There’s an old joke that says any fortune-cookie fortune can be improved by appending the phrase “in bed”: You will experience great success–in bed. You will overcome many obstacles–in bed. In the same way, the principles set out in Richard Florida’s recent book, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life, can be improved, or at least clarified, by adding the phrase “if you’re a prosperous white man under 40.” In choosing a city in which to live, you believe a cutting edge music scene is more important than good schools–if you’re a prosperous white man under 40. You disdain mere economic reasons for choosing a location–if you’re a prosperous white man under 40. And you want to live someplace with gay people (at least those who are prosperous white men under 40) because it provides evidence that your own eccentricities will be welcomed and nurtured–if you’re a prosperous white man under 40.
Florida describes thriving urban areas such as Austin, Boston, and Silicon Valley by saying, “Before these regions were high-tech hot spots, they were places where creativity and eccentricity could be accepted and celebrated,” and proceeds to infer a causal relationship. But despite a series of interjections that “this remains true even after the dot-com meltdown,” the facts show otherwise. While university-dependent industries thrive, the towns around them will thrive. When industry collapses, no amount of street level nightlife will save them.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Florida defends his definition of class by arguing that it “emphasizes the way people organize themselves into social groupings and common identities based principally on their economic function. Their social and cultural preferences, consumption and buying habits, and their social identities all flow from this.” Unless by “economic function” he means the quality of being economically expendable–of supplying luxuries like sculpture and faster PDAs–the second sentence contradicts the first. In his interest in “social and cultural preferences,” Florida ignores the fact that the economic functions of hairdressers and transplant surgeons aren’t the same. Their expenditure patterns might conceivably dovetail–but only if they’re both prosperous white men under 40.
Florida, a witty sociologist trapped in the body of a labor economist, does offer some sharp observations of the young wealthy people he’s discussing. To distinguish them from Thorstein Veblen’s leisure class of conspicuous consumers, he says they’re “more an ‘active class.’… Status and identity for these people come not so much from the goods they have, but from the experiences they have.” This leads to the frantic use of free time, which Florida calls “the efficient use of leisure,” surely the perfect oxymoron for the late Gilded Age. “Asked why he and his peers favor highly active forms of recreation, one young member of the Creative Class gave a succinct reply: ‘You get more entertainment value per unit of time.’”
Florida’s findings that creative cities also have substantial gay populations have attracted much media attention, but again cause and consequence are confused. Gay people might well be attracted to prosperous cities where they can work for a living and their private lives can remain private; that hardly demonstrates that a “gay-friendly” atmosphere produces prosperity. To regard gays as a particular economic asset requires a return to the fortune-cookie addendum and an acknowledgment that two-income, childless households in which both wage earners are male are likely to be wealthier and demand fewer municipal services than middle-class families or the impoverished elderly. As a solution to urban problems, “Push aside those with problems and turn the place over to someone who can use it better” leaves something to be desired.
