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Opinion EditorialsRichard Florida Columns

The Globe and Mail : The Trump effect: It’s Canada’s moment to win the global race for talent

Google’s Sidewalk Labs subsidiary has apparently chosen the Toronto waterfront as the place it will create a veritable city of the future, developing and prototyping new technology-enabled ways of working, living and getting around. And Toronto is placed at or near the top of many short lists for Amazon’s new second headquarters, over which more than 50 communities across North America are competing.Why have Toronto, and Canada more broadly, suddenly become so attractive to major U.S. tech companies? The election of Donald Trump may be the veritable tipping point, but Canada’s ability to compete for top global talent has been growing for a while.

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October 10, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

ABC RN: The new urban crisis (video)

Richard Florida is one of the most influential thinkers about cities in the postwar world. For almost two decades he championed the creative classes – artists, tech and knowledge workers and entrepreneurs – who he said would revolutionise our cities and stimulate economic growth.

Today he has changed his mind.

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October 8, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

Forbes : Is The American Urban Revival Over?

Florida has become quite concerned that the winners of the urban revival over the last 15-20 years — cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston and Washington — have become victims of their own success as they’ve become high-priced meccas specifically tailored to the needs and wishes of the creative class.

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September 27, 2017
CitiesOpinion EditorialsRichard Florida ColumnsThe New Urban Crisis Press

Crains New York Business : How to grow New York and other cities—while reducing inequality

As the world’s most economically powerful financial center and a budding hub for high-tech industry, New York City has grown increasingly segregated and unequal—particularly in areas surrounding new development. Now more than ever, the city has become a contested ground for space, spurring a local backlash among community members who can no longer afford to live where they are. With the current presidential administration and Republican majority on Capitol Hill unlikely to lend their support, New York must now turn to its local leaders, communities, and anchor institutions—universities, medical centers, real estate developers and large corporations—to mitigate this new urban crisis.

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September 26, 2017
Rana Florida ColumnsRana Florida Columns: City

The Huffington Post : City Leaders Cower to Pressure to Remove a Stop Sign – Residents in a Fury

n July 2017, in response to a formal request from the North Rosedale Residents’ Association, the city of Toronto placed two new stop signs at the intersections of Glen Road and Roxborough Drive and Glen Road and Binscarth Road. A month after the signs were installed, the residents’ association requested that they be taken down.

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September 21, 2017
Opinion EditorialsRana Florida Columns: WorkRichard Florida Columns

Toronto Star: Building six million good jobs in Canada

Today, more than six million Canadians — 40 per cent of Canada’s workers — toil in low-paying routine service jobs, preparing and serving our food, waiting on us in stores and retail shops, doing office work, and providing a wide range of personal and health care service, from cutting our hair and giving us massages, to taking care of our kids and aging parents.

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September 20, 2017
Opinion Editorials

The Star: Building six million good jobs in Canada

Today, more than six million Canadians — 40 per cent of Canada’s workers — toil in low-paying routine service jobs, preparing and serving our food, waiting on us in stores and retail shops, doing office work, and providing a wide range of personal and health care service, from cutting our hair and giving us massages, to taking care of our kids and aging parents.

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September 20, 2017
Opinion EditorialsRichard Florida Columns

New York Daily News: Stop giving away the store, N.Y.: Aetna shouldn’t get big tax breaks to come to Manhattan

Last June, Aetna announced that it was moving its headquarters from Hartford, Conn., where it has been located since 1853, to the Meatpacking District in New York City. New York, Aetna’s CEO Mark Bertolini told The New York Times, offers “the ecosystem of having people in the knowledge economy, working in a town they want to be living in, and we want to attract those folks, and we want to have them on our team. It’s very hard to recruit people like that to Hartford.”

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September 20, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

NewCo Shift: Can Business and New Federalism Save Our Cities?

