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Are we telling the truth, Mr. Florida?
A good friend of mine who happens to be a sociologist-economist-wonk at Georgetown sent me an article earlier this week that calls Richard Florida's creative class work into question. The 2004 article, which was written by Steven Malanga, was publised in City Journal, a quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute.
I was not particularly surprised to read that Florida's work is being subjected to critical review. Any book that has prompted so much discussion (and action) is bound to be scrutinized. What is somewhat surprising is the evidentiary substance contradicting Florida's claims. He seems to present the facts where Florida hasn't.
But a far more serious—indeed, fatal—objection to Florida’s theories is that the economics behind them don’t work. Although Florida’s book bristles with charts and statistics showing how he constructed his various indexes and where cities rank on them, the professor, incredibly, doesn’t provide any data demonstrating that his creative cities actually have vibrant economies that perform well over time. A look at even the most simple economic indicators, in fact, shows that, far from being economic powerhouses, many of Florida’s favored cities are chronic underperformers.
Exhibit A is the most fundamental economic measure, job growth. The professor’s creative index—a composite of his other indexes—lists San Francisco, Austin, Houston, and San Diego among the top ten. His bottom ten include New Orleans, Las Vegas, Memphis, and Oklahoma City, which he says are “stuck in paradigms of old economic development� and are losing their “economic dynamism� to his winners. So you’d expect his winners to be big job producers. Yet since 1993, cities that score the best on Florida’s analysis have actually grown no faster than the overall U.S. jobs economy, increasing their employment base by only slightly more than 17 percent. Florida’s indexes, in fact, are such poor predictors of economic performance that his top cities haven’t even outperformed his bottom ones. Led by big percentage gains in Las Vegas (the fastest-growing local economy in the nation) as well as in Oklahoma City and Memphis, Florida’s ten least creative cities turn out to be jobs powerhouses, adding more than 19 percent to their job totals since 1993—faster growth even than the national economy.
Florida’s ten most creative mid-sized cities are even less impressive economic engines. Since 1993, these cities, which include such underperformers as Albany, New York, and Dayton, Ohio, have increased their job totals by about 16 percent—less than the national average.
If Malanga is correct - and the facts seem to indicate that he is - many policy makers are being misled by a body of work that they are assuming is based on a set of objective truths.
Having spent the bulk of my professional life in the arts, I want to believe that everything Richard Florida writes and says is true. For the first time in my life, I'm not having to constantly beat the arts-is-valuable drum every day. A consensus around the truth of our importance seems to have emerged among policy makers at all levels of society and government.
But what if it isn't? What if these claims are bogus? What are the costs of promoting false expectations?
A chain of cultural center mega-projects are springing up throughout the United States. Arts centers, museums, and cultural districts are being developed at a brisk pace, and with great expectations.
What happens to our sector if the economics of these places and initiatives don't work? How does a sector whose integrity has been impeached make a credible case for value after the fact?
These questions concern me. I make no bones about it. We can't treat our integrity like a glassy-eyed gambler on a paycheck binge who's happy until the money runs out.
Posted on June 23, 2006 08:45 AM | Permalink
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