What Is the Creative Class? Scientists, Engineers, Architects, Educators, Writers, Artists (2002)

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The Creative Class is a posited socioeconomic class identified by American economist and social scientist Richard Florida, a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. According to Florida, the Creative Class are a key driving force for economic development of post-industrial cities in the United States. Florida describes the Creative Class as comprising 40 million workers (about 30 percent of the U.S. workforce). He breaks the class into two broad sections, derived from Standard Occupational Classification System codes: Super-Creative Core: This group comprises about 12 percent of all U.S. jobs. It includes a wide range of occupations (e.g. science, engineering, education, computer programming, research), with arts, design, and media workers forming a small subset. Florida considers those belonging to this group to “fully engage in the creative process” (2002, p. 69). The Super-Creative Core is considered innovative, creating commercial products and consumer goods. The primary job function of its members is to be creative and innovative. “Along with problem solving, their work may entail problem finding” (Florida, 2002, p. 69). Creative Professionals: These professionals are the classic knowledge-based workers and include those working in healthcare, business and finance, the legal sector, and education. They “draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems” using higher degrees of education to do so (Florida, 2002). In addition to these two main groups of creative people, the usually much smaller group of Bohemians is also included in the Creative Class.[1] In his 2002 study, Florida concluded that the Creative Class would be the leading force of growth in the economy expected to grow by over 10 million jobs in the next decade, which would in 2012 equal almost 40% of the population. Florida's use of census and economic data, presented in works such as The Rise of the Creative Class (2002), Cities and the Creative Class (2004), and The Flight of the Creative Class (2007), as well as Bobos in Paradise by David Brooks (whose "bobos" roughly correspond to Florida's Creative Class), and NEO Power by Ross Honeywill (whose NEOs deliver a more sophisticated level of evidence), has shown that cities which attract and retain creative residents prosper, while those that do not stagnate. This research has gained traction in the business community, as well as among politicians and urban planners. Florida and other Creative Class theorists have been invited to meetings of the National Conference of Mayors and numerous economic development committees, such the Denver mayor's Task Force on Creative Spaces and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm's Cool Cities Initiative.[3] In Cities and the Creative Class, Florida devotes several chapters to discussion of the three main prerequisites of creative cities (though there are many additional qualities which distinguish creative magnets). For a city to attract the Creative Class, he argues, it must possess "the three 'T's": Talent (a highly talented/educated/skilled population), Tolerance (a diverse community, which has a 'live and let live' ethos), and Technology (the technological infrastructure necessary to fuel an entrepreneurial culture). In Rise of the Creative Class, Florida argues that members of the Creative Class value meritocracy, diversity and individuality, and look for these characteristics when they relocate (2002). As Florida demonstrates in his books, Buffalo, New Orleans and Louisville are examples of cities which have tried to attract the Creative Class but, in comparison to cities which better exemplify the "three 'T's", have failed. Creative Class workers have sought out cities that better accommodate their cultural, creative, and technological needs, such as Chapel Hill, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Austin, Seattle, Toronto, Ontario and Portland, Oregon. Florida also notes that Lexington and Milwaukee, Wisconsin have the ingredients to be a "leading city in a new economy". The “Creativity Index” is another tool that Florida uses to describe how members of the Creative Class are attracted to a city. The Creativity Index includes four elements: “the Creative Class share of the workforce; innovation, measured as patents per capita; high tech industry, using the Milken Institute's widely accepted Tech Pole Index…; and diversity, measured by the Gay Index, a reasonable proxy for an area’s openness" (2002, pp. 244–5). Using this index, Florida rates and ranks cities in terms of innovative high-tech centers, with San Francisco being the highest ranked (2002). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_class Image By Tao Ruspoli (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons