What Draws Creative People? Quality of Place
Why do peopleâ€"especially talented Creative Class people, who have lots of choicesâ€"opt to locate in certain places? What draws them to some places and not to others? Economists and social scientists have paid a great deal of attention to the location decisions of companies, but they have virtually ignored how people, especially creative people, make the same choices.
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An attractive place doesn’t have to be a big city, but it does have to be cosmopolitanâ€"seething with the interplay of culture and ideas, where outsiders can quickly become insiders and anyone can find a peer group to be comfortable with and groups to be stimulated by. In her book Cosmopolitan Culture, Bonnie Menes Kahn says a great city has two hallmarks: tolerance for strangers and intolerance for mediocrity. These are precisely the qualities that appeal to members of the Creative Classâ€"and they also happen to be qualities conducive to innovation, risk taking, and the formation of new businesses.
Full piece: http://urbanland.uli.org/Articles/2012/Oct/FloridaCreative
I thought the text highlighted in bold especially speaks to Jacksonville's weaknesses right now....
Also
QuoteTwo often-overlooked factors that go into quality of place are the thickness of the mating market (only 48 percent of U.S. households include a married couple today) and, seemingly paradoxically, quasi-anonymity. Most people don’t want to live in tightly knit communities, with neighbors figuratively peering over back fences into their lives. Life in modern communities revolves around a set of looser ties that allows us to admit a greater variety of people and information into our lives.
This point makes it more difficult for smaller cities to be attractive to transient types. It's not just Jax, I've witnessed the "everybody knows everybody" feel in plenty of cities, it's just easier to be new, anonymous and transient in a bigger city with millions of people where people are just used to meeting new people and making new friends out of necessity. Heck even on this board alone it seems everyone knows each other and each other's business.
However, you do have some small city successes out there. Asheville, Greenville, and Portland, ME are impressive for their size when it comes to catering to creative culture.
Dick Florida is a rockstar. That article synthesizes a lot of some of my (and others) thoughts/posts on making DT and the urban core more attractive for the creative class. Which by the way, for those not familiar with Florida's work, the creative class may not be what you think. There are two core groups. First, innovators and ideas people, which can be found in engineering, science, tech, research, education, etc. Second, knowledge based professions like lawyers, doctors, architects, financial analysts, etc. Artists, musicians, chefs, and other more traditionally "artistic" professions also fall into the creative class, but the core of it are upwardly mobile professionals and innovators.
If a modern city doesn't cater to the creative class, it will be in major trouble in 10-20 years, if not sooner. Creative class members demand more from their cities, because they are valuable and mobile. Many can work from home. Many can quit their job and find 20 the next day across the country. Many don't have any children (or as many as their parents generation did) and can move at the drop of a hat. Many would happily retire at 35-40 and move to Costa Rica or Thailand or somewhere exotic, if they are no longer satisfied with their career or city. Basically, the paradigm has shifted and cities can cater to the creative class and thrive...or maintain the status quo and decline.
Quote from: CityLife on October 16, 2012, 08:34:12 AM
Dick Florida is a rockstar.
and he knows it too....he's charging upwards of $20,000 a speech.
+ does he know you call him Dick?
$20,000 a speech? If you can get away with it, why not? When I was helping Lakeland's economic development council and Creative Tampa Bay, before coming to Jax, I saw him speak (probably around 2003ish). He was okay but don't know if it was worth $20,000.
Quote from: tufsu1 on October 16, 2012, 09:11:05 AM
Quote from: CityLife on October 16, 2012, 08:34:12 AM
Dick Florida is a rockstar.
and he knows it too....he's charging upwards of $20,000 a speech.
+ does he know you call him Dick?
Just has a nice ring to it right? If he changed it to Dick, he'd be pulling $30,000 a speech.
You'll have the opprotunity to hear his $20k speech next month at the CFA Soiree, via JU.
http://cfasoiree.ju.edu
11.16.12, 6:30pm-12 am.
Quote from: Bill Hoff on October 16, 2012, 09:32:05 AM
You'll have the opprotunity to hear his $20k speech next month at the CFA Soiree, via JU.
http://cfasoiree.ju.edu
11.16.12, 6:30pm-12 am.
His $20k cost is reflected in the event pricing @ $100 a head (with $20 going to JU).
Good read and it highlights what a lot of posts on here have mentioned about the creative class, bright flight, retaining young creatives, etc...
Unfortunately I don't see Jacksonville bringing and retaining the creative class anytime soon. Just this year alone 3 friends have decided to move to NY.
We do have some great things going on such as the CoRK district and I think One Spark will be interesting but those are organic and home grown where as other cities have their leadership actively trying to entice and make their city welcoming to the creative class.
Quote from: TPC on October 16, 2012, 09:50:43 AM
We do have some great things going on such as the CoRK district and I think One Spark will be interesting but those are organic and home grown where as other cities have their leadership actively trying to entice and make their city welcoming to the creative class.
One potentially beneficial thing for Jax, is that it is basically a blank canvas....and there is little to no competition here. For instance One Spark, has barely even articulated their vision and there is some skepticism amongst some smart people I know. Yet they've been able to fundraise well and will likely get a shot to pull it off. Some of the successful DT/urban core advocates work full time jobs, yet still have the time and ability to influence policy and public opinion. Cool ideas are being thrown about like streetcars and bike sharing; we have some great new breweries, DT has cool new restaurants and bars, R/A is becoming a great urban neighborhood. These are things that will hopefully give hope to the current and next generations of the creative class, who may have just moved back to Jax after college, or may still be in high school.
