Safford vs. Florida: The Shoot-Out

Tell us how you really feel, Sean.

You may remember Sean Safford's presentation on community networks at the CEOs for Cities meeting in Chicago in 2007.  Since then Sean's book, Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save Youngstown, has been published, explaining why loosely networked communities are more resilient than those that are tightly networked.

In a blog post at Rust Belt Bloggers, Sean attacks Richard Florida and his research on the creative class.  Sean complains that Richard implies causation when, in Sean't view, there is none.

"Places that are more creative are more prosperous. So, increase gay, happy, bohemian… get more prosperous? This is total bunk," writes Sean.

"What is the counter-factual? It could be that creative people flock to places where there is excess wealth to support and pay premiums for their creativity. Creativity, in other words, is a by-product of wealth, not the driver of it. What about the link between gay people or happiness and creativity? It could be that happy gay people make the rest of the world more creative. Or, it could be that gay people are more mobile than straight people (no kids, a subset at least who feel they need to move away from home to live openly). So gay people move to where they are more likely to be happy. What makes people happy? Wealth, prosperity. Professional people and creative people do the same. Again, happiness is a by-product of the things that make us creative and prosperous; they are correlated, but not causal.

"So, the causal link between gay population, happiness and creativity isn’t really clear. But Florida doesn’t actually make an argument about the relationship between these things. Instead, he just lets people draw their own conclusions."

Even for those who support Richard or have been inspired by him (and i count myself among them), Sean's blog is important reading, if only to check their own assumptions and projections of Richard's research and its meaning.  Much of the problem Sean points to is caused (or at minimum made worse) by those who felt themselves undervalued and left out of the economic development equation and assumed more causality than Richard's research showed.  Even though Richard's research has been used to justify a lot of ridiculous strategies (no fault of Richard's), he opened up an important new line of thinking for urban leaders.  In fact, I would argue that Richard did more to convince urban leaders that the knowledge economy was real and inevitable than most of his peers.

  

Ian David Moss, May 6, 2009

Interesting stuff. I'm doing an independent study on public policy and the arts at the moment, and wrote a lengthy blog post discussing the strengths and weaknesses of <i>The Rise of the Creative Class</i> <a href="http://createquity.blogspot.com/2009/04/deconstructing-richard-florida.html">here</a>. Richard was kind enough to <a href="http://createquity.blogspot.com/2009/05/richard-florida-responds.html">respond</a>, sending me several research papers that he claims answer some of the methodological issues I raised (though I suspect the correlation vs. causation question that Sean talks about is still rather vexed). I'm reviewing them this week and will post what I find in a few days.

Link: http://createquity.blogspot.com

Ella, June 27, 2009

Wow, Safford sounds like he has a chip on his shoulder. All I can say is that when I do math I do it via the musical training I had as a child. When I need to present info in a business meeting, I try to make it as visual as possible. It holds my audience's attention better. It sounds like Safford just wants data to back up Florida's findings. If that's the case, then get on it! Craft a study! Prove it right, prove it wrong. At the end of the day, trust your gut. I, for one, would wither and die in a non-creative environment. But that's just me.

Name*Name*Florida Surfer, July 24, 2010

"So, the causal link between gay population, happiness and creativity isn’t really clear. But Florida doesn’t actually make an argument about the relationship between these things. Instead, he just lets people draw their own conclusions." That is a very interesting way of throwing the actual interpretation back on the reader. BRAVO!

Link: http://www.surf-cam.net/

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