creative_class - Yule Heibel on Diigo

01 Jan 09

The Frontal Cortex : Urban Innovation

Jonah Lehrer discusses Ed Glaeser's recent post in the NYT blog on NYC and why it's "America's most resilient city." Lots of great points, interesting comments thread, too. Closing line by Lehrer nails it.

scienceblogs.com/...urban_innovation.php - Preview

jonah_lehrer frontal_cortex urbanization creative_class innovation talent edward_glaeser

This is why I smirk when I read about cities like Orlando, Florida trying to jump start innovation with a bevy of tax credits for high-tech businesses. These places don't need more tax credits - they need more coffee houses and crowded sidewalks.
- well said! - on 2009-01-01
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18 Nov 08

Beyond the Bailout - New Thinking Required - Creative Class » Blog Archive »

Richard Florida makes the argument that Fordism -- or Fordist thinking -- lies behind some of our economic woes at present, and that we have to get past that paradigm. I left a comment re. this article ( http://www.wsoctv.com/automotive/17945476/detail.html#- ), "Falling Gas Prices Jump-Start GM SUV Sales; Automaker Puts Texas Plant On Overtime Amid Other Closures," published a week ago (11/10/08). The automobile industry shouldn't be bailed out without significant guarantees from the industry that it will embrace environmentally progressive goals.

www.creativeclass.com/...ilout-an-alternative-framework - Preview

bailout richard_florida creative_class comments automobile financial_crisis fordism

02 Nov 08

"Class Politics" Richard Florida, Creative Class Blog

Fascinating (possibly scary?) piece by Florida on how Obama's win could still fan the flames of an ugly backlash from the right that may be more convulsive and destructive than the current economic / financial meltdown. Florida factors in some data around demographic changes due to the creative economy (linked to democratic/ Obama politics), to paint a picture of a potentially very divided country.

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politics obama class_theory usa republican democrat class_war richard_florida creative_class

When people like Colin Powell say Mr. Obama is a “transformational figure,” they’re suggesting that an Obama administration can somehow heal the deep divisions within the American electorate and move the country forward, the way Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression. And certainly projected Democratic majorities in Congress make that kind of transformation appear plausible.
I wish that would happen. But I doubt it will, and the reason is simple: The divisions run too deep. The realignment that propelled and kept FDR in office is not happening today. American politics is distinguished today by shifting electoral coalitions, candidate-centered elections, and what some political scientists call de-alignment. America isn’t just suffering from political polarization, but a burgeoning economic divide and class war.
Since then, 20 million jobs in the creative sector have been created, and the ranks of what I call the creative class have grown to 40 million - nearly a third of the work force. That group has become powerful in American politics, and it is squarely behind Mr. Obama. New York Times columnist David Brooks recently reported that Republicans have all but lost creative professionals working in law, medicine, and high technology.
3 more annotations...
- Republican strategists have exploited this shift to their party’s advantage, beginning with the ever-prescient Kevin Phillips’s identification of the “silent majority” of white working-class voters in 1968.
  The rise of the creative economy generated a shift in social values. Tolerance, diversity, and self-expression became prized. Diversity and self-expression became necessary for the creative economy to flourish and function.
  As it grew and became more concentrated in locations such as San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Boston, and Washington D.C. - what we now know as blue America - the working class fell further and further behind. Globalization shipped jobs overseas, while institutional supports that led to higher working-class incomes during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s - powerful U.S. companies and powerful unions - were simultaneously being undercut. The great genius of former Bush political strategist Karl Rove was to seize upon the church as the one remaining constant in the lives of working Americans and to use it to his political organizational advantage.
- This class divide is overlaid on America’s economic and political geography, with the U.S. economy being driven by centers of innovation such as San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and Washington D.C.; finance, entertainment, and media cities such as New York and Los Angeles; and university-anchored tech centers such as Austin, Tex., Boulder, Colo., and Raleigh-Durham, N.C.
- These class divides will only deepen. Fear and anxiety will probably get worse. And a strange kind of reactive populism, much worse than anything we have seen before, could be on the rise. Unless Mr. Obama can fashion a broad, inclusive appeal that extends the benefits of the creative economy to working and service economies, the bitterness he himself acknowledged, in a moment of candor, will grow deeper.

