In an article in The Walrus earlier this year, Mark Kingwell referred to fellow urban thinker/public intellectual/University of Toronto professor/sometime Globe and Mail columnist Richard Florida as a “huckster”. Kingwell later republished his article in the uTOpia-for-boomers collection Toronto: A City Becoming, which the editors mischievously placed immediately after Florida’s own contribution, presumably to highlight the sense of rivalry between them.
One can kind of see what Kingwell means. Florida has that brash, too-perfectly-groomed, relentlessly upbeat feel, the simple message to sell in easy soundbites, the gravitation towards the powerful and influential, that are characteristic of salesmen. But poke that huckster facade and you find a lot more substance underneath — the soundbites are distillations of a lot of real research that has been thought about a great deal. Like a good salesman, Florida knows how to pitch to the right level for different audiences, but also, like the best salesmen, he has a genuine product to sell. One might not agree with what he’s saying, but he should not just be dismissed superficially.
It would be equally easy to dismiss Kingwell’s jibe as protecting his turf. Florida is the loud American who has suddenly stepped into all of the spaces where Kingwell plays — urbanism, go-to public thinker, the university, the media. It doesn’t help that Florida’s recent move to Toronto has echoes of Jane Jacobs — a renowned urban thinker abandoning the United States to move to Toronto as a city that embodies the ideals he writes about.
But underneath the apparent turf war lies a genuine clash of intellectual styles — one that makes their disagreement perhaps inevitable, but that can also produce a rich debate of ideas for Toronto.
The philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote a famous essay called “The Hedgehog and the Fox” in which he described two different types of thinkers. The hedgehog uses one big idea, whereas the fox uses lots of different ideas. Florida and Kingwell are nice examples of this contrast.
Florida has one big idea, the “creative class“, which he pitches relentlessly, elaborates, investigates further, and works into variations. It doesn’t take long to know what Florida is about. Read any of his work, and it is, in one way or another, about this idea. His message comes through loud and clear.
Kingwell, on the other hand, darts about playing with lots of different ideas. He touches on this subject or that, mashes them up, digresses and speculates. It’s stimulating and thought-provoking, but at the end, it’s hard to say what the specific message, or even the specific subject, is. The two articles in Toronto: A City Becoming embody this contrast nicely — Florida’s short, accessible, and focused, but perhaps simplistic; Kingwell’s long, playful, but rather meandering.
In the more contemporary metaphor of psychological disorders, Florida would be obsessive-compulsive, Kingwell attention-deficit.
If they were walkers, Florida would be the person who walks purposefully to his destination. It’s a good place to go, but along the way, you might get frustrated that he’s not looking around him at all the other interesting sights and destinations on the journey. Kingwell, by contrast, would be the psychogeographic ambler who is more interested in observing along an interesting route. There comes a moment where you start to wonder whether it’s possible he could perhaps not wander down every side alley and discourse learnedly on every single point of interest along the way, and if there is an actual destination, and if you could perhaps get on with getting there.
The intellectual contrast extends to how they do their work — Florida is the social scientist, Kingwell the philosopher. Florida’s work is based on huge research projects and studies, masses of statistics, and working with lots of collaborators. It’s thinking on an industrial scale, producing a robust product. Kingwell, by contrast, is a craftsman. His work is the encounter of his own personal intellect, reading, and experience with the ideas and trends he witnesses. You won’t find statistics or joint research projects in his footnotes, just extensive reading of other thinkers and personal tasting of the world around him.
While everyone has their personal preferences, neither of these approaches is better or worse than the other (and, obviously, I am simplifying each of them to highlight the contrast). In fact, when you prod deeper into each of their work, they are probably not that far apart in substance — it is their styles that clash.
I, frankly, find both of them frustrating in their own way, but they both also have interesting and valuable ideas, and I think it’s important not to dismiss those ideas simply because of their style. And perhaps the creative tension of having them both play in the same sandbox will spark some interesting interactions and new insights.