These things won't happen overnight...but if incremental changes are seen, then perhaps people will take notice and stay...or dare I say even move here.
But you are absolutely right TPC, the city needs to find a way to facilitate and encourage the growth of the Creative Class. Hopefully some of our leaders will be attending the JU function with Richard Florida.
Disclaimer: This is lengthy and making some generalizations, but I think the points are valid.
I just got back from a trip to NYC for the weekend, and while there are thousands of things that I learned from the trip, there are two that really stood out to me and that I think would radically transform Jax if they were implemented here.
First, I think that in NYC (especially in Brooklyn, but also Manhattan) the small business owners first and foremost care about delivering a quality product and pushing the envelope. I had a 'best of' of just about everything I ate there, but the venues where I enjoyed them all had nothing in common; best Steak Frites I've ever had from a fancy French restaurant, best dumplings I've ever had from a hole in the wall with 4 tables, best pizza from a place with no tables, best Empanadas, Spring Rolls, Udon Noodle Bowl, and more from street vendors.....etc. The other part of this one thing is that when a vendor goes all out to deliver a quality product and consequences-be-damned, the public goes crazy to support them. Literally the minute that I got home I heard somebody complain about horrible product at a premier local eatery. This is the instant that the revelation took place. In Jax, restaurateurs, bar owners, store owners, the government just dish out whatever makes them a buck and thinks that the public is either too stupid to notice and too lazy to care. For the few places have stepped up and are putting out some exciting products, but they either charge a huge premium to the unwitting public, or the public's reaction has been lackluster. We need to embrace our local innovators and patronize their businesses emphatically so that they can grow and so that others are encouraged to take the risk.
The second thing is that NYC is 100% about personal identity, uniqueness, and celebrating your strengths. From bar to bar, restaurant to restaurant, borough to borough, or street to street there was nothing that was trying to imitate anything else. Even two locations of the same business were completely different. I respected that about everything up there and it made the experience more exciting. Jacksonville needs to really find its own identity and embrace it and weave it into everything we do. From the city, down to the parts of town, down to the neighborhoods, and down to each street we need to be who we are and stand up for that. For starters, Jacksonville is a middle class hard working town with unequaled natural beauty and the agricultural resources to have one of the most exciting and varied food scene in the south. Throughout history we have been a progressive city with a diverse mixture of cultures and an enormous collection of historic homes, business, buildings, and public spaces. We have a huge amount of park land and preserved green space and a long list of famous sons and daughters who have made a big impact on our city and the world at large.
Let's take these two things and embrace them and build off them as we move forward. Now that our city government is finally getting it and getting out of the way, I think significant transformation can take place in and around our core. We can either let developers push us around and turn our most historic neighborhoods into anywhere USA, or we can work with them to make sure all parties benefit.
Quote from: TPC on October 16, 2012, 09:50:43 AM
Unfortunately I don't see Jacksonville bringing and retaining the creative class anytime soon. Just this year alone 3 friends have decided to move to NY.
retention could be an issue, but I actually think Jax. already has a fairly strong creative class....and even though it may not be saying much, sometimes it seems like there's more culture and creativity here than anywhere else in Florida.
In Florida, yes I agree. But not in the rest of the country, or even in the south. I think it would be easy to achieve if only those in the creative class got involved in city council.
Quote from: tufsu1 on October 16, 2012, 03:00:03 PM
Quote from: TPC on October 16, 2012, 09:50:43 AM
Unfortunately I don't see Jacksonville bringing and retaining the creative class anytime soon. Just this year alone 3 friends have decided to move to NY.
retention could be an issue, but I actually think Jax. already has a fairly strong creative class....and even though it may not be saying much, sometimes it seems like there's more culture and creativity here than anywhere else in Florida.
Substantiate your argument. How do we have more culture here? Give examples.
museums, live music venues, theatres, the symphony, smaller musical groups, Beaches Fine Arts, Art Walk, RAM, CoRK, etc.
for comparison, Orlando doesn't have seem to have as much....and while St. Pete and Sarasota do well, Tampa itself is pretty weak....now yes, South Florida has more...but they also have 500% more people.
even though Mr. Dare and I are often at odds, I think he would agree with me that we do Jax. is not devoid of culture.
Jax has a good creative class relative to FL for sure. I may be under-educated here, but I can't think of any other neighborhood in FL as fully hipster-ized as Riverside. Jax has so much potential to be a leader in the state and in the South in terms of attracting not only the Creative Class, but also young educated professionals in general, but leadership places too much emphasis on the new and bland clean slate offered in excess in Jax (exciting in leadership's eyes) and not enough emphasis on the city's old and potential-laden bones (more difficult, "its time has passed/has been" in leadership's eyes).
If Jax devoted as much time, money and energy into its core as it has/does in spurring new greenfield development, it would be a really exciting place by now. Nashville is the best example for Jacksonville imho on what to do and how to do it right - very exciting place to be right now with as much new construction as many larger cities are experiencing, even tops Charlotte right now and is essentially another Austin under the radar.