19 Oct 08

Creative Class » Blog Archive » The Nature of This Crisis Matters - Creative Class

A sobering assessment of current bail-out strategies and why they could well fail, by Martin Kenney.

www.creativeclass.com/...-whether-the-bailout-will-work - Preview

creative_class richard_florida financial_crisis economy martin_kenney

when the Treasury/Fed say they will bail out banks, they only mean a few key banks and leave the rest to their own devices (there is evidence for this suspicion as the large regional banks such as Sun Trust and Zion did not participate in the huge rally on Monday). So, which banks will be bailed out? My guess is Goldman Sachs (Paulson and Robert Rubin’s ex-employer), Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and a few others (did Wells Fargo buy Wachovia so that it could enter this charmed circle?). P.S. - We now have confirmation of which firms are being bailed out: JPMorgan, Goldman, Citi, BoA, Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, State Street Bank [thank you Barney Frank], Bank of NY Mellon [thank you Hillary and Schumer].
The forces of globalization are still underway and, as many of have been saying, they are putting downward pressure on incomes in the developed nations, which, of course, are the consumers of the products of the developing nations. A small telltale of this, IBM announced dramatically increased profits on only slightly higher sales. My guess is that these profits were made by substituting low-cost developing world service providers for their high-cost developing nation employees. This dynamic will continue putting pressure on wages in the developed nations and contributing to a deflationary dynamic.
2 more annotations...
- Income inequality has increased globally and, as a result, the vast majority find themselves less and less capable to consume.
- The technological revolution of digitization has changed the central source of value creation from the assembly line to the designer/engineer.

06 Oct 08

AURP Releases National Strategy for Building America's Communities of Innovation

AURP (Association of University Research Parks) "offers a series of urgent recommendations for the U.S. Government, so that it can more precisely support American innovation and American innovators with both economic and policy-based changes." (See article for proposal targets.)

Does this apply to university research parks in Canada, too?

Interesting references to the importance of place and the creative class.

See this PDF for "The Power of Place": http://www.aurpcanada.ca/pdf/AURP%20The%20Power%20of%20Place_Final.pdf (via www.aurpcanada.ca)

www.vitp.ca/...Communities-of-Innovation.aspx - Preview

aurp innovation research university technology_parks creative_class place_making

From establishing the first research park in
the world, to building world-class research universities and federal
laboratories while pioneering technology transfer and patent reform for
public-private research partnerships, the U.S. has led the world in attracting
research talent, funding scientific advances, and commercializing new
discoveries.
The United States is losing ground competitively. The ambitious entrepreneurs
and scientists who are willing to invest time and money into an idea are being
lost at a staggering pace to other countries. These foreign governments provide
incentives for this U.S. human capital to uproot and move. These individuals
find that the challenge of surviving in a foreign country is outweighed by the
tremendous economic benefit these foreign communities provide.
4 more annotations...
- At the present time, the U.S. is losing ground because we do not provide the
  Place for the Creative Class to prosper. We have left the responsibility
  of creating Place to local communities, many of which cannot bear the
  speculative burden of creating Place without governmental financial
  support.
- Our proposal targets the following:
- · Creating American Innovation Zones to drive the creation of modern research
  and development collaboration;
- · Expanding the availability of visas for skilled researchers; and
  
  · Encouraging in-migration of foreign start-ups through “soft landing”
  programs.

"I Purchase, Therefore I Am," by Richard Florida - Creative Class blog

Great entry by Richard Florida, which underscores the connection between suburbanization, reliance on cheap gasoline, consumption, and using housing/ real estate as a "piggy bank" that one could always raid to get money to buy more stuff. See entry, and annotations/ highlights.

I added a comment, in response to an existing comment by Wendy Waters, and then a second one in response to Kwende Kefentse.