Richard Florida is an academic, author, and leading voice on all things urban studies. His Rise of the Creative Class, first published in 2002, predicted a resurgence in city centers due to a new class of creative “knowledge workers.” His insights helped to catalyze scores of major city redevelopment efforts. Hailed as a far-reaching seer for predicting the tech and arts-driven boom in American cities, Florida’s work has recently been called into question for the unexpected consequences of urban renewal, in particular gentrification and its attendant income inequality, which has pushed lower income and diverse populations from cities throughout the United States.

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September 20, 2017
Richard Florida Columns

Houston Chronical: Florida, Rose: Post-Harvey, the city must reset its development trajectory

There is little doubt that the Greater Houston area will rebound and rebuild after Harvey. This has long been one of the world’s fastest-growing and most vibrant regions, with a population fast approaching 7 million and projected to pass 11 million by 2050. With an economic output of nearly $500 billion, Houston’s economy would place it among the 25 wealthiest nations in the world. It’s a center of high-tech energy production and medical research.

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September 8, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

The Berkshire Eagle: Leonard Quart: Letter From New York|:Maintaining equality while reviving cities

NEW YORK — In his 2002 book “The Rise of the Creative Class,” Richard Florida argued that in order to save themselves from post-industrial ruin, cities needed to attract the best young talent in computer programming, finance, media and the arts. Some cities followed his prescription and made themselves more vibrant by creating more walkable, pedestrian-friendly streets, caf and restaurant areas that acted as lively gathering places, refurbished parks, and art and music scenes. Those cities became magnets for what Florida called the “creative class,” but the consequences as Florida soon discovered were complex and not all of them worth cheering.

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September 5, 2017
Files / Working Papers

MPI BUILDING 65 MILLION GOOD JOBS The Geography of Low-Paid Service Class Jobs and How to Begin to Upgrade Them

This report takes a deep dive into America’s Service Class. The
Service Class includes 65 million workers who toil in precarious,
low-skill, low-pay jobs in fields like Food Preparation and Service, Retail Trade, Personal Care, and Clerical and Administrative positions.
Our research outlines the dramatic growth of the Service Class,
documents the low wages paid to Service Class workers, and charts
the large share of women and minorities that make up Service
Class workers.

admin
September 5, 2017
Opinion EditorialsRichard Florida Columns

The New York Times : The Urban Revival Is Over

For all the concern about the gentrification, rising housing prices and the growing gap between the rich and poor in our leading cities, an even bigger threat lies on the horizon: The urban revival that swept across America over the past decade or two may be in danger. As it turns out, the much-ballyhooed new age of the city might be giving way to a great urban stall-out.

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September 1, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

ReInvent (VIDEO): The City is the New Arena for Class Conflict

Just a few years ago, many urban planners and theorists described the next-generation of cities as hopeful harbingers of a new world filled with less consumption and increased opportunity, a remarkable combination of efficiency, sustainability, and scale. After a decades-long slide sparked by the urban riots in the 1960s, cities were on the comeback trail. Or so we thought.

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August 28, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

ReInvent: Cities, Once Beacons of a Progressive Future, Now Face A Class Crisis

Just a few years ago, many urban planners and theorists described the next-generation of cities as hopeful harbingers of a new world filled with less consumption and increased opportunity, a remarkable combination of efficiency, sustainability, and scale. After a decades-long slide sparked by the urban riots in the 1960s, cities were on the comeback trail. Or so we thought.

admin
August 28, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

ReInvent (VIDEO) : “Urbanism for All”—Achieving a More Inclusive Prosperity through Cities

Richard Florida, City Lab Co-Founder and editor at large, sees the contemporary American city as a battleground for class conflict, and believes that the solution is more urbanism—specifically, what Florida terms “urbanism for all.” Florida’s recently published book, The New Urban Crisis, reexamines many of the ideas laid out in his bestselling 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class. According to Florida, the old urban crisis was based around the city center.

