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Written on Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 at 8:31am by Christopher Smith | 4 Comments

The Rise Of The Creative Class

If you’re not busy today during lunch, stop in at the Buffalo Architecture Center in the Market Arcade Complex for a panel discussion on Richard Florida’s book, The Rise of the Creative Class.

I’ll be on the panel with Chris Hawley of New Millenium Group, Zack Schneider of Schneider Digitial, and others.

If you’ve never read the book, check out the summary or this editorial review:

Florida, an academic whose field is regional economic development, explains the rise of a new social class that he labels the creative class. Members include scientists, engineers, architects, educators, writers, artists, and entertainers. He defines this class as those whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology, and new creative content. In general this group shares common characteristics, such as creativity, individuality, diversity, and merit. The author estimates that this group has 38 million members, constitutes more than 30 percent of the U.S. workforce, and profoundly influences work and lifestyle issues. The purpose of this book is to examine how and why we value creativity more highly than ever and cultivate it more intensely. He concludes that it is time for the creative class to grow up–boomers and Xers, liberals and conservatives, urbanites and suburbanites–and evolve from an amorphous group of self-directed while high-achieving individuals into a responsible, more cohesive group interested in the common good.

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4 Comments

  1. joan says:
    August 15, 2006 at 9:11 am

    From the first panel:

    http://www.buffalorising.com/city/archives/2006/08/buffalos_creative_class.php

    The term “creatives” needs to be expanded, especially in the “tech” field.
    Every exciting new business that I could think of had something to do with the internet, computer graphics, digital video/publishing, etc.

    Buffalo is the PERFECT place for these types of emerging businesses. Glad to see this panel will be the next installment!

  2. Rüdiger Kalupner says:
    August 15, 2006 at 3:38 pm

    Until now there is still a very fundamental, a very evolutionary secret about the political power of the creative class.

    Here, I’ll open the wall and you will see the hidden reality: the ‘creative class’ will evolve into a political party, which will realize the natural priority of the creative, conflict-dissolving way in evolutionary process. This creativ-class-party will be the alternativ party to all non-creative parties we have in all democracies.

    All non-creative parties are grown out of historical conflict-fighting-processes. The top-conflict in every society is called ‘distribution conflict’. Those non-creative parties exist at contrary borders of the various conflict-front. They organize and exploit their conflicts. They need organization and power to fight against the other side of the conflict-frontiers. The unsolved conflicts are their ressources. But the creative power in evolutionary acceleration process aimes to dissolve the conflicts – in order to rise efficiency of this acceleration process.

    Here we see the political power for the creative party in each economic crisis. Only a creative party can cooperate with this creative power in the evolutionary process – by finding the genial little change at the tipping point in the global economical or cultural process, which the evolutionary process has created and which will dissolve the blockade-power of conflicts against future growth of men and economy in our society.

    When Mr. Florida argues “it is time for the creative class to …. evolve from an amorphous group of self-directed … individuals into a responsible, more cohesive group interested in the common good” then he will perhaps think about to create the creative party. After he has found the ‘tipping-point-in-the-globalized-process’ – he will succeed. How to find this point? He only needs the operational and very simple knowledge about the evolutionary selection-and-success-logic, which reigns the evolutionary process – and he will find the mega-powerful tipping point in the actual global process.

  3. Pauldub says:
    August 16, 2006 at 7:02 am

    In other words, you think that the creative class would be more interested in conflict resolution than assuming poer and retaining it? Laudable. However, many political parties start with the same ideals.
    Absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
    But it is my belief that this “creative class” will start out with a different mindset that will negate any chance of their motives changing from conflict resolution to gaining and retaining power.

  4. Rüdiger Kalupner says:
    August 16, 2006 at 12:18 pm

    The motives of the creative class actors are irrelevant in this context.

    Only the new, but until now unknown evolutionary elements of the economic control system counts, which will be a further, new institution in economics like justic, democratic parlaments, democratic parties, unions a.s.o. which created a free society after 1776 in America and after 1789 in Europe. This new control system will produce a global (financial/cost-) priority for the creative, ressource-saving options of acceleration in concurrenc with well known powerful fighters options – which are forced to waste human and institutional chances and ressources, because all fighters are forced to win. Instead, the creative actors look for a win-win-situation.

    This new ‘creative economic control system’ for global acceleration will be implemented by a self-accelerating process, not controlled by institutions, which will be started by the concret form of the global tipping point. The evolutionary creative process tends to produce a maximum for all members of the project. It is very attractive to be part of a creative evolutionary project.

    I know, that the discussion of this tipping-point-truth and his hidden power in our global reality will force all countries to follow the exodus on the creative path of evolution. This path is simply the more efficient one – compared with the actual one. The global concurrenc between economic location produces a TINA-situation – There Is No Alternativ – for all goverments and states . It’s like in 1989, when Hungary opens the Iron Curtain. The old global conflict-fighting system imploded.

    For readers, interested in modern history, I’ll give same unknown informations about the last global change:

    Mr. Gorbatschow was informed about this tipping point reality in the evolutionary process and all this knowledge, I write about here. My papers found the way from my table to the table of the PRAWDA-correspondent in Bonn/Germany and to the ambassy of the USSR in Bonn/Germany and they landed on the table of Michael Gorbatschow in the years following 1986. On the ambassy-way my papers reached Peking to – long bevor March 1992 !!!!

    It’s simple true, that all socialists around Gorbatschow and around the leaders of the Communist Party of China have been informed about the hidden decision inside the actual evolutionary process: the creative power inside the evolutionary process will rule the future – not one of the conflict partners which try to win the concurrence or the fight between capitalism and socialism.