Richard Florida

Florida was born in Newark, New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers College in 1979 with a B.A. in political science. He then attended Columbia University, where he studied urban planning (M.Phil. in 1984 and Ph.D. in 1986).{{Cite web|title=About Richard {{!}} Creative Class Group|url=http://www.creativeclass.com/richard_florida/about_richard|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111102143926/http://creativeclass.com/richard_florida/about_richard|archive-date=November 2, 2011|access-date=December 8, 2017|website=www.creativeclass.com|language=en}}

Florida's early work focused on innovation by manufacturers, including the continuous-improvement systems implemented by such automakers as Toyota.{{Citation needed|date=November 2013}}

Florida is best known for his concept of the creative class and its implications for urban regeneration. This idea was expressed in Florida's best-selling books The Rise of the Creative Class (2002), Cities and the Creative Class, and The Flight of the Creative Class, and later published a book focusing on the issues surrounding urban renewal and talent migration, titled Who's Your City?

Florida's theory asserts that metropolitan regions with high concentration of technology workers, artists, musicians, lesbians and gay men, and a group he describes as "high bohemians", exhibit a higher level of economic development.{{cite web |title=Bio |url=https://premierespeakers.com/richard_florida/bio |website=Premiere Speakers |access-date=March 14, 2019}} Florida refers to these groups collectively as the "creative class." He posits that the creative class fosters an open, dynamic, personal, and professional urban environment. This environment, in turn, attracts more creative people, as well as businesses and capital. He suggests that attracting and retaining high-quality talent versus a singular focus on projects such as sports stadiums, iconic buildings, and shopping centers, would be a better primary use of a city's regeneration of resources for long-term prosperity. He has devised his own ranking systems that rate cities by a "Bohemian index," a "Gay index," a "diversity index", and similar criteria.{{cite news|title = Richard Florida (interview)|date = July 16, 2007|url = http://www.cc.com/video-clips/lnroz7/the-colbert-report-richard-florida|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151121021942/http://www.cc.com/video-clips/lnroz7/the-colbert-report-richard-florida|url-status = dead|archive-date = November 21, 2015|last = Colbert|first = Stephen|newspaper = Comedy Central|access-date = July 16, 2007}}

In 2004, following the rise of Google, the gurus of Web 2.0, and the call from business leaders (often seen in publications such as Business 2.0) for a more creative, as well as skilled, workforce, Florida asserted that the contemporary relevance of his research is easy to see.{{cite news|url=http://www.matr.net/article-10729.html|title=In Defense of the 'Creative Class' - Author Richard Florida responds to criticisms of "The Rise of the Creative Class."|last=Florida|first=Richard|date=April 28, 2004}} One author characterizes him as an influence on radical centrist political thought.Satin, Mark (2004). Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now. Westview Press and Basic Books, pp. 14, 16. {{ISBN|978-0-8133-4190-3}}.

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Florida's ideas have been criticized from a variety of political perspectives and by both academics and journalists. His theories have been criticized as being elitist, and his conclusions have been questioned.{{cite journal|title=Struggling with the Creative Class|author=Jamie Peck|url=http://www.boell-bw.de/fileadmin/Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung/2008/city/Peck_Struggling_with_the_creative_class.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101215142556/http://www.boell-bw.de/fileadmin/Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung/2008/city/Peck_Struggling_with_the_creative_class.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 15, 2010}} Researchers have also criticized Florida's work for its methodology. Terry Nichols Clark of the University of Chicago used Florida's own data to question the correlation between the presence of significant numbers of gay men in a city and the presence of high-technology knowledge industries.{{cite journal|title=Urban Amenities: Lakes, Opera, and Juice Bars Do They Drive Development?|author=Terry Nichols Clark|url=http://www.coolcities.com/useruploads/files/UrbanAmeneties.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110723200255/http://www.coolcities.com/useruploads/files/UrbanAmeneties.pdf|archive-date=July 23, 2011}}

Harvard economist Edward Glaeser analyzed Florida's data and concluded that educational levels, rather than the presence of bohemians or gay people, is correlated with metropolitan economic development.Edward L. Glaeser. "[http://www.creativeclass.com/rfcgdb/articles/GlaeserReview.pdf Review of Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class].