admin
August 28, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

ReInvent: “Urbanism for All”—Achieving a More Inclusive Prosperity through Cities

Richard Florida, City Lab Co-Founder and editor at large, sees the contemporary American city as a battleground for class conflict, and believes that the solution is more urbanism—specifically, what Florida terms “urbanism for all.” Florida’s recently published book, The New Urban Crisis, reexamines many of the ideas laid out in his bestselling 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class. According to Florida, the old urban crisis was based around the city center.

admin
August 28, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

Sand Francisco Review of Books: Book Review: ‘The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity’ by Richard Florida

In the first chapter, Richard Florida explains that peaks and valleys are part of the lifecycle of any society as “obsolete and dysfunctional systems and practices” collapse, replaced by “the seeds of innovation and invention, of creativity and entrepreneurship.” The First Great Reset occurred in the 1870s, the Second in the 1930s, and a Third is now developing. “The promise of the current Reset is the opportunity for a life made better not by ownership of real estate, appliances, cars, and all manner of material goods, but of greater flexibility and lower levels of debt, of more time with family and friends, greater promise of personal development, and access to more and better experiences. All organisms and all systems experience the cycles of life, death, and rebirth.”

admin
August 14, 2017
Files / Working Papers

Martin Prosperity Institute: Job Growth in Canadian and U.S. Metros

This report examines job growth across Canada and the United States. It uses data from Emsi data for the period 2001–2016 for the 222 metros that had more than 100,000 jobs in 2016. This includes 203 U.S., 91 percent of the total, and 19 Canadian metros, 9 percent of them. We also look at job change for the more recent 2012–2016 post-economic crisis and recovery period. (Emsi compiles its labor market analytics from U.S. and Canadian government sources).

admin
August 2, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

Fortune: The Wealth Gap in the U.S. Is Worse Than In Russia or Iran

According to New York Times columnist David Brooks, socioeconomic segregation is ruining America.
“Housing and construction rules that keep the poor and less educated away from places with good schools and good job opportunities…have a devastating effect on economic growth nationwide,” Brooks wrote in a much-derided July 11 column. (Derided not for the sentiment outlined above so much as the evidence, which involved Italian cold cuts as a restrictive cultural signifier for the American upper middle class.)

admin
August 2, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

RNZ: (Video)Gentrification and the new urban crisis

Fifteen years ago Richard Florida, one of the world’s leading urbanists, urged city leaders to make urban areas more attractive to the creative class; college-educated millennials, entrepreneurs and artists.

In his book, The Rise of the Creative Class, he argued that these people would help revitalize blighted urban areas and help under resourced communities.

admin
August 2, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

American Prospect: The Pittsburgh Conundrum

orty years after the decline of the steel industry, Pittsburgh has emerged from the ashes of deindustrialization to become the new Emerald City. Its formidable skyline gleams with homegrown names—PPG, UPMC, and PNC. Touted as the “most livable city” by the likes of The Economist and Forbes, its highly literate and educated workforce has contributed to a robust and diverse local economy known as a center for technology, health care, and bio-science. It is a leader in startup businesses. Uber and Ford’s announcement in 2016 that they would base development of their self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, rather than in Silicon Valley, is a telling example of the power of high-tech image and low costs.

admin
July 26, 2017
Opinion Editorials

New York Daily News: Two nations, red & blue: Urban giants have less and less in common with the rest of America, leaving U.S. politics beyond repair

Does the looming special counsel investigation into potential collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin presage a less-than-four-year incumbency for this President? One can always hope. Certainly, resignation, impeachment or a 25th Amendment solution seem much more likely today than they did a year ago, when the very idea of a Trump presidency strained credulity.

admin
July 13, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

Inside Higher Ed: The Rural University and Richard Florida’s ‘New Urban Crisis’

