Richard Florida
The Rise of the Creative Class
ISBN: 978-1-5416-1774-2
Cities and the Creative Class
ISBN: 978-0-415-94887-8
When I discovered the world of entrepreneurship more than a decade ago, much of the terminology around entrepreneurial ecosystems and startup communities had not been invented or set in stone. Much of the literature surrounding these concepts discussed a group of people referred to as “creatives.” This encompassed most jobs surrounding startups, from designers to developers, engineers, project managers, and artists. Essentially, this was designed to differentiate the jobs of the twentieth century from those being created for the high school and college graduates of the twenty-first century.
The Rise of the Creative Class was one of the foundational texts of this era. Reading this book now feels a bit like Baby Boomers trying to explain the field of entrepreneurial ecosystem building to their colleagues at a suburban office complex. Because the language wasn’t yet invented or codified, Florida had to spend a decent amount of time explaining the differences between the manufacturing economy and the creative economy and why the creative economy was the only direction toward prosperity.
This was written in a time of pure optimism for the creative class. The full effect of the decline of manufacturing – the breakdown of society in between the cities, the opioid crisis, and the despair and desperation that followed – hadn’t been felt in the early 2000s. The globalization of certain industries was still new, and it felt like the economy was completely moving in a post-manufacturing direction. I read the version revised in 2019, and this early-2000s optimism was still present, which made the book feel more like a relic of the past than it should.
The overarching theme of the book was that the creative economy requires technology, talent, and tolerance. Again, the optimism of the early 2000s shines through here. In the twenty-plus years since the original version of The Rise of the Creative Class was released, technology has permeated every aspect of our lives. Nearly everyone in the developed world interacts with modern technology daily, even if they are working in relatively tech-poor industries or jobs. Since the pandemic, we’ve learned that talent is distributed somewhat evenly throughout the world and became more distributed as people moved out of cities post-2020. Finally, the concept of tolerance has deeply changed since the turn of the century, with a backlash occurring recently as the Overton Window swung drastically leftward during the 2020s. The world has changed, whether the author likes it or not.
Florida, in the tiny bit of the book revised in 2019, did touch on the need for the creative class to reach across the divide between themselves and the manufacturing and service classes. Perhaps he does understand, even in a small amount, that the creative class has metastasized into “the coastal elite” that the rest of the country despises – out of touch with the struggles of the vast majority of the United States population outside the bubbles of New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that the attitudes of the creative class caused the divide, and cities are not the places where this shift will happen. Focusing on cities to bridge the gap misses the entire reason for the divide – this is the same type of energy possessed by people who try to develop apps to solve everything.
Cities and the Creative Class is a supplement to The Rise of the Creative Class and meant to be a follow-up to the original text. It was a quick read and didn’t really cover much new material beyond the original book. While The Rise of the Creative Class has been updated slightly since the early 2000s, Cities and the Creative Class could use a follow-up two decades later. While I’ve reviewed other books that are decades old, many of those books have held up better than either of Florida’s books.
Overall, 6/10, would slightly recommend these books to people looking to learn about the basics of forming a creative community and a review of what things were like two decades ago. In this series, I’ve reviewed other books that cover this topic – those books are both more relevant and current than either of the texts reviewed here. While I do appreciate the work Florida did decades ago, much of the information in these books can be obtained through newer books like The Startup Community Way, The Rainforest, and others. It never hurts to revisit foundational work, but don’t go out of your way to read these.