www.creativeclass.com/...i-purchase-therefore-i-am - Preview

creative_class economy financial_crisis mortgage_crisis richard_florida suburbs

Most experts agree this is the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression. The stock market is down almost 25 percent so far this year. Housing prices in the United States are off more than 20 per cent since their peak in 2006. Manufacturing output is falling and consumer confidence has slipped.
Martin Feldstein, former head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, past chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and a Harvard economics professor - usually a voice of calming reassurance - wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “Sliding into recession, monetary policy already at maximum easing, and fiscal transfers impotent … an unenviable situation, to say the least, for any incoming president.”
Where did this financial mess come from? And what does it mean?
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- The easy answer is to blame the housing market.
- Banks and financial institutions, so the story goes, are clogged with this bad debt, now dubbed toxic waste. This is the kind of thinking behind the U.S. financial bailout: Remove the toxicity and all will magically be well again.
- The real reason is that the roots of the current crisis are tied to the fundamental nature of the postwar model of economic development called “Fordism.” That model drew a tight connection between assembly-line mass production and mass consumption - ultimately fueled by massive suburbanization.
- Fordism emerged as a full-blown economic and social model during the 1930s, marked by president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, and flourished after the Second World War, when government policies brought about the rise of longer-term mortgages and a new system organized under the now infamous Fannie Mae to purchase those mortgages and thus lubricate the system.
  Add to that massive tax breaks for homeownership and gargantuan subsidies for highway construction and infrastructure, and a whole new model of suburban-fueled mass consumption was born - family after family purchased new homes, filling them with TVs, appliances and all manner of furnishings, while also purchasing record numbers of cars to get to and from work.
  - I also blogged this, here: http://tinyurl.com/52hr33 - on 2008-10-06
  - To underscore the validity of what Florida is saying here, watch the video of SoCal news, "What the meltdown looks like" (on trash-outs): http://tinyurl.com/3jryu9 - on 2008-10-06
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- While Fordism looks stable on the surface, it suffers from a fatal flaw: It’s impossible for consumption to keep up with the ever-growing pace and efficiency of production. This is particularly true of recent times, when a great deal of production has been sent to China, India and other places where labour is cheaper. It’s hard for the working and middle classes to consume more when their wages are essentially stagnant. Low-wage workers in emerging economies do not have the income to fill the gap. And while the ranks of the rich have grown, the wealthy are a relatively small group that can buy only so many luxury cars, designer products, homes and yachts.
  That’s where credit comes in. Those new fancy mortgage instruments were meant to turn homes into veritable “piggy banks” that could be used to finance bigger and better cars and homes and toys.
- Almost a century ago, Austrian economist Rudolf Hilferding identified this basic contradiction of modern capitalism in his monumental work Finance Capital. Capitalist economic development stands on a shaky foundation, he argued - workers always produce more than they can consume, more even than society as a whole can consume.
  - - we always produce more than we can consume: so, can we get around to producing the "right" things, or is that impossible? - on 2008-10-06
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- As one leading blogger, Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, recently put it: “Since consumption has come to depend on growth in indebtedness, a reversal, however painful, is necessary. Our excesses have been so great that there is no way out of this that does not lead to a general fall in living standards.”
  There you have it. The financial crisis is in reality a much deeper crisis of our underlying economic model and our way of life. It’s a crisis of the way we have come to define ourselves.
- Regardless of how or when the financial markets are restored, credit will be much harder to get - the age of the house as piggy bank is long gone.

06 Aug 08

Be Nice to the 'Creative Class'! :: Views :: thetyee.ca

Why does one too often get the impression that publications like The Tyee are fighting a rear-guard and even anachronistic battle? That somehow, somewhere different patterns are emerging, which its journalists just don't see, preferring instead the familiar world of what they knew "back in the day"?

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thetyee richard_florida creative_class vancouver socialcritique

04 Aug 08

Night Life Reprogrammed - NYTimes.com

Everything is more intense in NYC, including the geek or nerd "party" scene (meet ups, tweet ups, "ignite" events, etc.). More people = more capital, in terms of creative energy and innovation. (And perhaps headaches... but that's another story...!)

Of course I'd love to figure out how to sustain a mini-version of this right here (Victoria). Vancouver works very hard at it -- but even in Vancouver (I'm told), it's the same people reappearing at the different events (i.e., nowhere near the critical mass of larger US metros). Part of the problem is enticing people to come out -- it's so easy to stay home, after all...

www.nytimes.com/...03webparty.html - Preview

nyt creative_class geek socialtheory ignite meet_ups

IgniteNYC was just one of 12 tech events listed that evening
Now, young Internet entrepreneurs, some holdouts from the old days and a few members of the city’s creative class (and underclass) are engaged in a new type of party, which mashes together Silicon Alley 1.0’s camaraderie and optimism, meetup.com’s spontaneity and informality, Burning Man’s home-brewed creativity, and a technology conference’s devotion to unveiling ideas.
3 more annotations...
- These days many of the ideas are about producing and delivering video content.
  - - interesting, with "prediction" aspects...? - on 2008-08-04
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- some are just attracted to a night life that involves actually talking to creative people doing exciting things, rather than heading out to clubs and bars that beat you into silence with their thundering rhythms.
  “Instead of just going out to drink and be bored,” said Ilana Arazie, whose video blog, Downtown Diary, chronicles her love life, “you’re talking to interesting people who are starting companies and telling great stories.”
- 16 speakers made PowerPoint presentations. Each was allowed 20 slides that auto-advanced after 15 seconds — five minutes total — a modified version of a format pioneered in Japan called “Pecha Kucha,” loosely translated as chitchat.

12 Nov 07

Yule Heibel's Library tagged creative_class → View Popular

The Frontal Cortex : Urban Innovation

Beyond the Bailout - New Thinking Required - Creative Class » Blog Archive »

"Class Politics" Richard Florida, Creative Class Blog

Creative Class » Blog Archive » The Nature of This Crisis Matters - Creative Class

AURP Releases National Strategy for Building America's Communities of Innovation

"I Purchase, Therefore I Am," by Richard Florida - Creative Class blog

Be Nice to the 'Creative Class'! :: Views :: thetyee.ca

Night Life Reprogrammed - NYTimes.com

Remarkk! » Essay: What is an Open Creative Community?

Remarkk! » Vancouver Speaking Gig: “Co-creating the Creative City”

Co-creating the Creative City - Mark Kuznicki - Video | Urban Vancouver

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