Richard Florida

Full disclosure: I have not read either Richard Florida's book The Rise of the Creative Class or his latest work The Flight of the Creative Class. Nevertheless, according to the New York Times this is the gist of the former:

Should Pittsburgh recruit gay people to jump-start its economy? Should Buffalo — another fiscally flat-lining city — give tax breaks to bohemians? As policy prescriptions go, these sound absurd. But according to a new theory devised by Richard Florida, a professor of regional economic development at Carnegie Mellon University, towns that have lots of gays and bohemians (by which he means authors, painters, musicians and other "artistically creative people") are likely to thrive.

To understand why gays and bohemians are linked to prosperity, Mr. Florida explains, you must first understand something else: the role of an emerging economic force that he dubs the "creative class" and that civic leaders in dozens of communities regularly fork over $10,000 to hear him discuss.

...This, in essence, is Mr. Florida's "creative capital theory." As he put it during a recent interview in Manhattan, "You cannot get a technologically innovative place unless it's open to weirdness, eccentricity and difference."

I have read elsewhere that Florida's approves of the "Keep Austin Weird" campaign as the sort of initiative that helps retain this creative class, in turn promoting economic dynamism.

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But according to the Christian Science Monitor Florida's new tome warns that the U.S. is increasingly in danger of losing out in its bid to retain the creative class to other countries:

It may be too soon to anoint Tallinn, Estonia - or Dublin, Ireland, or Sydney, Australia - the world's new creative capital, as opposed to many thriving US cities. Still, by Florida's reckoning, America's magnetism for creative workers has weakened as the drawing power of other nations has become supercharged - owing to regulatory policies, quality of life, tolerance, and a range of other issues.

My reaction -- assuming Florida is even on to something -- is to note that Estonia, Ireland and Australia are among the most free-market countries in the world. Indeed, according to the 2005 edition of the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom all three have economies that are more free than that of the U.S. Perhaps the solution to promoting creativity is not the promotion of weirdness, but economic freedom.

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More thoughts on Florida's work here and here.