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.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the fad was for downtown malls. In the 1980s,
it was convention centers and sports stadiums. But none of the fads came
close to living up to their lofty billings.
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. It is a belated extension of the New Economy
boom of the late 1990s. As with the idea of a New Economy, there is some
merit to the focus on creativity. But as we learned from the dot-com
bust that followed the boom, even the best ideas can be oversold.
Long before the current craze, Robert D. Atkinson of the Progressive
Policy Institute wrote, "The ticket to faster and broader income
growth is innovation." And one of the keys to innovation, he noted
in describing his Metropolitan New Economy Indexes, is the ability to
attract talented and innovative people. But he also emphasized the importance
of school reform, infrastructure investments, work force development
partnerships, public safety, and reinventing -- and digitizing -- city
government. All these critical factors have been widely ignored by those
who've discovered the magic bullet of "creative" urban development.
The new mantra advocates an urban strategy that focuses on being "hip" and "cool" rather
than straightforward and practical. It is eagerly promoted by the Brookings
Institution, by some urban development types, and by city pols from both
parties in places like Cincinnati, Denver, Tampa, and San Diego. It seeks
to displace the Progressive Policy Institute's New Economy Indexes with
what might be called a "Latte Index" -- the density of Starbucks
-- as a measure of urban success. Cities that will win the new competition,
it's asserted, will be those that pour their resources into the arts
and other cultural institutions that attract young, "with-it" people
who constitute, for them, the contemporary version of the anointed. Call
them latte cities.
But, like all the old bromides that were supposed to save America's cities,
this one is almost certain to disappoint. Based partly on the ideas in
Carnegie Mellon professor Richard Florida's book, Rise of the Creative
Class, the notion of hip uber alles reminds one of the confectionary
world of earlier gurus such as Charles Reich, author of The Greening
of America, and John Naisbitt, author of Megatrends. Both promised a
largely painless path to a brave new world, but both now are largely
forgotten.
It's not surprising that after 50 years of almost uninterrupted middle
class and job flight to the suburbs -- even with the partial urban revival
of the 1990s -- urban officials might be tempted to clutch at straws.
The appeal of such fads is plain to see. They seem to offer a way around
the intractable problems of schools that fail to improve, despite continuous
infusions of money; contentious zoning and regulatory policies that drive
out business; and politically hyperactive public-sector unions and hectoring
interest groups that make investment in cities something most entrepreneurs
studiously avoid.
The "creative solution" pointedly avoids such hurdles, 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.
Those most outspoken about such a culture- and lifestyle-based urban
revival have all the heady passion of a religious movement; indeed, they've
organized themselves into something called the Creative Class. One hundred
of them -- they called themselves the "Creative 100" -- met
in Memphis last spring to lay out their principles in a document called
the Memphis Manifesto. Their mission, it reads, is to "remove barriers
to creativity, such as mediocrity, intolerance, disconnectedness, sprawl,
poverty, bad schools, exclusivity, and social and environmental degradation." The
1934 Soviet constitution couldn't have said it better.
This is an urban strategy for a frictionless universe. There is no mention
of government or politics or interest groups. There's no recognition
of the problems produced by outmoded regulations, runaway public spending,
or high taxes. Instead we get the following froth: "Cultivate and
reward creativity. Everyone is part of the value chain of creativity.
Creativity can happen at any time, anywhere, and it's happening in your
community right now."
Why do supposedly serious people embrace such ideas? After decades of decline
and often fruitless political combat, mayors, city councils, and urban development
officials seem ready to embrace any notion that holds out hope without offending
the entrenched constituencies that resist real reform.
"The economic development people will buy anything that makes it seem easy," suggests
Leslie Parks, former chairwoman of the California Economic Development Corp. "They
see a schtick that requires few hard choices, and they bought it."
Parks traces much of the current enthusiasm for the "creative" strategy
to the late 1990s dot-com boom. In this period, there was a palpable economic
surge in certain cities -- San Francisco; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; Austin, Texas;
New York -- that also attracted bright, "creative" young people, and,
incidentally, many gays. These are the cities that Florida and his acolytes have
held up as models for other towns.
Yet virtually all these places have been hemorrhaging jobs and people since the
boom busted. San Francisco, according to economist David Friedman, has actually
lost employment at a rate comparable to that of the Great Depression. Roughly
4 percent of the population has simply left town, often to go to more affordable,
if boring, places, such as Sacramento. San Francisco is increasingly a city without
a real private-sector economy. It's home to those on the government or nonprofit
payroll and the idle rich -- "a cross between Carmel and Calcutta," in
the painful phrase of California state librarian Kevin Starr, a San Francisco
native.
As for the others, they are no bargain either. Seattle has also lost jobs at
a far faster rate than the rest of the country and has its own litany of social
problems, including a sizable homeless population; the loss of its signature
corporation, Boeing; and growing racial tensions.
Although Portland is often hailed as a new urban paradise, it is in a region
suffering very high unemployment. "They made a cool place, but the economy
sucks," notes Parks, who conducted a major study for the Oregon city. "They
forgot all the things that matter, like economic diversification and affordability."
New York City has also suffered heavy job losses. Gotham's population outflows,
which slowed in the late 1990s, have accelerated, including in Manhattan, the
city's cool core. In contrast, New York's relatively unhip suburbs, particularly
those in New Jersey, quietly weathered the Bush recession in fairly fine fettle.
Today, economic growth is shifting to less fashionable but more livable locales
such as San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, Calif.; Rockland County, N.Y.;
Des Moines, Iowa; Bismarck, N.D.; and Sioux Falls, S.D.
In many cases, this shift also encompasses technology-oriented and professional
service firms, whose ranks ostensibly dominate the so-called "creative class." This
trend actually predates the 2000 crash, but it has since accelerated. Since the
1990s, the growth in financial and other business services has taken place not
in New York, San Francisco, or Seattle, but in lower-cost places like Phoenix;
Charlotte, N.C.; Minneapolis; and Des Moines.
Perhaps more important, the outflow from decidedly un-hip places like the Midwest
has slowed, and even reversed. Employers report that workers are seeking more
affordable housing, and, in many cases, less family-hostile environments.
To be sure, such cities are not without their share of Starbucks outlets, and
they have put great stress on quality-of-life issues -- like recreation and green
space -- that appeal to families and relocating firms. But the watchword is livability,
not coolness. "It's gotten very easy to get workers to relocate here," notes
Randy Schilling, founder and CEO of Quilogy, a St. Louis-area technology company. "You
get a guy here from Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, and even if he gets
a pay cut, he and his family lives better."
There is, fortunately, an alternative to a hollow urban politics that relies
mainly on the hip and the cool. Such a politics lies not in trendy ideas that
will be forgotten a decade from now, but in commonsense policies that stress
basic services like police and firefighters, innovative public schools that are
not beholden to teachers' unions, breaking down of barriers to new housing construction,
and policies that lead local businesses to expand within the urban area. It's
a politics that, to paraphrase the great urbanist Jane Jacobs, seeks not to "lure" a
middle class with bars, bells, and whistles, but instead aims to create one at
the grassroots level.
That's the kind of "creativity" that cities, and Democrats, really
need to embrace.