Other critics have said that the conditions it describes may no longer exist, and that his theories may be better suited to politics, rather than economics.{{cite magazine|title=The Curse of the Creative Class|last=Malanga|first=Steven|magazine=City Journal|date=Winter 2004|url=http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_curse.html|access-date=November 8, 2007|archive-date=January 3, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110103152227/http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_curse.html|url-status=dead}} Florida has gone on to directly reply to a number of these objections.

Some scholars have voiced concern over Florida's influence on urban planners throughout the United States. A 2010 book, Weird City, examines Florida's influence on planning policy in Austin, Texas. The main body of the book treats Florida's creative class theory in an introductory and neutral tone, but in a theoretical "postscript" chapter, the author criticizes what he describes as Florida's tendency to "whitewash" the negative externalities associated with creative city development.Long, Joshua (2010). Weird City: Sense of Place and Creative Resistance in Austin, Texas. University of Texas Press.

Thomas Frank criticizes Florida's "creative class" formulation as one of "several flattering ways of describing the professional cohort," this particular one being "the most obsequious designation of them all." Frank places the creative class within a broader critique of the Democratic Party: "Let us be clear about the political views Florida was expounding here.{{cite magazine|url=http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/januaryfebruary-2004/creative-class-war/ |title=Creative Class War |magazine=Washington Monthly |issue=January/February 2004 |first=Richard |last=Florida}} The problem with, say, George W. Bush's administration was not that it favored the rich; it was that it favored the wrong rich—the 'old-economy' rich.... Florida wept for unfairly ignored industries, but he expressed little sympathy for the working people whose issues were now ignored by both parties."{{cite book |last=Frank |first=Thomas |date=2016 |title=Listen, Liberal |location=New York |publisher=Metropolitan Books |isbn=9781627795401 |pages=134, 137 }}

Florida lives in Toronto and Miami and is married to Rana Florida.{{cite web |url=http://www.creativeclass.com/creative_class/author/index.php/rana-florida |title=Rana Florida}}{{cite news|title = Miami now winter home to 'creative-class' thinker Richard Florida|date = August 19, 2012|url = http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/19/2956157/miami-now-winter-home-to-creative.html|last = Viglucci|first = Andres|newspaper = Miami Herald|access-date = November 16, 2013}}

• The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class—and What We Can Do About It, 2017. Basic. {{ISBN|0465079741}}.
• The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, 2010. New York: HarperCollins.
• Who's Your City?, 2008. {{ISBN|0-465-00352-4}}.
• The Flight of the Creative Class. The New Global Competition for Talent, 2005. HarperBusiness, HarperCollins. {{ISBN|0-06-075691-8}}.
• Cities and the Creative Class, 2005. Routledge. {{ISBN|0-415-94887-8}}.
• The Rise of the Creative Class. And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure and Everyday Life, 2002. Basic. {{ISBN|0-465-02477-7}}.
• Branscomb, Lewis & Kodama, Fumio & Florida, Richard (1999). Industrializing Knowledge: University-Industry Linkages in Japan and the United States. MIT Press. {{ISBN|0-262-02465-9}}.
• Kenney, Martin & Florida, Richard (1993). Beyond Mass Production: The Japanese System and Its Transfer to the US. Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-507110-7}}.
• Florida, Richard (1990). The Breakthrough Illusion. Corporate America's Failure to Move from Innovation to Mass Production. Basic. {{ISBN|0-465-00760-0}}.

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• {{cite magazine |last1=Florida |first1=Richard |title=How the Crash Will Reshape America |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/03/how-the-crash-will-reshape-america/307293/ |magazine=The Atlantic |issn=1072-7825 |date=March 2009 |url-access=limited}}
• {{cite news |last1=Wainwright |first1=Oliver |title='Everything is gentrification now': but Richard Florida isn't sorry |url=https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/oct/26/gentrification-richard-florida-interview-creative-class-new-urban-crisis |work=The Guardian |date=26 October 2017}}

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• [https://web.archive.org/web/20120324015746/http://www.creativeclass.com/_wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Richard_Florida_CV_May_24_2011.pdf Curriculum vitae] [http://www.creativeclass.com/_wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Richard_Florida_CV_May_24_2011.pdf original]

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Category:1957 births

Category:20th-century American economists

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:21st-century American economists

Category:21st-century American male writers

Category:American expatriate academics in Canada

Category:Carnegie Mellon University faculty

Category:Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation alumni

Category:George Mason University faculty

Category:Living people

Category:Radical centrist writers

Category:Academic staff of the University of Toronto

Category:Urban theorists

Category:Writers from Newark, New Jersey