Blog
Richard Florida: The View from Here
Posted by Carol Coletta on September 14, 2008 |
I spoke with Richard Florida a couple of weeks ago about his books and his ideas. A few excerpts:
"From a public policy point of view, we had better figure out how we're going to cope with an increasingly unequal world -- the rising gap between rich and poor, the super rich and the rest of us. As the Chinese students said to me, "Richard, if you think this issue is big in the U.S., I come from Shanghai. Even though I am in my middle 20s, I live better than you do. I have a better lifestyle as a young consultant than you do or your peers do in academia. But the people at the outskirts of Shanghai live in pre-civilized conditions.
"If we don't address the spikiness by helping second- and third-tier cities cope, the political ramifications of this might be something we don't like.
"We don't want to make the world less spiky by chopping down the peaks. We want to make sure the valleys are successful enough that they become legitimate and reasonable and exciting places."