NWA could be a victim of its own economic success if community leaders aren’t strategic about its future development.
adminAugust 23, 2022
In a recent OECD Dialogue on the future of regions: Getting creative about regional development, world-renowned expert on place-based development and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, Dr. Richard Florida shares his expertise on the relationship between a creative workforce and regional economic development. He encourages cities and regions to consider how diversity, creativity and innovation can contribute to attracting creative talent and investment, and shape inclusive and sustainable development. He then unpacks how non-metropolitan areas can benefit from a greater influx of creative people and capital, especially in the wake of the pandemic.
adminAugust 23, 2022
The metaverse isn’t the end of cities. Rather, this evolution of the digital world should be seen as a complement to the physical world, and companies should develop their location strategies to maximize the potential of both the megacities that have become…
adminAugust 23, 2022
America’s downtowns are in big trouble, or so the pundits tell us, thanks to the enduring effects of Covid-19 and the rise of remote and hybrid work. In 10 of the largest US cities, office occupancy averages are less than half, roughly 44% as of mid-August, of what they were back in 2020 before the pandemic hit. That’s better than they looked in May 2021, when the average stood at just 27%. But several big cities, including New York, Chicago and San Francisco, have been stalled at 40% or under for several months — a sign that the workplace disruptions of the Covid era are with us for the long haul.
adminAugust 23, 2022
Elon Musk announced this month that he will move Tesla’s corporate headquarters to Austin, making good on his earlier threat to move his HQ out of California’s Silicon Valley. The Tesla Inc. chief executive officer is hardly the first tech titan to trade the Bay Area for a red state. Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois are just two of the highest profile California venture capitalists who set up shop in Miami.
adminOctober 19, 2021
At long last, it appears that the worst days of the Covid-19 pandemic may finally be behind us. Despite early predictions of a lasting urban exodus, people are heading back to great cities. But the pandemic has brought many potentially lasting urban changes, including the attribution of streets once used for cars and parking to bike lanes, parklets and restaurants.
adminOctober 19, 2021
The U.S. is on the verge of the fourth revolution in urban technology. Where railroads, the electric grid, and the automobile defined previous eras, today, new strategies that integrate new technologies in our cities can unlock striking possibilities.
adminOctober 18, 2021
A year ago, just before the start of pandemic lockdowns, some 10% or less of the U.S. labor force worked remotely full-time. Within a month, according to Gallup and other surveys, around half of American workers were at distant desktops. Today, most of them still are. And surveys of employers and employees alike suggest a fundamental shift. While forecasts differ, as much as a quarter of the 160-million-strong U.S. labor force is expected to stay fully remote in the long term, and many more are likely to work remotely a significant part of the time.
adminApril 16, 2021
America’s political map is famously divided into shades of red and blue. But while most of America was anxiously watching screens and needles to see which hue the handful of crucial swing states would turn, the nation’s future was ultimately being decided at a far more granular scale—in the suburbs.
Geography’s defining role in how Americans vote has increased over the past decade or so, as people have sorted themselves by income, education and ideological outlook. More affluent and college-educated professionals and knowledge workers have clustered in larger cities, as many working-class people moved outward to the suburbs and rural America, widening the chasm between blue cities and red outlying areas.
adminNovember 23, 2020
In “60 Seconds With,” ELLE Decor articles editor Charles Curkin chats with creatives and industry leaders, getting the scoop on their life and work in one minute or less. In this installment, he talks with the urbanist Richard Florida about how city life—New York City life, in particular—will change in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. His prognosis is decidedly good. Florida’s one minute starts…now.
adminNovember 23, 2020
The city’s future depends on how it can best mobilize and marshal its assets to get back-up-and-running safely during this period. Even as the state and city are all out to mobilize to combat the virus, preparation for reopening and recovery must start now.
adminApril 20, 2020
The lockdown will end before scientists develop a working vaccine. Here’s a four-point plan for how companies should adapt.
adminApril 6, 2020
As the coronavirus surges across Canada, the immediate response has been social distancing to damp down its spread. But our cities can’t stay locked-down indefinitely. The economic costs, never mind the toll it takes on our society, culture, and mental health, are too devastating. Sooner or later, they will need to reopen.If we want to reopen safely and securely, we have to start preparing now. In addition to widespread testing, careful monitoring and more precisely targeted interventions, here is a short list of practical things we can start to do now to get our cities and economy back up and running safely and securely.
adminApril 3, 2020
The only way to fix American politics is to massively shift power from our dysfunctional federal government to our pragmatic cities, suburbs and local communities.
adminOctober 30, 2019
A dozen or so years ago, I was recruited to Toronto to establish the Martin Prosperity Institute, a think tank focused on urban, regional and national competitiveness. My wife and I have grown to love this city we call home. But Toronto needs to compete with the best of the best, and that’s why I support Sidewalk Labs’ Quayside project.
Toronto has made it into the ranks of global cities. It tends to place highly in rankings of quality of life. It has strong banks and a world-class real estate market. But despite the hype about high-tech in Toronto, we lag significantly behind the world’s leading cities.
adminSeptember 16, 2019
Canada prides itself on its reputation as an open, tolerant and caring place. Especially at our border, where the image of Justin Trudeau greeting refugees turned away from the United States was seen around the world. But, over the dozen years that we have lived in Toronto, we have regularly encountered problems when coming back home to Canada at Pearson Airport.
adminJuly 17, 2019
We need to talk. We need a conversation about the real facts of cycling and pedestrian safety in this city. Where are the real problems? What are the realistic, evidence-based options to make our streets safer?
adminJuly 8, 2019
Sidewalk Labs released its long-awaited plan on Monday, providing a detailed look at what it has in store for the city’s waterfront. To date, the controversy over the project has revolved around critical issues of privacy and the nature of its waterfront development. But there is another dimension to the initiative, one that has been largely missing from the conversation: the role of Sidewalk Labs’ project in Toronto and Canada’s future high-tech development.
adminJuly 8, 2019
Urbanists and privacy experts across the city have raised important concerns about the Sidewalk Labs’ project on Toronto’s waterfront. But something important remains missing from the conversation. We are failing to consider what Sidewalk Labs can do for our economic future. This is a project that holds the promise of vaulting Toronto to world leadership in one of the most important fields of high-tech industry.
