Is “Creative Class” the key to reviving cities?

The author of The Rise of the Creative Class and Who’s Your City? defines the ‘creative class’ as STEM educated workers in the science, technology and engineering fields coupled with people with backgrounds in the arts and design.

Since the early 2000’s, he says this “creative class” has been fleeing the suburbs of their upbringing for urban settings. 

“There’s more of the kind of jobs they do in the urban core – these knowledge jobs, these high-tech companies that used to be out in the suburbs are now pouring back to urban centers in Manhattan, Pittsburgh and San Francisco . ” Florida told WITF’s Smart Talk. “They want to keep their commutes low.  Creative class people work with their mind, time is money.” 

He says safety plays a large role in attracting a ‘creative class’ as well.  “Crime is much lower in urban areas, particularly violent crime,” he noted. 

Culture is also a draw for the creative class.

“The restaurants, the nightlife, the cafes, the libraries, the museums, all of this creates a buzz, a factor these ‘creative class’ people are drawn to . . . they are drawn into a city, it begins to change its character,” he said. “It becomes more affluent, it has more amenities and the cycle feeds on itself.”

Florida isn’t concerned about this ‘creative class’ as being perceived as too elite.  “The creative class is an elite group,” he emphasized. ” It’s highly paid, its members earn in the high five figures or six figures, they tend to be highly well educated and they tend to be going into urban areas. They’ve been a premiere force in changing those neighborhoods.”

The effects of  gentrification doesn’t always have a positive impact on all urban dwellers.  “Our middle class has completely been eviscerated in America so we have a third of our society, the ‘creative class’ doing well while 66% of us fall further behind,” he said. “Society has splintered into small areas of concentrated advantage, in the city and in the suburb.”

While Florida feels the ‘back to the city’ movement has been successful the unintended consequence is creating new urban issues.  “Not a crisis of decay and poverty, but a crisis of a missing middle class,” he said

Richard Florida will speak at Penn State, Harrisburg on Wednesday, October 12^th as part of the PNC Thought Leader Lecture Series.