Does the Creative Class Help Our Cities?

"Did The Creative Class Really Save Your City? Probably Not"
Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan
Co.design:business+innovation+design
www.fastcodesign.com/1671891/did-the-creative-class-really-save-your-city-probably-not

Hello Everyone:

I'd like to keep going on the subject of the urban design and the creative class.  I think it's a subject worth exploring because it impacts a city in so many different ways.  Today, I want to write about new research that looks at whether or not creative class does really provide benefits for a community.

An article posted on fastcodesign.com argues that the answer to whether or not the creative class really is beneficial to a city is no.  In his book The Rise of the Creative Class (2002), Richard Florida argues that gentrification at the hands of the creative class leads to widespread gains for urbanites.  However, this article suggest that there is a growing body of scientific and ethnographic evidence to dispel this assumption.  In January, a pair of journalists from Crown Heights (in Brooklyn naturally) published an investigation of efforts by new and long-time residents to sustain a sense of community in the face of rapid gentrification.  The story was shared through the social media sites and recently, Grist published a rebuttal to Florida's argument filtered through the lens of the City of Oakland, California where housing prices and upscale amenities have done very little to alleviate poverty and crime.  Writer Susie Cagle raised a secondary issue, that the dissolution of community ties could negatively affect residents in times of natural and man-made crisises.  I would agree here because, part of the idea of community is that you know your neighbor and can depend on him/her in times of emergencies.

Susie Cagle points to crises such as Hurricane Sandy, when grassroots organizations got straight away to the task of digging out New York while agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Red Cross were still trying to get organized.  She also points to Oakland following the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989 when the city banded together to rescue the injured.  Presently, the West Oakland neighborhood where the 880 Freeway (??) collapsed is dense with lofts, condominiums, and foreclosed homes of people who could keep up the mortgage.  Many of the homes were bought by investors who either rent them out at inflated prices or leave them empty waiting for the real estate market to it worth the effort to resell or rehabilitate it.  Ms, Cagle concludes that the so-called "urban renaissance" is not the solution for community development in the face of a crisis.

Even Richard Florida published new research refuting the simplistic idea that gentrification "trickles down" to benefit the lower classes.  Sort of an artisanal twist on "trickle down economics."  Repeat after me, trickle down economics, in any form, does not work.  Florida and his team of researchers concluded that while the creative class workers clustered in cities enjoyed increase income, blue-collar workers in the same city, in the same neighborhoods experienced  an inverse effect: rent increases without an increase in income that comes with a creative economy.  Florida's research also mentions the "well-being inequality" which is defined as what happens when the creative class workers are willing to pay more to live in neighborhoods with better food, entertainment, and jobs.  Really?  So how does this concept explain the attraction to former economically depressed neighborhoods like Downtown Los Angeles or Harlem in New York?  Lower-income workers can't afford to live in these suddenly upscale neighborhoods and move farther away from the city.  Oh, then how do you explain the phenomena of creative economy workers fleeing Brooklyn, New York for the suburbs they swore they'd never, ever live in?

Thus not everyone benefits when a neighborhood gentrifies.  The question become how to mitigate the process.  While gentrification may seem like a natural course for the real estate market and interfering with it may seem like an unthinkable task, this misconception is being challenged by grassroots organizations with varying degrees of success.  For example, in Crown Height, new and long-time residents formed the Crown Heights Assembly, an "Occupy-inspired" group to resist predatory housing companies.  Respect Our City in Oakland is planning to the same thing.

What do you think?