adminJuly 8, 2019
This is an opportunity for the mega-corporation to broker a new deal with the city and state
adminApril 11, 2019
We’re used to thinking of high-tech innovation and startups as generated and clustered predominantly in fertile U.S. ecosystems, such as Silicon Valley, Seattle, and New York. But as with so many aspects of American economic ingenuity, high-tech startups have now truly gone global. The past decade or so has seen the dramatic growth of startup ecosystems around the world, from Shanghai and Beijing, to Mumbai and Bangalore, to London, Berlin, Stockholm, Toronto and Tel Aviv. A number of U.S. cities continue to dominate the global landscape, including the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, but the rest of the world is gaining ground rapidly.
adminApril 11, 2019
Toronto Mayor John Tory’s resounding victory last month gave him an “historic mandate,” as he put it. He’ll need it, because the city he is leading is badly stuck, unable to address the deep challenges it faces. Indeed, the mayor must use his hard-won political capital to make headway on four key fronts.
First and foremost is affordable housing. Tory has said he will make housing and housing affordability a priority of his second term, declaring that “we must do more to speed up the increase in supply of affordable housing.”
adminApril 11, 2019
lobalization strikes again. The latest target is entrepreneurship.
For decades, promoting start-up firms through venture capital and other methods of business investment seemed a peculiarly American strength. It has nurtured countless tech firms, including titans such as Facebook, Google and Apple. Americans have been duly proud. It reinforced a sense of national exceptionalism, because other countries couldn’t easily duplicate it, if at all.
adminApril 11, 2019
En estos tiempos, la clave para el desarrollo económico de América Latina ya no solamente incluye sus materias primas y sus manufacturas, sino también un recurso ilimitado aunque ignorado por muchos: el inmenso potencial creativo de la región. La creatividad forma indiscutiblemente parte del ADN de las sociedades, ciudades y barrios latinoamericanos,
adminApril 11, 2019
While recent headlines have blared about the Trump administration’s multi-front trade war with Canadian dairy farmers, Chinese manufacturers and the European Union’s steel, aluminum and automotive industries, a much larger economic threat has gone virtually unnoticed. The high-tech startups that have provided the U.S. with a powerful edge in fields such as computers, software, mobile devices, biotech, the internet and an array of digital platforms now face rapidly increasing pressures from foreign competition. This looming crisis of American innovation could undermine the nation’s long-running global advantage in bringing to market the next new technology, the next new industry, the next big thing. It may well be the gravest challenge yet to America’s century-plus hold on global economic hegemony.
adminNovember 16, 2018
Canada, we increasingly hear, is becoming a global leader in high-tech innovation and entrepreneurship. Report after report has ranked Toronto, Waterloo and Vancouver among the world’s most up-and-coming tech hubs. Toronto placed fourth in a ranking of North American tech talent this past summer, behind only the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Washington, and in 2017 its metro area added more tech jobs than those other three city-regions combined.
adminNovember 16, 2018
It goes without saying: Ours is a divided nation. But the real boundary doesn’t run between Blue or Red states, liberal and conservative ideologies, or urban versus rural regions. No, the real divide in America is one of scale. Richard Florida and Mick Cornett belong to different political parties, and differ sharply on a number of policy views. But they share a core belief that our country’s future lies in Local America.
adminNovember 16, 2018
A shadow hangs over Toronto after Sunday’s shooting on the Danforth. The recent killing spree follows on the heels of a vehicle attack on Yonge Street this spring and a raft of shootings, including one with small children in the crossfire last month. The city’s international reputation as a multicultural success story seems at risk, as Torontonians fear they are succumbing to the twin threats of gun violence and terrorism vexing other global cities.
adminNovember 15, 2018
Torontonians like to sound off on Americans’ inability to deal with guns and gun deaths. But Toronto’ s inability to deal with the car creates its own killing fields. Today, more Torontonians die from being hit by cars than from being killed by guns. In 2016, nearly 2,000 pedestrians and 1,000 cyclists in the city were hit by cars. Of these, 43 resulted in fatalities.
adminNovember 15, 2018
Ontario’s recent economic success is the product of longer-run investments in universities, arts and culture; advanced research in key fields like artificial intelligence; openness to immigrants; and a growing commitment to place-making and city-building. This economic advantage will be significantly diminished if Doug Ford becomes premier of Ontario. Comparisons are already being made between Mr. Ford and Mr. Trump, as well as between Mr. Trump and Mr. Ford’s late younger brother, Rob, the original North American populist. All three positioned themselves as advocates for the “little guy,” slashing taxes and cutting back government. Like Mr. Trump, Doug Ford has even hired actors for campaign events.
adminNovember 15, 2018
With the help of his colleagues at the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute, Patrick Adler and Charlotta Mellander, Richard Florida ranked Canada’s, and each nation’s Olympic medal performance relative to their population, size of their economy and number of athletes on their Olympic teams. So, how does Canada’s performance measure up on metrics like these?
adminNovember 15, 2018
Airports have a stronger connection to regional growth than high-tech industry and about the same impact as high-skill talent, writes Richard Florida. “The key lies in the way that global hub airports connect global cities.”
adminMay 1, 2018
Runaway gentrification. Concentrated poverty. Racial and economic segregation. Cities in the United States today are struggling with some of their biggest challenges since the darkest days of the 1960s and 1970s, when “white flight,” deindustrialization, and crime were at their peaks. Together, these concerns add up to what I have dubbed the New Urban Crisis.
adminFebruary 20, 2018
Elected officials and community leaders nationwide and those of Amazon HQ2 finalist cities support a non-aggression pact for Amazon’s HQ2 initiated by Richard Florida.
adminFebruary 6, 2018
Amazon’s short list of contenders for its much ballyhooed HQ2 reads like a who’s who of the most economically vibrant and dynamic cities in North America. There’s one part of Amazon’s HQ2 competition that is deeply disturbing — pitting city against city in a wasteful and economically unproductive bidding war for tax and other incentives. As one of the world’s most valuable companies, Amazon does not need — and should not be going after — taxpayer dollars that could be better used on schools, parks, transit, housing or other much needed public goods.