36 comments
Who’s a bigger jerk? A tough call!
great analysis, Dylan. I like them both, but Florida more. Kingwell talks too much out of his ass, while Florida has data to back it up.
With all due respect, mark, when you say something uncontextualized and unsubstantive like that I think the answer is “mark”.
“Kingwell talks too much out of his ass”: ha! That’s what philosophy grads do, not that it’s without some merit. At least that’s my conclusion from a Philosophy major. Florida is a huckster, though, right or wrong.
Florida has started turning some of those “huge research projects” into smaller chunks:
http://martinprosperity.org/insights/insight/creative-density-of-cities
As Kingwell would say, Husserl disagrees.
jamesmallon> I should let this go, but you’ve rubbed a pet peeve of mine: when people shout out statements about people who do things, but they don’t back it up. “Florida is a huckster, though, right or wrong.” What do you mean? You’re not adding anything to the conversation — it’s fine to think that but explain why you think that. When you don’t explain, it comes off as the usual complaints from the do-nothings about the do-somethings. See, I don’t even know you, but that’s the impression you give off when you toss things out like that.
Excellent and very thoughtful article. I don’t know about the last part, though. Typically the “fox” would align with the philosopher who is all about the big ideas, and the “hedgehog” with the social scientist who is cautious and wants to make sure that the ideas fit the data — no?
Good ideas or not, I think they’re both wankers. Which means I have trouble listening to anything they say. If you have any doubts about Kingwell, just try reading his book about fishing with gagging.
Oops…I meant “without” gagging. Who’s the wanker now? 🙂
As a former student of Kingwell, I find his primary obsession to be the Platonic notion of “justice,” but otherwise I agree with the assessment here.
If there ever was a huckster in this scene, though, I think Malcolm Gladwell would be it.
Good comparison. I think there’s also a fundamental difference in what each of them is trying to do when they write about the city. Florida is a social scientist, as you say, and he’s interested in nuts-and-bolts urban policy (and, um, helping people decide where to move). Kingwell, on the other hand, is a philosopher and cultural critic who’s interested in cities because that’s where larger cultural and political dynamics get played out, but he’s not really interested in the nitty gritty of tax codes or transit plans or whatever. So often they’re not disagreeing so much as they’re just talking past each other. It’s definitely more than a difference of style, though.
So much bashing of personalities.
What happened to ideas?
“Huckster: a mercenary person eager to make a profit out of anything.” Kind of a cheap shot if you ask me, that demeans the speaker more than anyone.
Hey Shawn, if you don’t like what you’ve characterized me “shout[ing] out statements about people who do things, but [not] back[ing] it up”, you may have to take on other people who’ve made comments here.
“When you don’t explain, it comes off as the usual complaints from the do-nothings about the do-somethings. See, I don’t even know you, but that’s the impression you give off when you toss things out like that.” It’s my turn to characterize a comment: fatuous, and I ‘don’t even know you’.
Back to Kingwell and Florida: Kingwell is entertaining to me, because when I read something he’s written I might come across something I did not already know; I characterize Florida as a huckster, because I don’t come across anything I did not already know. He makes a good living from repackaging common sense. Florida moves in the circles that he congratulates, which is narrow among other things. He also takes an elite view of how society works, which is narrow at best, but also out of date and frankly dangerous: humanity has a more than chequered history of elite power. It also is not how a city or society works, but it is hard for most self-described elites to accept they have less influence on society or political movements than they think.
I agree with Kingwell’s sentiment. Florida has not provided any convincing evidence that Toronto has, or is poised to take advantage of its ‘creativity’. To me it sounds like empty rhetoric. A city that loses jobs during boom period, fails to grow and becomes more economically stratified cannot be considered a success.
@Stephen Indeed. It’s one thing to engage in a critical dialogue, but these two fellows must have to suffer a constant barrage of people like @jamesmallon here who “know everything” already, and even when trying to explain why Florida is wrong, simply hurls more sentences with no real content. But that’s alright, there is nothing here he didn’t already know.
