The Ottawa Citizen - June 18, 2006

The case for/against 'cool' cities

 Take two urban gurus, two disparate literary visions and you get an uncertain future

By Doug Fischer

n the rarified world of city planners it was the equivalent of Frazier vs. Ali, Senators vs. Leafs.

At each podium an urban guru, both bestselling authors, and both brash, articulate academics commanding hefty speaking fees and loyal followings.

For about a year, Richard Florida and Joel Kotkin had been criss-crossing North America and Europe, their physical paths coming perilously close a dozen times, the trajectories of their competing theories colliding at the nexus of the debate over the future of cities.

Little wonder that when they finally met face-to-face last summer in Colorado to debate their ideas, an urban planning magazine couldn't resist billing the encounter as "The Battle of the Urbanerds: Uncaged at Last."

Even Denver's mayor, John Hickenlooper, got swept up in the fight spirit by starting his introduction of the speakers with his best ring-announcer imitation: "In that corner, from Los Angeles, California, Jo-o-o-o-el Kotkin ... "

Sadly, like many highly anticipated events, the debate was a disappointment for those expecting fireworks, or even a vigorous exchange of ideas. The two men spent their hour on stage praising each other's research and looking for common ground.

But anyone who'd been paying attention to their nasty jousting in the media wasn't buying it.

Florida and Kotkin are not only the authors of the two most talked-about books in decades on the future of cities, they are very much two sides of the same coin.

Given the sexy, media-friendly nature of Florida's thesis -- not to mention his catchy name -- it's hardly surprising the thirtysomething economics professor at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University has generated the most buzz.

In his wildly popular Rise of the Creative Class, Florida argues that cities that attract gays, bohemians and ethnic minorities are the new economic powerhouses because they are also the places where creative workers -- the scientists, technogeeks and entrepreneurs who start and staff innovative, fast-growing companies -- want to live.

The most contentious part of Florida's work is a series of indexes he's designed to measure a city's tolerance of gays, minorities and artists and then gauge its chances for economic success.

His rankings place San Francisco, Austin, Boston, San Diego and Seattle as the top five creative cities in the U.S., and Louisville, Buffalo, Las Vegas, Norfolk and Memphis as the bottom.

Florida isn't saying gays and bohemians create growth. Rather, he believes their presence signals the existence of critical factors that lead to growth.

"Gays are the canaries of the creative economy," he wrote last year. "Where gays live, you will inevitably find a community that has the underlying preconditions that attract the creative class of people."

Because much of the attention has focused on Florida's infamous indexes, the central message of his book -- that cities must move away from funding corporate tax breaks and expensive white elephants like sports stadiums designed to stimulate the economy -- has been largely overlooked.

Florida argues instead that cities need to support grassroots innovation and small-scale creativity, conditions that have generated some of the biggest business success stories of the past quarter century.

Politicians have embraced his ideas with enthusiasm. In a bid to lure university graduates to her depressed blue-collar state, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm launched a "cool cities" campaign by donning a pair of sunglasses and promising that Detroit's future would be "so hip you will have to wear shades to live there."

Mayors across the U.S. are offering incentives to those setting up hip clubs and restaurants, underwriting artists' enclaves and festivals and rezoning old industrial areas to pave the way for new downtown housing and cool businesses.

But Florida has attracted as many detractors as supporters, many of whom, including Kotkin, consider his theories simplistic and misdirected.

The author of the award-winning The City: A Global History and a lecturer at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Kotkin is skeptical of Florida's contention that the creative class makes up 30 per cent of the workforce.

In a near sacrilege, Kotkin argues it is the suburbs that are actually driving economic growth because of their high birth rates, low taxes and family-friendly environments.

"Cities do not become successful because they are hip and cool, but it is so much easier to put $2 million into downtown lofts and ... sucker some newspaper reporter into writing about them and get people to move into them," he said last year. "Meanwhile, nothing has really changed."

According to Kotkin, real change occurs when a city establishes suburbs that are not defined by sprawl but a sense of community. He wants village-like suburbs that combine parks, restaurants and some retail within walking distance of single-family homes.

"Owning a home is the dream of most young families," he contends. "Even in Paris, London and Tokyo, people are moving increasingly into the suburbs where they can afford that dream."

Meanwhile, he says, the inner cores of the cities favored by Florida and his disciples are losing population. "There is so much hype ... it's unbelievable how city officials and the media are accepting this stuff without looking at the data."

Kotkin's book is much more than a response to Florida's work. It is a succinct, elegant 3,500-year history of cities -- what he calls "humankind's single greatest creation" -- from Mesopotamia to today's post-industrial suburban sprawls.

But he also uses the book to argue forcefully that all of the world's great creative cities -- Athens, Alexandria, Venice, New York, London -- emerged from vigorous mercantile economies, not the reverse.

In Kotkin's view, there are three attributes that make a great city: sacred places (these could be parks, forests, great buildings), safety and a solid economy.

"To be successful and hold onto its people, a city needs to create a sense of order and consistency," he says. "People need a city where they can make a living, feel secure and a place they feel proud to live."

San Jose, which created a bustling, lively city around the high-tech industry, is one such place, he says. Denver is another.

Whatever the case, Florida appears to have the momentum for the time, likely the result of the media appeal of his ideas. But both men say they intend to engage in the debate, through books, lectures, research and interviews, for the long haul.

To paraphrase the old sports cliche, if you can't beat 'em in the alley, beat 'em in the media.

 

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