adminFebruary 6, 2018
The bids to host Amazon’s much ballyhooed second headquarters are in from dozens of cities across the US and Canada. With its promise of 50,000-plus jobs and billions in investment, it has been hailed as one of the biggest urban development opportunities in recent memory. However, things are not working out exactly as the ecommerce group may have hoped. Resentment among city leaders is growing at what looks like a big, well-capitalised company taking advantage of cities and their taxpayers.
adminOctober 25, 2017
Most of the world’s research and entrepreneurship is concentrated in a few megacities.Innovation is geographically uneven. The world’s 40 richest mega-regions — expansive conurbations such as the Boston–New York–Washington DC corridor, Greater London, or the passage that runs from Shanghai to Beijing — account for more than 85% of the world’s patents, and 83% of the most-cited scientists. And yet, only 18% of the world’s population lives in them.
adminOctober 19, 2017
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.
adminOctober 10, 2017
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.
adminSeptember 26, 2017
Toronto is a great city with many amazing things going for it. It’s time we make our streets safer for our people, especially the elderly and children who are at the highest risk.
adminSeptember 26, 2017
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.
adminSeptember 20, 2017
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.”
adminSeptember 20, 2017
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.
adminSeptember 8, 2017
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.
adminSeptember 1, 2017
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.
adminJuly 11, 2017
When Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines told an audience in London she was “ashamed” that President Bush came from Texas, she had no reason to think her words would cause country music stations in parts of the United States to boycott the trio’s latest album and their best-selling hit single, “Travelin’ Soldier.”
adminJune 27, 2017
Tech startups helped turn a handful of metro areas into megastars. Now they’re tearing those cities apart.
adminJune 20, 2017
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.
adminJune 14, 2017
With Trump in office, Canada will become more and more attractive to global talent.
adminDecember 14, 2016
We are undergoing several nested transformations at once that are causing incredible disruptions of the economic, social, and political order.
adminDecember 5, 2016
The best growth strategy for Ontario is to deepen the innovation and knowledge component of all industries, not just newer ones.
adminSeptember 14, 2016
Toronto may be the nation’s largest metro and the main driver of its economy, but it barely punches its own weight when it comes to the members of Canada’s Olympic team. The real standouts of this Olympic Games are smaller metros like Kingston, London, Windsor, and Guelph, which are home to far greater concentrations of Olympians than one might expect given their size.
adminAugust 22, 2016
In total medal count, Canada is faring fairly well. But by other, more meaningful measures not so much.With the help of colleagues at the University of Toronto Martin Prosperity Institute Charlotta Mellander and Patrick Adler, Richard Florida ranked each nation’s overall medal performance by their population, size of their economy, and the number of athletes on their Olympic teams.
adminAugust 16, 2016
Whoever wins the mayoral election will need more devolved powers to deal with the “plutocratization” of London.
adminApril 18, 2016
Perhaps it’s finally time for Congress to step in and stop the incentive arms race among states by invoking its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. In the meantime, GE could always do the right thing and give taxpayers back their money. For a company that wants to be seen as both cutting edge and a good corporate citizen, such a move would set an important precedent.
adminJanuary 31, 2016
The prevalence of lifestyle diseases such as type 2 diabetes is rising alarmingly in cities across the world. But the social factors driving this epidemic are complex and need our urgent attention, writes Richard Florida
adminDecember 11, 2015
To demonstrate its commitment to all these interwoven urban issues, it’s time for the government to create a new body – a “ministry of cities,” which would spearhead these interwoven initiatives while signalling to the world that this country is ready to lead the ongoing century of cities.
adminNovember 9, 2015
Newly released, our study, Canada’s Urban Competitive Agenda: Completing The Transition From Resources To A Knowledge Economy, shows that the Canadian economy is built on two distinct models with two distinct geographies. Natural resources drive the West, while knowledge and creativity propel development in the East.
adminOctober 12, 2015
A ranking of Toronto’s 140 neighborhoods—a definitive document that separates the great from the good, the average from the awful. We teamed up with the urbanists, economists, sociologists and information scientists at the Martin Prosperity Institute, a think tank at U of T’s Rotman School of Management. They crunched every stat they could drum up: census data, community health profiles, the Fraser Institute’s school report cards, the Toronto Police Service crime figures and independent studies.
adminSeptember 29, 2015
Cities are the fundamental drivers of entrepreneurial innovation and economic growth. So why does Ottawa insist on ignoring them?
adminSeptember 21, 2015
Study after study has shown that the Olympics cost cities substantially more than they bring in, and can drain local economies and government finances for years.
adminSeptember 9, 2015
The city’s growth will require innovation, creativity and investment to be sustainable.
adminAugust 5, 2015
Canada ranks fourth in the world in a new ranking of the world’s most creative and economically competitive countries. The survey, put together by my research team at the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute, places Canada behind only first-place Australia, the United States and New Zealand. This is the third version of these rankings we’ve done, and Canada is up from its seventh-place finish in 2011.
adminAugust 5, 2015
Keeping the Gardiner East up is a false solution for Toronto’s worsening traffic woes. Tearing it down, meanwhile, would create a world of opportunity.Taking down the Gardiner East is the most fiscally prudent and economically viable option available to the city, writes Richard Florida.
adminJune 10, 2015
In this op-ed Richard Florida examines the significant economic division between conservative “red states” and liberal “blue states.”
adminJanuary 5, 2015
America’s great divide is not between poor cities and affluent suburbs; its great metropolitan areas are patchworks of concentrated advantage and concentrated disadvantage that stretch across both. Some of its suburbs are thriving; others are in a steep decline. In this new, fractured and divvied metropolitan geography, the traditional juxtaposition between “urban” and suburban” has lost much of its meaning.
adminDecember 17, 2014
As the election night map reminds us, Toronto remains a deeply divided city.