Whoa!
Another distinction: R. Florida speaks and writes in sentences that are understandable and recognizable as English, while M. Kingwell writes like an academic whose colleagues opposed his unreasonably early and underqualified tenure. He is, admittedly, much better on TV.
Florida is up front about who he is, while Kingwell, shall we say, isn’t. It shows.
Florida gave a bang-up interview on the KERA Think podcast a month ago that made me a believer, full stop. Kingwell I hated on sight, and that has scarcely abated.
Florida may be a rich, carpetbagging populist, but he functions better as a public intellectual than Kingwell does.
Carpetbagging, now that’s a factual insult. This is progress.
I don’t know. Florida pretty much lost me when his first column in the Globe talked about how he couldn’t find parking after driving on a Saturday to Kensington…
Disparishun – that’s an interesting question. I think it mostly comes down to personalities – you’ll find both types in any field. Social scientists, for example, often choose a consistent theoretical lens through which to interpret their findings – thus creating a “hedgehog” effect.
James M – that’s a good point, I think you might be right. Though I confess I have such a hard time figuring out what Kingwell’s main points are that it’s hard to tell. But maybe that’s because I’m more interested in the nuts-and-bolts policy myself. Kingwell is certainly extremely interested in some specifically city issues, notably architecture (and I approve of the fact that he talks a lot about walking, both literally and as a metaphor), but they are, as you say, more cultural rather than policy oriented.
I just discovered that I put in the wrong link for “poke that huckster facade”. I’ve fixed it now – it now goes to the specific relevant blog post rather than the blog’s main page.
My biggest knock on Florida’s theory of the “creative class” is that I don’t think he understands how important food is. Or energy. I think he thinks those things can always be produced cheaply somewhere else, and that people whose wealth is built on ideas will always be able to trade those ideas for food and energy to advantage. If it’s true that he thinks that, then I think he’s wrong.
Rather than Florida vs. Kingwell, I’d much rather hear Florida debate Michael Pollan, who wrote a great article on the future of food in the New York Times this past October.
URL for the Times article mentioned above:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=login
Florida is all hype and not much substance. He tends to borrow ideas and older concepts and present them as his own. This has been been documented and can be found online.
I was really peeved in a recent story where he said that the creative class were paid to think and that the worker class just moved objects around (I guess like like drones). I find these kinds of class generalizations to be arrogant and I am surprised that in a City as smart and diverse as Toronto they go generally unchallenged.
Florida reminds me of a sort of Erich von Dà ¤niken; somebody who was cool for a while but a few years later you are embarrassed to have their books in your library.
My sympathies lie with Kingwell, since, as Kevin observed, his aim is social justice rather than prosperity (which are not, generally speaking, the same thing).
scottd’s comments are largely bitter and lack content. This has been documented and can be found online.
(goose, gander, etc.)
Jonathan> That’s a fair comment — but can there be social justice without prosperity? Lots of lefty social justice/welfare state in the UK in the 1970s, but not much prosperity. Wasn’t such a fun place to live (or so say my punk rock and Joy Division albums).
Florida has responded to this post, btw (and mentioned social justice):
http://www.creativeclass.com/creative_class/2008/12/10/toronto-dialogues/
Social justice and prosperity are obviously closely associated, but I tend to think that the latter is more likely to flow from the former, rather than the other way around.
Sam>Hint use Google.
Shawn> There’s so much wrong with that comment… I’ll confine myself merely to the obvious truth that an attempt at social justice does not imply its success.
I don’t know much about Florida, but Kingwell’s ability to inspire resentment always amuses me. I guess if you have your finger in that many pies you’re increasing the odds, but in my own experience a lot of it isn’t really aimed at him specifically. For instance, when I was a philosophy undergrad in Toronto, you would hear the occasional gripe about him from students, but as I recall it was always coming from the button-down analytic crowd, who didn’t dislike him so much as, I don’t know, phenomenology. Or Lacan, whatever.
