Editor’s note: This is the third in a periodic series about regional issues in the 2005 Colorado College State of the Rockies Report Card.
Urban scholar Richard Florida, author of “The Rise of the Creative Class and How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure and Everyday Life,” has popularized the theory that cities have thrived in recent years by attracting and retaining “creative” workers, folks employed in everything from computer software design to the arts and music industries.
Where does the West fit in the great debate over the “creative class” and the revitalization of center cities?
Florida’s theory of regional economic growth argues that growth is driven by such creative people who prefer, and choose to live in, places that are diverse, tolerant and open to new ideas. Diversity, in turn, increases the odds that a place will attract different types of creative people with different skill sets and ideas. Greater and more diverse concentrations of creative people ultimately lead to higher rates of innovation, business formation, job generation and economic growth.
His theories have found favor with some big-city mayors, including Denver’s John Hickenlooper, and other advocates of center-city revival. But another scholar, Joel Kotkin, author of “The City: A Global History,” has a different take on the question.
Kotkin claims that any urban revival strategy based principally on being “hip” will ultimately fail because economic growth is shifting to less fashionable but more livable locales, like the suburbs and Sunbelt metropolises.
For Kotkin, catchphrases like “family friendly” and “affordable” supplant Florida’s “bohemian” and “tolerant” conditions for economic growth.
But is there really a reason to argue here? Results from Colorado College’s 2005 State of the Rockies Report Card indicate that both scholars seem to have much to contribute.
By replicating Florida’s creativity measurements of diversity, innovation, talent and creativity for all major towns and cities within the metropolitan areas of the Rocky Mountain West, the Report Card finds that major earning discrepancies do in fact exist between the top creative areas and the creative losers of each region. On average, annual household earnings exceed $75,000 for nearly 27 percent of households in the top two creative places in each metro area, while only 13 percent of households experience such earnings in the two cities ranking lowest in each metro area.
Backing up Kotkin’s argument, however, the top creative areas tend not to be urban centers. In the Denver metro area, Boulder, Superior, Louisville, Golden, Littleton, Lone Tree and Castle Pines all outperform Denver proper on Florida’s composite measure of diversity, innovation, talent and creativity. Similar trends were noted in other parts of the interior West, with cities including Albuquerque, Colorado Springs, Reno, Phoenix and Las Vegas all lagging behind their neighboring suburbs in the creativity indicators. Only in the central cities of Boise, Fort Collins, Grand Junction, Santa Fe and Tucson were creativity, innovation and diversity concentrated in the “downtown” atmosphere most often associated with Florida’s creative class.
These results may at first come as a surprise to Mayor Hickenlooper’s creative vision for downtown Denver. However, the dispersed concentrations of creativity fit nicely within the Denver Council of Governments’ 2030 Vision plan:
With downtown Denver at the center, a string of high-density, mixed-use urban centers will be prominent at various locations throughout the region, along the backbone of transportation corridors. These lively concentrations will be pedestrian-friendly – a mixture of retail, employment, civic and cultural uses located near moderate- to high- density residential uses.
But the existence of multiple creativity centers support Florida’s perspective, too. “The most successful regions,” Florida writes on his website, “welcome all kinds of people. And they offer a range of living choices, from nice suburbs with single-family housing to hip urban districts for the ‘unattached.”‘ Florida still emphasizes, though, that sprawl seems to negatively impact a region’s prospects for fostering creativity.
Results from the State of the Rockies Report Card indicate that places like Denver that are looking to reinvigorate their downtown experience have much to learn from neighboring communities that seem to fare better at attracting and retaining a more diverse, creative and innovative workforce. Often creative types are lured to what Florida has called the “emerging indigenous culture on the fringe.” In the case of the Denver metro area, creative workers seem to be seeking affordable alternatives to the downtown lifestyle local urban revivalists would like to foster.
If we are to embrace Hickenlooper’s and Florida’s creative-class theory, we must also look to the community’s civic leaders to make the theory work within Kotkin’s context of variable housing and land-use patterns. When we realize that diversity and family, and housing choice and new urbanism are not mutually exclusive concepts, Denver will have reached a mature phase in economic development planning.
Patrick Holmes is program coordinator for the State of the Rockies Project at Colorado College. For more information, go to www.coloradocollege.edu/stateoftherockies.