Acknowledging these problems is a step in the right direction, but it will take more than words to remedy these deep divides. Richard Florida weighs in.
adminDecember 2, 2014
America’s future can be even better than its past. But the key to getting there — to reigniting innovation, spurring long run prosperity and rebuilding our sagging middle class — lies in strengthening and empowering our system of cities, our greatest asset of all.
adminDecember 2, 2014
During your Caribbean Cruise, you may dream of living in paradise, of packing it all up and escaping to the islands. While that’s a great fantasy, the reality of trying to make a living makes it less attractive. But there’s always Miami. No, really, Miami. It’s a great place to live. Just ask Richard and Rana Florida, the power couple behind the Creative Class Group.
adminNovember 14, 2014
Just as our cities and urban centers are reviving, their growing class divisions threaten their further development in new and even more vexing ways.
adminNovember 6, 2014
San Francisco is one of the most innovative and creative places on the planet. But the very forces that are making San Francisco boom are also dividing it.
adminOctober 1, 2014
The reality is that incentives play little if any role in companies’ location decisions, which are based on more fundamental factors like labor costs, the quality of the workforce, proximity to markets and access to suppliers.
adminSeptember 26, 2014
Knight Cities Challenge offers applicants a chance to share in $5 million by focusing on the question: “What’s your best idea to make cities more successful?” The contest will test the most innovative ideas in talent, opportunity and engagement in one or more of 26 Knight Foundation communities. Richard Florida writes about talent as a driver of city success.
adminSeptember 23, 2014
‘Job creators’ wring tax breaks from states at the expense of everyone else.
adminSeptember 22, 2014
Virtually all of the published research on the subject shows that most economic development incentives are a senseless waste of taxpayer money. My own analysis found no connection between incentive dollars spent per capita and such measures of economic success as wages, incomes, human capital levels or unemployment.It’s time to put an end to incentive madness once and for all.
adminSeptember 16, 2014
Since the worst of the recession, New York City has gained back the jobs it lost and then some, surpassing its all-time high of over 4 million private-sector jobs by more than 5%. This is a resurgence to be sure, but it is a disappointingly uneven one.In short, the road to opportunity remains closed for far too many New Yorkers.
adminJuly 7, 2014
America’s largest metro areas, which are currently gaining population at impressive rates, are driving much of the population growth across the nation. But that growth is the result of two very different migrations–one coming from the location choices of Americans themselves, the other shaped by where new immigrants from outside the US are heading.
adminMay 27, 2014
Richard Florida had the honor of returning to his undergraduate alma mater, Rutgers University, to address the newly minted graduates of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, who will be some of the leaders of this epochal undertaking. He shared a few of his stories about Rutgers with them, and about the importance of finding your passion and forging your own course through life. He’d like to share them with you as well.
adminMay 22, 2014
Richard Florida gives the commencement speech at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers.
adminMay 19, 2014
The Globe and Mail asks Richard Florida to pinpoint the most crucial principles for building a better city.
adminMarch 17, 2014
London has emerged from nearly a century of British decline to take its place at the very apex of global capitalism cannot be denied. In an era in which cities have become the principle organizing units of the global economy, London stands head and
shoulders above all but a handful of its urban peers.3 New investments have turned East London’s Tech City into a centre of start-up and venture capital activity. Talent has the most expensive places on the planet to live.
adminFebruary 10, 2014
The Ontario government was right to raise its minimum wage, and to introduce legislation that would peg future increases to inflation. But the new legislation should also take into account the significant differences in costs of living across the province. It should include provisions to index the minimum wage on a geographic basis.
adminFebruary 10, 2014
The mega-city has become the nerve centre of one of the world’s greatest mega- regions, a trans-border economic powerhouse that stretches from Buffalo to Quebec City. It’s important to recognize this, because mega-regions have replaced the nation state as the economic drivers of the global economy.
adminJanuary 30, 2014
The rise of the ‘creative class’ as the motor of economic growth means that countries which promote technology, talent and tolerance will do best. Will this lead to higher inequality? Not necessarily argues Richard Florida.
adminJanuary 22, 2014
Richard Florida discusses how the benefits of having and expanding Toronto’s island airport far exceed the costs.
adminDecember 17, 2013
For most of history, people lived in the same locations from birth until death; their lives revolved around their large extended families. Nowadays, Americans are much less likely to stay put for life – just as it’s less likely that they will have one job for life. In Jane Jacobs’s words, they are “federations of neighborhoods,” where virtually everyone, no matter their age, ethnicity, religion, level of education, sexual orientation or income, can find a niche where they feel welcome and comfortable.
adminDecember 4, 2013
America’s landscape has changed in fundamental ways, with powerful implications for its politics.
adminNovember 14, 2013
Rob Ford will soon be gone. But even more important than who replaces him will be how soon and how thoroughly we can remake the office of the mayor. Canada’s strictly regulated banks have shown the world that government has a key role to play in the new economy. With a new city charter and a growth model for the 21st century, Toronto can set a new standard for municipal governance.
adminNovember 13, 2013
According to new research by the Social Science Research Council’s Measure of America project, for our nation’s 5.8 million “disconnected youth”—the one in seven Americans between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four who are neither working nor enrolled in school. This cohort, whose numbers were stable for a decade, surged by 800,000 after the Great Recession and includes not only children from poor and minority families but significant numbers of white, middle-class youth as well.
adminOctober 29, 2013
Tech startups—and the venture capital on which they thrive—are breaking out of their suburban mold.
adminOctober 8, 2013
As entrepreneurs we are used to being our own one-stop-shop. Successful leaders know their own strengths and accept their weaknesses. Finding the right partners or teammates early on who can compliment your skills maximizes results and can often differentiate a successful business from a doomed one.
adminOctober 3, 2013
To kick off The Atlantic’s new special report on the past and future of the world’s global capitals, we begin with a survey of the surveys to answer that universal question: What city rules them all?
adminSeptember 26, 2013
New York, Houston, Washington, D.C.—plus college towns and the energy belt—are all up, while much of the Sun Belt is (still) down. Mapping the winners and losers since the crash.
adminSeptember 19, 2013
Creativity is at once our most precious resource and our most inexhaustible one. As anyone who has ever spent any time with children knows, every single human being is born creative; every human being is innately endowed with the ability to combine and recombine data, perceptions, materials and ideas, and devise new ways of thinking and doing. Cities are the true fonts of creativity.
