The News Tribune reports the following:
Richard Florida, the author and guru of turning around cities by appealing to what he calls the “creative class,” will return to Tacoma this fall to teach locals how to turn T-Town into a creative city…
David Graybill, chamber president and CEO, said the response to Florida’s message of success-via-appealing-to-creatives drew more rave reviews than any chamber keynoters he could remember.
Graybill and Chamber Board President John Folsom have collected roughly two-thirds of the $150,000 in sponsor donations necessary to bring Florida and his team back and provide local staff support.
Florida will lead a two-day intensive training session in September or October with locals unlike anything the sociologist has done elsewhere.
The training will involve 25 to 30 diverse community leaders and potential leaders who will learn the metrics behind Florida’s theory that the strongest cities focus on talent, technology and tolerance. The goal: action steps the community can take to position Tacoma for creative success. The Tacoma experience could get lead billing in a future Florida book.
If you’re interested in Florida’s work, he has his own website at http://www.creativeclass.org/
One particularly good read there is a piece by Florida from The Atlantic on globalization and knowledge that challenges many of the arguments in Thomas Friedman’s most recent popular work, The World Is Flat. Florida’s rebuttal is here. We've used this piece in the introductory comparative politics class at the end of the semester, when we consider globalization and its effects (real or imagined).
While Florida preaches to Tacoma and rebuts Friedman, others rebut Florida. See Joel Kotkin’s piece “The Ersatz Urban Renaissance”.
