Like smokers seeking a cure from their deadly habits, city politicians and economic development officials have a long history of grasping at fads to solve their persistent problems and rebuild middle class cities. Today, a new fad is bewitching urbanists and pols alike. Known as the "creativity craze," it promotes the notion that "young creatives" can drive an urban revival. ... The "creative solution" pointedly avoids such hurdles [good schools, good zoning policies, a city not beholden to unions], suggesting that the key to urban resurgence lies in attracting the diverse, the tolerant, and the gay. Having such a population is well and good, but unlikely by itself to produce a revival, let alone a diversified economy. This is an urban strategy for a frictionless universe.
Why do supposedly serious people embrace such ideas? ... San Francisco, according to economist David Friedman, has actually lost employment at a rate comparable to that of the Great Depression. It is increasingly a city without a real private-sector economy.
These folks (and this organization appears to be Hillary's baby) clearly have an agenda of their own, but the criticism of Florida is not without some merit, even if they have oversimplified his thesis. As Florida points out: The US should not be worried about losing out on the low-cost, low-skilled end of the global labor market; it should be worried about other countries slowly chipping away at its ability to grow, attract, and retain top creative talent. When I asked a group of my students whether they would prefer to work in good, high-paying jobs in a machine tool factory or lower-paying temporary jobs in a hair salon, they overwhelmingly chose the latter.
Going back to David Friedman for a moment: Professor Friedman is also a longtime member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, where he is known as Duke Cariadoc of the Bow. He also founded the largest and longest-running SCA event, the Pennsic War.
His comment about SF job loss: Since late 2000, Bay Area employment has plummeted by as much as 18%, a near-Depression rate of decline. Yet, the region is remarkably devoid of pro-growth sentiment. Few of its elected officials display even a passing interest in job creation. Meanwhile, the rest of the state has been doing markedly better.
It should be noted that this article is nearly three years old now, and the data is surely even older. Besides, the statistic and the Depression reference are misleading, particularly in the way Kotkin and Siegel use it. It suggests people are out of work and homeless, when in fact they've just moved (back) to Sacramento and traded their monthly rent on a one-bedroom apartment for a three-bedroom home of their own. I say "back" to Sacramento because the comparison by Friedman and Kotkin is ill-conceived (or at least ill-used). It's misleading to compare current Bay Area employment to that during the peak of the boom. Instead, they should compare 2005 levels to those, say, of 1990 or 1992. If done, I think they'd find the "decline" to be substantially less than 18%. The fact of the matter is that the boom attracted people to the city. They came from spawl zones like Atlanta and suburban New Jersey. They worked through the boom, and when the bubble burst and the flashy jobs went up in smoke, they went back to their steady jobs out in the sprawl. Both Friedman and an author of the linked article, Joel Kotkin, are fellows at the New America Foundation, along with Peter Bergen (The Osama bin Laden I Know, Holy War, Inc.), Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Moral Animal), and Anatol Lieven (The Two Fukuyamas). They've been saying this for a while now. In a 2004 article of the same ilk, Kotkin writes: Two forms of "Kool-Aid" are particularly in vogue. ... The second, more trendy approach focuses on turning Western cities into what may be called "cool towns." Politicians, academics, the media, planners and developers ... increasingly see the promotion of the arts, entertainment and other amenities as the most critical aspect in attracting the much-sought-after "creative class" of educated workers. In many ways, these forms of Kool-Aid constitute the latest in a series of bromides tried with meager success since the 1960s, from downtown pedestrian malls to convention centers and sports arenas, as ways to breathe life into regions. Neither is likely to lead to anything more than continued frustration in the long run for those who want to spark new growth. The failure of the "cool town" approach also reflects a profound misreading of sociological trends. Although there is a segment of the population that really cares about being "hip and cool," most educated workers, particularly those over 30, appear more concerned about such mundane things as affordable housing, economic opportunity, secondary education and public safety.
Apparently the future will be found not in a Gibsonian megalopolis populated by cool hunters, but instead in bland sprawls like Orlando, FL; Riverside, CA; Atlanta, GA; suburban New Jersey; Denver, CO; and Phoenix, AZ. Can anyone recommend some good science fiction where the action shuffles back and forth between anonymous strip plazas and mass-produced new-suburban settlements of stock homes? Thus far I've identified some fantasy authors (James P. Blaylock, Tim Powers) that seem to work in this space. I've never read either of them, but both seem to have won critical acclaim. (Also apparently good, but sort of the opposite of what I'm after: Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, and China Mieville's Perdido Street Station and King Rat.) Here's a thought: The science fiction of my friends' children will take place in the past. When some of them are old, the omnipresent electric power of this time, and all the wonders that ran on it, will seem like an unfathomable occult force that saturated the world like a spell. They will tell stories about it in the flickering firelight, and their grandchildren will blink in amazement.
Too Much Froth | 