The first interpretation is that Florida responding to his critics that the secret to urban prosperity is to focus on attracting creative class employees and employers. The book is something of a mea culpa that Florida overestimated the ability of cultural amenities to drive urban success, and underestimated how the growth of urban knowledge economies can serve to drive economic inequality.

admin
July 13, 2017
Richard Florida Columns

Harvard Business Review: What Inclusive Urban Development Can Look Like

Inclusive prosperity is the idea that the opportunity and benefits of economic growth should be widely shared by all segments of society. Most cities fall well short of that ideal. While urban areas continue to afford new opportunities to employees and businesses from all walks of life, they are increasingly split between wealthy, high-skill knowledge workers and low-paid service workers.

admin
July 11, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

KQED: Google Eyes San Jose for Campus for 20,000 Employees

Last week, the San Jose City Council voted to start negotiations with Google to sell the company 23 acres of city owned land near the Diridon Caltrain Station. The purchase is part of Google’s plan to build a massive transit oriented village that would include six to eight million square feet of office and retail space and bring up to 20,000 Google employees to the city. Community activists are concerned about pressures the development may exert on wages and housing prices and the overall impact it may have on San Jose’s culture. In this hour, we’ll learn about Google’s possible San Jose campus and we want to hear from you — if your town is home to a large company — what are the benefits and drawbacks?

admin
June 29, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

The Chicago Forum on Global Cities: (video) The Urban Crisis

What policy priorities are needed for global cities to drive more sustainable and inclusive prosperity? How does today’s technology revolution affect how cities build a strong, enduring, middle class? How are cities providing access to the skills and training needed for city youth to fill the jobs of tomorrow? Can global cities grow a thriving creative class without a new urban crisis perpetuating small areas of affluence aside much larger areas of disadvantage?

admin
June 29, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

New York Times: Why America’s Great Cities Are Becoming More Economically Segregated

Richard Florida became famous among people who think about cities 15 years ago with “The Rise of the Creative Class.” He predicted that postindustrial cities would succeed by focusing on the three Ts: technology, talent and tolerance. People in the “creative class” benefit from density, he said, and would move to places where laws are kind to tech entrepreneurs, where museums provide an evening out and where gay people are comfortable. Indeed, New York recovered its private-sector jobs nearly four years faster than the nation after the Great Recession.

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June 26, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

Politico: A Declaration of Urban Independence

On Monday, November 7, 2016, I made what I thought were the final edits to the manuscript of my latest book, The New Urban Crisis, and sent it off to my publisher. The next day, my wife and I invited our American friends to come to our house in Toronto to celebrate what we were all but certain would be Hillary Clinton’s election. We pulled out all the stops. We hung up red, white and blue bunting, and dressed our baby and our puppy to match. My wife’s sisters supplied us with life-sized cutouts of Clinton and Donald Trump, which they had literally “muled” over the border from the Detroit suburbs. At 6 p.m., when the polls began to close, we turned on the TV to watch the early returns. By 8:30, the party had come to a crashing stop. I spent the rest of the night glued to Twitter; I hardly even noticed when the last of our guests departed.

admin
June 23, 2017
Opinion EditorialsRichard Florida Columns

Evonomics: Richard Florida: It’s Not (Just) the Working Class. It’s the Service Class.

The Service Class, not the Working Class, is the key to the Democrats’ future. Members of the blue-collar Working Class are largely white men, working in declining industries like manufacturing, as well as construction, transportation, and other manual trades. Members of the Service Class work in rapidly growing industries like food service, clerical and office work, retail stores, hospitality, personal assistance, and the caring industries. The Service Class has more than double the members of the Working Class – 65 million versus 30 million members, and is made up disproportionately of women and members of ethnic and racial minorities.

admin
June 14, 2017

The Creativity index appeared to be one of the best metrics to understand sales performance at Cirque. And correlation are strong, therefor we will be now using this metric to anticipate sales performance and better forecast.

Alexandre AlleMarket Insight Advisor, Cirque du Soleil