Don't Ignore The 'Procreative' Class
Challenging some of the ideas in Richard Florida's "The Rise of The Creative Class," a recent article suggests that ignoring the "Procreative Class" -- middle- and working-class families -- can hurt cities too.
"Florida argues that cities do well to recruit those sundry scientists, engineers, academics, designers, architects, entertainers, actors, rock and rollers, jugglers and, of course, the 'thought leadership' that comprise the 'creative class.'
There is an oddly unexplored flaw in Florida's thesis: He does not take into account the possibility that a city might "tip," that it just might attract one creative person too many. The tipping point is not hard to gauge. I refer the reader here to the 'Mime Index.' When the first mime artist shows up on a city street, you know that the creative class has officially reached critical mass, and from then on bad things will begin to happen."
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The Cities' Cultural Wealth
First off, it would probably help readers to know that the author of this is coming from an explicitly right wing Christian perspective (look at the home page of the web publication). That's fine but it helps explain why he's more interested in good old left-bashing than he is in really looking at the role of different social groups in American cities. It may also explain why he completely ignores the role of immigrant families (and to some extent second generation families), which are bringing thousands of children to American urban neighborhoods and public school systems. Are we interested in the Asian and Latino "procreative class?"
It's a shame because there is a real discussion to be had about the role of various groups in the city. Different groups bring different needs and different strengths. They use parks differently. Etc.
That discussion has to be grounded in a realistic understanding of the American capitalist housing market, which sorts people by various characteristics. Many American cities have single and childless people (and--gasp--gay people, whom our author can't stand) near their centers, families with children further out. Sometimes those further out families are within moe expansive city limits--as in New York, sometimes they're outside of more restrictive ones--as in San Francisco. Statistics about children per capita in a city don't tell you very much, especially since there is huge variation neighborhood to neighborhood.
Maybe somebody whose interest is urbanism rather than cultural warfare will write about this topic, and we'll be able to have a more useful discussion.
I agree with your comments
I agree with your comments entirely. Florida's work does deserve some more in-depth criticism, but this commentary approaches it from a tangential perspective (ie. culture wars) rather than an urbanist/community development standpoint.
I have also taken issue with Florida's diversity measurement. It has been my observation that the presence of openly gay residents signals only a certain type of tolerance (though tolerance nonetheless). Openly gay couples are disproportionatley white and educated and may, in fact, have much more in common with a gentrifying neighborhood's residents than, say, a heterosexual, working class African-American couple with 4 kids. I am of course not saying that people of other backgrounds are not as likely to BE gay, only that being openly so is less prevalent in minority communities. To be fair to Florida, perhaps it is the measurement that needs to be adjusted and not necessarily the concept. Diversity is a, well, diverse concept. It encompasses age, marital status, language, ethnicity, children/no children, education, political leanings, and much more. I think you are right in that a more productive way of thinking is to identify the strengths and needs different groups bring to the urban setting and how their presence makes the place richer, more complex and, hopefully, more stable.
Interestingly, I just returned from Pittsburgh, where Florida begins his book in wondering why that City has failed to retain its young, bright "creative" graduates. What I saw there, however, was a city undergoing a tremendous, grass-roots resurgence. I visited with some CDCs doing excellent work in finding creative ways to reinvent an urban core that is still recovering from the changes brought on by mill closures in the 1970s. In many cases, this was facilitated by incentives given to artists and other creative entities (schools, for example) to reoccupy abandoned or blighted areas and to act a catalyst for improving life for the existing residents. Pittsburgh has a proud and palpable working class sensibility and it struck me that many of the "creative" groups working in places like Friendship and Penn Avenue embrace this attribute as an important facet of local culture. Though it was true, in my cursory observation, that there were many openly gay residents (which is probably telling us something important - but what?), I am hesitant to use this as the sole indicator of "diversity toerance" in a city that is almost 30 percent African American.