Artists seeking low rents and large spaces discovered the area 15 years ago, when City Theatre revamped a Bingham Street church. Now, long-retired millworkers have made friends with new hipster neighbors. Locals describe the district as having both kinds of blue hair, for grannies and Goths. About 10,000 Pittsburghers call "Sahside" home; more flood in on weekends.

Signs of gentrification bookend the district. The SouthSide Works development, on the 34-acre site of the old Jones and Laughlin steel mill, has brought national retailers to the eastern end of the neighborhood. Station Square, a marina and entertainment complex, brackets its western end. The South Side's redevelopment started on the level riverfront, called the Flats; now "For Sale" signs are creeping up the Slopes, as the adjoining hillside is dubbed."

Moby Pays Homage to New York; Immigration Tales

YouTube Videos promoting one's hometown are not just for grassroots rappers in places such as Carrboro, NC. (see Its Carrboro). Music industry giant Moby has a new song and video titled New York, New York and they can be heard and seen here. (Hat Tip, Perez Hilton).

Also, Apple's podcast directory lists a series called Immigration Tales, with Victor Cajiao. So far it has six episode's -- the first being Victor's immigration tale -- he came from Cuba. Other tales in the series include Elsie from El Salvador and Bart from Poland. Could the next Andrew Grove be on there?

Communities Use YouTube to Promote Selves

A few months back we were sent a video from friends in NC. Its Carrboro was created and produced by concerned citizens who felt their city was being ignored.

Are citizens in your neck of the woods out shooting videos about how alive your community is? Send us your videos, we'd love to see them.

(posted by Rockin' Rod)

Health Care as Economic Engine

That's the message of Gina Kolata's story in the 8/22/06 Science Times (sub required). The Nobel-prize winning economist, Robert Fogel, predicts that by 2030, about a quarter of economic ouput will be spent on health care, making it "the driving force in the economy," like railraods in the early 20th century. Fogel is the author of the fantastic book, The Fourth Great Awakening.

The article caused me to recall something the visionary venture capitalist, David Morgenthaler said to me several years ago. When he was a young man, Morganthaler said, he invested heavily in technology: figuring it took a large share of income to buy more computing power.

Now he invests in health care and entertainment, which he saw as driving sectors in our economic future. Largely, he said, because the technology revolution has brought very cheap computing power. Now when he spends his money he wants to buy additional years of life, or more quality years of life, or enhanced experiences. This is where demand is. The economy is no longer powered by the key engines of the industrial era, as our current growth in the face of soaring commodity prices can attest to.

Yes, certainly, one of the new economic drivers is health care, but so is entertainment and the production and puchase of experiences. And on that score, another leading sector is destined to be education -- I mean education not as elementary, high school and college -- but education broadly defined as life-long development across all spheres, including work, life and leisure. And technology, especially in the form of software, will remain important as an undergirding infrastructure in this emerging economic system. Health care, education, entertainment, and technology -- the core fields of the creative economy!

(posted by Richard)

Who Doesn't Love Online Video?

There is no doubt that online video has become a killer application. The combination of powerful, yet cheap cameras and broadband connections have unleashed a wave of creativity that applies to entertainment, commerce, education, and just about any other endeavor that humans show interest in.

From YouTube and DailyMotion to Revver and EEFoof.com, new video services with new business models are popping up daily. Of course Google Video and Yahoo Video are forces to be reckoned with. No matter which model wins out, creativity will benefit.

Are you or your organization using online video to get things done? Is it effective?

BTWs, here's a video of me (RF) from Google Video that I found while surfing the other day. It is my visit to the Charlie Rose Show with an old friend, Tom Stewart, the editor of the Harvard Business Review. On the clip we discuss globalization and the creative economy.

(posted by Richard)