adminSeptember 17, 2013
Twenty-five years ago, Pittsburgh hosted the Remaking Cities Conference, an international gathering of architects, visionaries and dignitaries, including England’s Prince Charles, the honorary co-host and keynote speaker. This year, Oct. 15-–18, 2013, Carnegie Mellon University will host the Remaking Cities Congress, with 300 invited urbanists and thought leaders who will again focus on the post-industrial city in North America and Europe. In that context, they have asked 10 thought leaders to assess the Pittsburgh region’s strengths and weaknesses and to consider what they would like to see in the Pittsburgh of the future. The package begins with a foreword from noted urbanist Richard Florida.
adminSeptember 5, 2013
Florida: With 8 million New Yorkers increasingly divided between haves and have-nots, the next mayor must ward off destructive class warfare.
adminAugust 20, 2013
As high-paying manufacturing work has declined over the past couple of decades, America’s economy has literally split in two. The large and rapidly growing mass of low-wage, low-skill service jobs in fields like food preparation, retail sales and personal care are much the same across the country and these workers have become largely stuck in place.
adminJuly 30, 2013
Richard Florida calls Pittsburgh his “base case” for the transition of a formerly industrial city to the creative economy.
adminJuly 29, 2013
Leading up to Canada Day, the Huffington Post blog team asked prominent Canadians what they would change about one aspect of its country.
adminJune 25, 2013
Long the epitome of a humane, prosperous, diverse, caring city, Toronto has at long last captured the world’s attention – but not in the way that anyone would want. Mayor Rob Ford’s latest scandal has drawn headlines in the New York Times, New York Magazine, and Vanity Fair, making him the butt of jokes on talk shows like Real Time with Bill Maher, and even on the sports network ESPN.
adminMay 20, 2013
You don’t have to be a Marxist to wonder if capitalism has run its course. Though the stock market is soaring the economic recovery is jobless, millions remain un- or underemployed, and the economies of the world are mired in slow growth. At the same time, the gap between the rich and the poor is wider that it’s been in more than a century.Before we can treat capitalism’s symptoms, we have to understand its disease. We are in the midst of the greatest, most thorough economic transformation in all of history.
adminMay 17, 2013
Considering the importance of immigration reform and the high emotions roused by the Boston bombing, it’s important to look at what we actually know about the connections (or the lack thereof) between immigration, crime and American cities.
adminMay 7, 2013
The debate over a casino in downtown Toronto is coming to a head. When all is said and done, gambling is one of the most regressive ways to generate public revenue and one of the least productive uses of money imaginable.
adminApril 17, 2013
The nascent turnround in Detroit offers a model from which other cities can learn, writes Richard Florida
adminApril 10, 2013
The dustbin of history is littered with dire predictions about the effects of technology. They frequently come to the fore in periods in which economies and societies are in the throes of sweeping transformation—like today.The key to a broadly shared prosperity lies in new social and economic arrangements that more fully engage, not ignore and waste, the creative talents of all of our people.
adminMarch 25, 2013
Mapping Toronto’s gun deaths reveals the same convergence of poverty and violence we associate with U.S. cities
adminMarch 7, 2013
While there is much to applaud about the recent revival of American industry, manufacturing is simply insufficient to help revive lagging industrial regions or power the job creation the nation so badly needs.
adminFebruary 18, 2013
A “Great Reset”—the structural change following crisis—is underway. And there are some indicators of how metropolitan areas are evolving through a time of historic upheaval.
adminFebruary 4, 2013
Richard Florida discusses President Obama’s ambitious proposal for the his second term: Create a new federal Department of Cities.
adminFebruary 4, 2013
Entrepreneurial high-tech start-ups have taken an urban turn. Nowhere is this shift more apparent than New York City, which has emerged as the nation’s second-largest center of venture capital-financed high-tech start-ups, thanks to Google’s significant presence in the old Port Authority building in Chelsea and companies ranging from Foursquare to burgeoning tech-fashion players like Rent the Runway, Warby Parker, and Gilt Groupe.
adminDecember 19, 2012
Rob Ford’s downfall is stunning – and it opens up a bigger can of worms for Toronto’s future than even his contentious mayoralty did. In the short term, there are some daunting questions: Will he leave office in two weeks as ordered for violating conflict-of-interest rules? His lawyers have filed a request for a stay pending an appeal. If Mr. Ford does step down, will city council appoint his successor or will there be a by-election? If there’s an election, will Mr. Ford’s name be “the first one on the ballot”?
adminDecember 4, 2012
As we move into a spiky world dominated by cities, the winners and losers are becoming ever clearer. Cities show dramatic geographic divides by class, and some American metros have levels of inequality comparable to those in the poorest nations in the world. And the economic crisis and Great Recession has only compounded this situation.
adminNovember 26, 2012
As one of the world’s richest cities, New York has an obligation not just to rebuild but to show the world how to rebuild the right way — smarter, greener, more resilient than ever. New York is the very definition of resilience. It has absorbed several body blows in the past decade and bounced right back — the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the financial collapse of 2008 and now Hurricane Sandy.
adminNovember 7, 2012
Richard Florida examines a new vision for Toronto. The city’s great period of growth won’t continue if we don’t enlist the best and brightest minds from Bay Street, the universities and the public sector.
adminNovember 5, 2012
Income and wealth inequality have risen to record levels in the United States. Even as cities have become the new social and economic organizing units of our increasingly spiky world, their inequalities are approaching levels found in Third World nations.
adminNovember 2, 2012
Richard Florida explores why people—especially talented Creative Class people, who have lots of choices—opt to locate in certain places? What draws them to some places and not to others? Economists and social scientists have paid a great deal of attention to the location decisions of companies, but they have virtually ignored how people, especially creative people, make the same choices.
adminNovember 2, 2012
While both presidential candidates are quick to accuse the other of stooping to class warfare, neither will admit how class-ridden America has become. It’s ironic because this widening class divide represents one of the nation’s gravest dangers.
adminSeptember 13, 2012
High-tech industries have flourished in the suburban office parks that are so ubiquitous in Silicon Valley, North Carolina’s Research Triangle and other “nerdistans.” But in recent years, high-tech has been taking a decidedly urban turn. Drawn by amenities and talent, tech firms are opting for cities.
