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Pittsburgh,
the tired old titan of America’s
industrial age, shed 150,000 jobs in the 1980s.
Determined to reinvent the economy, city leaders set
about building the institutions of the emerging
high-tech era. They established a technology
council, business incubators and venture funds. They
supported tech-transfer initiatives to commercialize
the research coming out of
Carnegie
Mellon
University
and the
University
of Pittsburgh.
And they created the Ben Franklin Partnership to
link emerging technology companies with capital,
management and R&D resources.
Carnegie Mellon has one
of the top three software-computer science schools
in the nation. According to Richard Florida, a
Carnegie Mellon professor of economic development
who spoke recently in
Richmond,
the thinking went like this: “If we could incubate
high-tech companies from the university, supply them
capital and provide them all the other support they
needed, we could create new growth companies.”
In
sum, the civic leaders of
Pittsburgh
put into place – 10 to 15 years ago -- the
programs that Virginians today see as essential to
their own economic success.
Pittsburgh's
economic-development theory was state of the art.
There was just one problem. It didn’t work.
Carnegie Mellon grads, says Florida,
have launched countless companies -- Sun
Microsystems, Red Hat and Lycos, to name just a few.
But they’re all located somewhere else.
“You’ll see Carnegie Mellon alumni everywhere
– except in Pittsburgh.”
While
researching his path-breaking book, “The
Rise of the Creative Class,”
Florida
discovered a simple truth. A generation ago, people
moved to where the jobs were. Today, jobs move to
where the people are. Pittsburgh,
a conservative city dominated by old-economy blue
bloods, simply was not enticing to Carnegie Mellon
graduates. Alumni moved to more exciting regions,
from
Boston
to
the Silicon
Valley.
Capital and job creation followed them.
The
implications for economic development are momentous.
In the old model, economic developers induce
companies with financial incentives to invest bricks
and mortar in their region. In the new model, regions
prosper by making themselves attractive to members
of the so-called “creative class” – the
artists, educators, intellectuals, techies,
professionals and high-level managers who fuel
cultural, technological and entrepreneurial
creativity. For advanced economies, creativity is
the only sustainable source of competitive advantage
in a global economy and the only sustainable source
of prosperity.
Florida
drove home this message to the Greater Richmond
Chamber of Commerce and, again, at the Virginia
Commonwealth
University
engineering school. His audience included top
political, civic and educational leaders of the
Richmond
area. Gov. Mark R.
Warner tore himself away from General Assembly
business to attend, as did
Secretary of Commerce and Trade Michael Schewel. Florida
gave a mesmerizing performance, and his message
resonated with many in the audience.
Richmond
has received its wake-up call. The rest of Virginia
should pay heed as well. The
Pittsburgh
prof’s critique of reigning economic-development
orthodoxy applies to every
community in Virginia,
including even the tech corridors of Northern
Virginia.
Sure, says Florida,
Virginia
should encourage companies to relocate here. By all
means, Virginia
needs to build the infrastructure of the Knowledge
Economy, from broadband to universities. But regions
also need to start thinking how to develop, retain
and attract members of the creative class.
Florida
tendered few prescriptions for
Richmond,
much less Virginia’s
other cities or its hard-pressed rural areas, and he
left no illusions that the job would be easy. Members of the creative class gravitate to cities
which practice openness, tolerance and diversity. As
a practical matter, that means cities which embrace
gays, immigrants, eccentrics, geeks, freaks and
weirdos. It is not a vision of society that Virginia,
with its strong strain of fundamentalist politics,
would readily adopt. It is difficult to imagine
Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson swallowing the idea
that making Lynchburg and Virginia Beach hospitable
to gays and bohemians would, in the long run, create
a more creative and dynamic economy.
But
transforming a region into a creative center is not
impossible, even in the Bible Belt, as demonstrated
by Atlanta,
Austin
and the Research Triangle. Richmond
and Virginia,
as
Florida
observed from his brief stay here, have many of the
assets that creative people are looking for. The Old
Dominion is widely perceived as a state of great
beauty, he says. Its universities are highly
regarded. And Richmond
possesses a wealth of historic architecture and
highly livable urban areas.
