What makes a city prosper?

[Undertoad]

I could have put this in cities, I could have put this in technology, I could have put this in current events and I could have put this in politics. I put it here because it brings all those concepts together.

Salon has an excellent article today: Be Creative - Or Die.

It brings together a lot of the thinking that tw and I have posted over the years. It's an interview with an author who has just published a book of why certain cities are doing very well, while others are dying.

The name of his book is "The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life." It discovers a new class of creative people: scientists, engineers, tech people, artists, entertainers, musicians. In addition there is a set of creative people who are professionals and managers, lawyers, financial people, healthcare people, technicians... basically anyone who "uses their ideas and knowledge and creativity in their work." I.e., from tw's perspective, the people who throw out the books, the crusty traditions, the rules, etc. and who truly innovate.

The guy points out that Pittsburgh and Detroit should be the economic powerhouse cities. Why aren't they? Detroit has its huge manufacturing base, Pittsburgh has done everything it could do to attract technology. But it isn't working. The cities that ARE the new economic powerhouses are San Francisco, Austin, Boston. Why? Because creative bohemian types, gays, innovators move there.

"You see it with young singles who want an active night life and an active mating market, but you also see it elsewhere, like a fellow I interviewed the other day who's in a biracial gay relationship with four adopted kids, and he's saying to himself, Can I live in a city like Pittsburgh with four adopted kids in a biracial relationship?"

Cities do well because they bring creative, productive people together, and then those people are even MORE creative and productive, because they're working with other creative and productive people. Good infrastructure, <i>even good education</i> is a secondary factor.

"...we just started asking, 'How do you choose a place to live and work?' and the answers just came out: Diversity, we want a place that's diverse, where there's different kinds of people on the street. Of course a job is important, but it isn't just 'a' job: We need lots of jobs because we know now that 'a' job isn't going to last long. We want a city to be creative, we want it to be exciting, we want it to have all kinds of amenities, we want it to have outdoor sports, extreme sports, rollerblading, cycling, art scene, music scene. Then we asked, 'Do you do all that stuff?' and the answer was 'No, we just want to know it's there.'"