adminSeptember 4, 2012
Over the next 50 years we will spend trillions of dollars on city building. The question is: How should we build? For many economists, urbanists and developers, the answer is simple: We should build up. But the answer is more complex than that.
adminJuly 31, 2012
Four years after the great economic and financial crash of 2008, the U.S. economy continues to sputter and Europe teeters on the brink of economic collapse. Only one advanced nation has been able to rebound to pre-crisis levels of jobs and economic output: Canada.
adminJuly 20, 2012
Excerpted with permission from The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited: 10th Anniversary Edition, by Richard Florida. The tectonic upheavals our economy is enduring are the result not just of financial shenanigans by the global One Percent, but of a deeper and more fundamental shift — the passing of the old industrial order as it gives way to the emerging Creative Economy. If we wish to build lasting prosperity we cannot rely on market forces and the Invisible Hand alone to guide us. The grand challenge of our time is to invent new institutional structures that will guide the emergence of a new economic order, while channeling its energies in ways that benefit society as a whole.
adminJuly 12, 2012
Richard Florida on how to help lower-income New Yorkers climb the city’s increasingly slippery economic ladder. Behind New York’s encouraging news is a troubling trend: Huge numbers of middle and especially lower income
people continue to struggle. To complete its transition, New York must develop strategies that enable many more of its workers to benefit from the ongoing transformation of its economy.
adminJuly 10, 2012
Excerpted with permission from The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited: 10th Anniversary Edition, by Richard Florida.
adminJuly 3, 2012
Creativity is now the main driver of America’s economy, and is more and more concentrated in and around cities. Richard Florida reports on the trend—and lists the nation’s most creative metro areas, from Boulder to metropolitan Austin to the Washington, D.C. region.
adminJune 27, 2012
This article was adapted from Richard Florida’s new book “The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited” from Basic Books. His nitial research over a decade ago identified the rise of the creative class as a key factor in America’s cities and economy overall. What has struck him since is that the effects of class are not just limited to cities, jobs and the economy. Class increasingly structures virtually every aspect of our society, culture and daily lives — from our politics and religion to where we live and how we get to work, from the kind of education we can provide for our children to our very health and happiness.
adminJune 25, 2012
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s intolerance is damaging both the city’s reputation for fairness and its business climate.
adminApril 23, 2012
Richard Florida discusses why bringing a casino to Toronto is a bad idea. He says gambling is one of the least productive economic activities imaginable — removing money from one set of pockets and putting it in another, without producing anything concrete as part of the exchange.
adminMarch 4, 2012
Richard Florida discusses how Toronto’s experience in basketball simply does not match up to the city’s growing size, wealth and stature. The outflow of basketball stars is no longer a metaphor for any larger talent drain, but an increasingly isolated and unique problem. Toronto’s sports franchises, need to start doing more of what it takes to compete on a global scale.
adminMarch 1, 2012
Richard Florida’s column in the Business Insider discussing our most important resource which is us – the creative potential that is in every human being.For perhaps the first time in human history, the further progress of our economy is inextricably tied up with the further development of our essential humanity.
adminFebruary 1, 2012
The deepening social and economic divisions that are all too apparent in London are becoming evident in our own cities as well. Richard Florida argues that there is a real danger that riots like London’s will become a feature, not a mere bug, of global cities.
adminAugust 24, 2011
Richard Florida says that many of the nation’s urban areas are booming with new restaurants, parks and condos. All these areas are great to visit, he says, offering a slice of local urban life. He shares up-and-coming neighborhoods with Larry Bleiberg for USA TODAY.
adminAugust 24, 2011
London’s riots prompted commentators on the right to blame hooliganism, while those on the left cited frustrations with the UK’s faltering economy and fiscal austerity. But the causes run deeper and are linked fundamentally to the changing structure of the world’s economy. They are problems many of our global cities will soon face.
adminAugust 18, 2011
US crime levels have fallen to their lowest reported levels in nearly half a century despite major unemployment and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Even more remarkably, the drop was steepest in America’s big cities – which are still popularly believed to be cauldrons of criminality. The question is: why?
adminJuly 1, 2011
Richard Florida’s column in The New York Times on the widening gap between the D.C. economy, with its robust housing and job markets, and the rest of America. What’s the key?
adminJune 3, 2011
Looking to meet someone to start the year off right? Richard Florida crunches the numbers for the best cities in America for single men and women to be this New Year’s Eve.
adminJanuary 3, 2011
Every kid hopes for a white Christmas with lots of gifts, but some cities are more likely to have it. Richard Florida on the 20 best cities to be a kid on Christmas morning.
adminDecember 22, 2010
The pundits say Tuesday’s election was a repudiation of Obama’s handling of the recession, but Richard Florida says the data show something entirely different.
adminNovember 5, 2010
You may have your costume already picked out, but how does your city rate for celebrating Halloween? Richard Florida crunched the numbers for the ultimate list of the best cities to collect candy.
adminOctober 28, 2010
From California to Virginia, Richard Florida ranks the most innovative states in the country to find out where good ideas are generating economic growth.
adminOctober 21, 2010
Barcelona has always been as commercial as it is creative. The city of Gaudi and Miro and the young Picasso is also a center of textile, chemical, pharmaceutical, and automotive manufacturing, publishing, finance, telecommunications and information technology, of technological innovation and entrepreneurship. It’s this combination that the city and region can build on to survive and prosper through the economic crisis and Great Reset.
adminOctober 13, 2010
Remaking our sprawling suburbs, with their enormous footprints, shoddy construction, hastily put up infrastructure, and dying malls, is shaping up to be the biggest urban revitalization challenge of modern times—far larger in scale, scope and cost than the revitalization of our inner cities.
adminOctober 11, 2010
Nearly one in four American homeowners are now underwater on their mortgage. Richard Florida crunches the numbers to find the 20 cities with the biggest debt and housing problems.
adminAugust 31, 2010
Where do the biggest brainiacs in America live? Richard Florida crunches the numbers to figure out the smartest cities in the country.