There
is no formula for building a hip, cool,
creative-class city, but
Florida
does offer some general advice. First, don’t make
mistakes. Stop sending off signals that reinforce
negative stereotypes of, say, a city that is still
fighting the Civil War. Likewise, don’t squander
precious capital on assets, such as athletic
stadiums and convention centers, which have little
appeal to members of the creative class. Second,
invest in the amenities and build the institutions
that make the city more
attractive to creative
people.
Cities
typically measure their cultural vitality by the
size of their SOBs, Florida
quips. SOB is his short-hand for the Symphony, Opera
and Ballet, the triad of high culture. Those
artistic institutions appealed to an older
generation, but Baby Boomers and later generations
aren’t happy sitting and watching passively. They
like street life. They want to boogie. The artistic
vitality of a community may be better gauged by the
number of nightclubs, bars and music festivals. Instead of pouring money into the
traditional cultural institutions, Florida
suggests, set up “creativity
funds” to invest in
local artists.
Similarly,
many communities hunger for major league ball teams
as a confirmation that they have made the big
leagues themselves. But creative-class Baby Boomers
would rather participate in sports than sit in the
stands as spectators. Aspiring creative centers,
says
Florida,
might be better advised to invest in dirt-bike
trails, roller-blading paths and rock-climbing
walls.
Increasingly,
Florida
suggests, the character of a region will be shaped
by the universities in its midst. His latest
research has led him to conclude that universities
may play a deeper role in a region’s development
than commonly acknowledged. Universities have always
been recognized as a source of stable employment, as
opposed to corporations which come and
go, and
everyone values them as generators of new
technology. But they play other crucial roles.
Colleges and universities develop and recruit
talent. Often, they are marked by greater ethnic
diversity than the community around them. And their
culture breeds openness and tolerance. Says
Florida:
“Universities are open to very strange people.”
Universities
and communities thrive when they act as players in a
creative ecosystem.
Florida
urges communities to tear down the visible and
invisible barriers that separate town from gown. He pointed
to the Savanna
College
of Art & Design as an exemplar: Rather than
building large, institutional-
looking buildings as
it expanded, the College retrofitted existing
buildings – old stores, lofts and warehouses. The
result is a college that appears to be physically
integrated into the community, not separate from it.
Whatever
path Richmond
follows,
Florida
cautioned, it shouldn’t be decided by a top-down
process. The rich white guys who run things don’t
have a clue what young people are looking for. One
good place to start is talking to college students.
Some of their ideas may be idealistic and naïve,
but they know one thing better than anyone else:
They know what they want out of life. They know what it would take to make them
stay in Richmond.
Talk
to immigrants. Find out what it would take to
encourage more immigrants to move to the region.
Talk to minorities. Southern regions like Atlanta
and Research Triangle lead the country in
attracting educated African Americans. Could
Richmond
replicate their success? “Open up the dialogue,”
says Florida.
“Expand the stakeholder set.”
Finally,
Florida
advises, Richmond should market itself not merely as a place to do
business but as a place to live. Austin,
though once dominated by good-old-boy Texans in
cowboy hats, has done a great job of promoting
itself as a home of the eccentric and weird.
“Anybody, no matter how bizarre, can find a place
there,” he says. In a similar vein, Pittsburgh
now is trying to re-brand itself around one of its
native sons, artist Andy Warhol.
Most
of
Florida’s
suggestions touch upon topics, quite frankly, that
Richmonders have never thought about before. There
are no blueprints for transforming a region into a
center of creativity.
Richmond
certainly doesn’t want to become like
Boston
or San Francisco
and probably couldn’t even if it
tried.
Richmond has to figure out its future on its own.
The time to
launch the dialogue is now. It could take years to fashion a vision that fits comfortably
with Richmond’s
unique heritage and conservative values of its inhabitants.
Other regions are confronting the same challenges
and groping for their own solutions. Some, like
Toronto,
are actively reinventing themselves with Florida's
guidance.
Creativity is the main competitive
advantage of U.S. cities, but it's a fragile one. If
Richmond focuses on the wrong goals, it will easily
be bypassed as a center of creativity. The path it chooses will affect its competitiveness well into
the 21st century.
--
February
3, 2003
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