adminAugust 29, 2010
Wondering where the jobs of the future are going to be? Richard Florida crunched the numbers to create a list of the American cities with the fastest-growing job markets, from New York to Durham to Bethesda.
adminAugust 13, 2010
The fiscal and monetary fixes that have helped mature industrial economies like the United States get back on their feet since the Great Depression are not going to make the difference this time. Mortgage interest tax credits and massive highway investments are artifacts of our outmoded industrial age; in fact, our whole housing-auto complex is superannuated.
adminAugust 12, 2010
Which cities have the most immigrants and foreign born citizens in America? Richard Florida and his team crunch the numbers to come up with a surprising list and explore why these cities benefit from high immigrant populations.
adminAugust 4, 2010
From the obvious (San Francisco) to the surprising (Columbus), Richard Florida and Gary Gates crunched the numbers to come up with the gayest cities in the country.
adminJuly 20, 2010
Wondering where you earn the highest incomes? Richard Florida and his team have put together the definitive list of American’s 20 highest earning cities.
adminJuly 14, 2010
Canada’s economy is badly in need of significant structural changes. Without the pressure of a crisis, there’s a real danger that we’ll settle for complacency, instead.
adminJuly 7, 2010
More and more workers are plugging in and taking meetings at places, like Starbucks, that aren’t home or the office. Richard Florida on why this trend will change our business world.
adminJuly 7, 2010
Periods of crisis and creative destruction such as the current one are when new categories of jobs are created as old categories of jobs are destroyed. The key to a sustained recovery is to turn as many of these – as well as existing lower-paying jobs – into better, family-supporting jobs.
adminJuly 6, 2010
People used to follow the jobs; they moved where the company sent them. But today, people often pick a place to live first and then look for work. Today, it may be where we live, rather than who’s employing us at the moment, that attaches us to our work and careers.
adminJune 28, 2010
Richard Florida says owning a home may actually be a drawback given the economic flexibility required to power long-lasting recovery. He and his colleagues tracked homeownership levels across U.S. cities and regions to see how they correlate to other measurable demographic and economic factors.
adminJune 16, 2010
There’s no question that this year’s 1.6 million college graduates are entering the job market during one of America’s worst economic crises. But this does not mean that college grads are facing unprecedented kinds of trouble.
adminJune 9, 2010
The Class of 2010 is heading into the real world but where should they live? Urban guru Richard Florida and his team find the best cities for the young and ambitious.
adminMay 26, 2010
Richard Florida examines the challenges Toronto and Canada face, especially in light of how the tectonic economic events of the past 18 months are recasting the role of cities and regions worldwide.
adminMay 24, 2010
Local entrepreneurship, arts and cultural industries … have become the core stuff of economic development, writes Richard Florida in The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity. Please see the excerpt.
adminMay 15, 2010
Richard Florida examines how in a broader creative sector, the United States will add 10 million jobs over the next decade. While the U.S. economy will add more than one million computer and engineering jobs, health care and education are expected to generate more than three times as many jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
adminMay 10, 2010
Richard Florida takes a look at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. When you account for population size, medal count reveals a crude measure of what’s behind national athletic excellence.
adminFebruary 26, 2010
South Korea has clawed its way out of poverty by becoming a manufacturing powerhouse. But to stay a world-class economy will require the country to draw on a different set of skills. In the future, it will be the ability to create—as distinct from the ability to produce—that will foster innovation, and with it, sustainable economic growth. Whether it is new ideas, new business models, new cultural forms, new technologies, or new industries, it is creative capital that will drive the world economy. The ability to harness creativity will be the biggest challenge, as well as the biggest opportunity, for South Korea.
adminFebruary 23, 2010
Why are Americans becoming less nomadic? Greater labor mobility helps the economy, but are there other kinds of effects — negative or positive — related to a more rooted population? Is there an upside to more Americans staying closer to their hometowns?
adminJanuary 12, 2010
Richard Florida’s take on “How Cities Renew” in relation to his recent trip to Abu Dhabi, his observations on the city and its people.
adminAugust 14, 2009
Today a highly significant demographic realignment is at work: the mass relocation of highly skilled, highly educated, and highly paid people to a relatively small number of metropolitan regions, and corresponding exodus of traditional lower- and middle-class people from those same places.
adminJuly 20, 2009
The concentration of bohemians and gays consistently have a staggering impact on housing values.
adminJuly 20, 2009
Richard Florida on how members of Generation Y are picking their new hometowns as they graduate from college and enter the workforce during a recession.
adminJune 10, 2009
Mark Thoma points to San Francisco Fed research on the lasting effects of the past decade’s run-up in consumer debt and current “deleveraging” on the U.S. economy and American consumers.
adminMay 22, 2009
This spring’s 2.3 million newly minted college grads are understandably worried about their economic future. So where are this year’s college grads heading? A recent survey lists the best places for college grads to launch their careers.
adminMay 18, 2009
Richard Florida’s research on mega-regions provides a potentially useful framework for thinking about where and how to invest in a national high-speed rail system.
adminMay 15, 2009
Announcement of Richard Florida’s addition to the Atlantic’s team of correspondents and bloggers.
adminMay 15, 2009
Transportation infrastructure plays a big role in economic development by opening up new spaces and by allowing for the redevelopment of old spaces in more intensive ways.
adminMay 15, 2009
Richard Florida has a new blog on the Atlantic website. His first post is about a new Pew poll on American consumption patterns that Felix Salmon and the Economist and others have commented on.
adminMay 15, 2009
The main cause of the new foreclosure wave appears tied more to the real economy than to the financial mess.
adminMay 15, 2009
Will Wilkinson, a research fellow at Washington’s Cato Institute wrote this terrific essay on Toronto’s largely successful experiment in immigration – its global-straddling ethnic mosaic.
adminMay 8, 2009
Homeownership has been a central tenet of a ‘richer and fuller life’ in the USA, but foreclosures are severely testing this model. A possible solution: Rent these homes as a first step toward a more affordable, flexible housing system.
adminMarch 10, 2009
Less than a month after taking office, the Obama administration unveiled its massive stimulus package aimed at recharging the lagging American economy – a staggering three-quarters of a trillion dollars. As the Harper administration rushes to dole out a $40-billion stimulus of its own, it’s high time to ask a simple question: Are we stimulating the right things?
adminMarch 1, 2009
The crash of 2008 continues to reverberate loudly nationwide—destroying jobs, bankrupting businesses, and displacing homeowners. But already, it has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America’s economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?
adminFebruary 11, 2009
As part of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto, Richard Florida and Roger Martin delivered a report called “Ontario in the Creative Age,” commissioned by Premier Dalton McGuinty contemplating today’s challenge of moving from jobs oriented to routine to jobs that hinge on creativity.
adminFebruary 11, 2009
Richard Florida visits Russia this month and discusses the country’s push to develop more of a market-based economy, having abandoned its state-run economy to the historical dustbin as well as drawing upon the similarities between the youth of both Russia and the U.S.
adminDecember 28, 2008
Restarting economic growth this time around will require a new social and economic framework that is in line with the new idea-driven economy.
adminDecember 1, 2008
Richard Florida and James Milay explore the the effects if a recession hits Canada suggesting that the continuing shift in Canada’s economy from traditional blue-collar, working-class jobs to creative and service jobs will dampen the effects of job losses over all, but those in the working class will feel the pain much more.
adminNovember 24, 2008
Richard Florida warns of an extended period of volatility and conflict in American politics.
adminNovember 2, 2008
Richard Florida’s take on Montreal and it’s position amidst the current economic storm.
adminOctober 18, 2008
Florida’s public policy-makers must recognize that mega-regions are the engines of the newglobal economy. They must support Florida’s mega — the 15th largest in the world.
adminSeptember 8, 2008
Richard Florida suggests that the big sort poses huge implications for US economic competitiveness and a wide range of domestic economic and social issues.
adminJuly 25, 2008
A popular economic development guru believes that a region’s tolerance and diversity, its quality of life and its support for what he describes as the “creative class” pave the way for economic and population growth. According to Richard Florida: “The distinguishing characteristic of the creative class is that its members engage in work whose function is to ‘create meaningful new forms.’ “
adminJuly 14, 2008
… but not for the reasons you think. One of the few things increasing as fast as the price of oil lately has been the amount of commentary linking higher energy costs to the death of suburbia. Clearly, higher gas prices have affected where people want – or can afford – to live. Just as the demand for SUVs plummets and consumers have finally begun to see the point of hybrids, people are turning away from sprawling exurbs toward urban neighbourhoods and inner suburbs.
adminJuly 12, 2008
What matters now is quality of place, defined as the intersection of three key elements of our cities: what’s there, who’s there and what’s going on.
adminJune 16, 2008
A mega-region needs to think and act like a mega-region, not like a bunch of separate cities with empty space between them.
adminJune 15, 2008
Fareed Zakaria: The end result will be a “landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in until now – one defined and directed from many places and by many peoples.”
adminJune 1, 2008
“…we are experiencing modern history’s third great power shift, after the rise of the West from the 15th century on and then the rise of the U.S. in the 19th century.”
adminJune 1, 2008
Leaders exploring new approaches to everything from education, crime and smoking bans to environment and climate change – even bringing modern management techniques to government. Their efforts and those of their peers have made their jurisdictions safer, smarter, greener, more aesthetic, more efficient, wealthier and more globally competitive.
adminMay 31, 2008
WE ARE ALL familiar with the rough geography of the United States — the slash of the Rocky Mountains between two great coastlines, the bulge of Maine, the Florida peninsula, the Great Lakes, set in the heartland. But what about the country’s psychogeography?
adminMay 14, 2008
The most overlooked — but most important — element of my theory and of the creative economy itself is that every human being is creative.
adminMay 12, 2008
“The diversity, of whatever kind, that is generated by cities rests on the fact that in cities so many people are so close together, and among them contain so many different tastes, skills, needs, supplies, and bees in their bonnets.”
adminMay 12, 2008
From where I sit, Philadelphia’s future looks very bright. Trust me: I know all about the issues that confront the city. I grew up in New Jersey, went to Rutgers, and spent much of my teens and 20s hanging out in Center City. I’ve seen the dark days and watched the recovery.
adminMay 10, 2008
WE ARE ALL familiar with the rough geography of the United States – the slash of the Rocky Mountains between two great coastlines, the bulge of Maine, the Florida peninsula, the Great Lakes, set in the heartland. But what about the country’s psychogeography?
adminMay 5, 2008
Over the past decade or so, greater Portland has developed a well-deserved reputation as one of the nation’s very best places to live.
adminApril 28, 2008
When people talk about economic competitiveness, the focus tends to be on nation states. In the 1980s, many were obsessed with the rise of Japan. Today, our gaze has shifted to the phenomenal growth of Brazil, Russia, India and China. But this focus on nations is off the mark.
adminApril 12, 2008
WHICH OF THESE two decisions do you think has a bigger impact on someone’s life: finding the right job, or finding the right significant other? No one’s going to argue with the notion that where you live affects your employment prospects. But the place you call home has a lot to do with your chances of finding the right partner as well. Having an enticing “mating market” matters as much or more than a vibrant labor market.
adminApril 9, 2008
“The party that can bring together the working class and the creative class is likely to build a lasting majority”
adminApril 6, 2008
For the past two weeks, all eyes have focused on Barack Obama and race. A couple of weeks ago, it was Hillary Clinton’s gender. A month before that, it was all about the Obama surge among young voters.
adminMarch 29, 2008
For decades we’ve heard that new transport and communication technologies – from the street car to the Internet – would make geography and place irrelevant…
adminMarch 9, 2008
The old model of a university pumping out research results and educated students, or even commercial innovations and start-ups, are no longer sufficient. Business and political leadership have taken technology seriously; now, they must do the same with talent and tolerance. The places that don’t will find that the discoveries and talent they produce will continue to migrate away.
adminFebruary 9, 2008
This is the first in a series of articles in which The Globe and Mail visits an iconic Toronto neighbourhood or event with Richard Florida.
adminNovember 11, 2007
Richard Florida on his adopted city’s central role in a new world order built not around nations but around mega-regions.
adminNovember 7, 2007