Whatever criticisms one might have about his academic publishing record after the first political theory / justice bookâ€â€and I don’t really know, having changed disciplines myselfâ€â€he’s certainly an engaging public intellectual. Personally, unlike jamesmallon, I’m not sure I learn as much from his books as some, having taken one of his seminars & therefore having learnt some of his pet issues, but it’s still good reading.
That said, I’ve yet to read the Fishing book. I’d also skip Marginalia.
Wrenkin:
“Shawn> There’s so much wrong with that comment… I’ll confine myself merely to the obvious truth that an attempt at social justice does not imply its success.”
Telling somebody there “so much wrong with that comment” and then not actually saying what those things are … is an odd way to make a point.
So is making a political philosophical point about economics, post-war recovery, Labour party politics, and the human condition based almost exclusively on Joy Division. I mean, it’s a good start, but…
Jonathan’s comment was about whether prosperity and social justice are linkedâ€â€from his later comment he thinks the latter is more likely given the former. Your comment seems to have two parts: the first asks “can there be social justice without prosperity?” The second I’m unsure about. Maybe you’re answering your own question and saying that you can have such justice without prosperity, but your comment that the UK “[w]asn’t such a fun place to live” seems to indicate that you’re saying that what the UK had in the “social justice/welfare state” was a failed attempt at the goal. It’s this latter reading to which I replied. I probably should have been more clear and said that a failed attempt does not logically imply that the goal cannot be achieved.
There are also, as ever, definitional issues: Does social justice incorporate economic concerns? Absolute ones (ability to feed oneself, say), a measure of equality relative to other (richer) people, both? How are we defining prosperity? What’s “fun” got to do with either of those two things, anyway? Indeed, maybe your comment was saying that, as far as linkage goes, social justice is necessary for prosperity, but then that reading is only supportable if you were linking prosperity and fun… Anyway, lots going on.
I’m sorry if I was a little glib. I hope you’ll forgive me, but I felt guilty taking too much time away from studying for finals.
Glib sometimes is OK (esp when you answer like the above). With fun, I simply meant “The Good Life,” Plato, etc.
Probably many would argue that the 1970s UK were a failed attempt at the social welfare state.
Kingswell vs. Florida = Chalk vs. Cheese
Am not sure who the other “Sam” is (dec. 10 at 11:31am) but I find Florida a tad over-rated. Oh he says the kind of stuff that’s sure to make him a media darling and to endear him to certain elites who are constantly “envisioning” a better city. But whether intentionally or because of oversight, there seems to be an awful lot of nuts and bolts stuff and gritty reality that he doesn’t seem to deal with, which unfortunately real cities are required to. I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a huckster (which seems to imply that he’s trying to hype something he knows is worthless — like the florida swampland drives of yore) but I’m not sure he deserves the prestige and influence that he seems to have garnered. Will sign myself as samg in future to distinguish myself from other “sam”.
Thanks Dylan for wandering into this subject, and I also wanted to say that I’ve enjoyed most of the rest of the comments here too.
Dylan, I think the Fox and Hedgehog analogy is apt. And as Disparishun pointed out, it is interesting that this would seem a reversal of the common sense take on the opposition between social scientists and philosophers. Except, the ‘common sense take’ is a bit outdated in this case I think.
Florida (although in some ways very uncommon) is an example of a phenomenon that seems pretty common these days: a technically-oriented researcher turned media-man. Because the ideas that he is hawking serve a political purpose, what was probably once more fox-like reasoning seems very hedgehog like. Ideas well (and tightly) packaged seem to usually have the biggest political clout in the media. Florida is an example of a social scientist who has been forced to sell his conclusions, making the transition from fox to hedgehog.
Kingwell on the other hand is I think demonstrative of most contemporary philosophers since Wittgenstein: opening subjects for discussion, asking questions, proposing trial descriptions of things. These are all legitimate philosophical techniques, fox-like techniques, that accept objectivity as something beyond our grasp and truth as something that is arrived at through dialog.
Anyways that’s the way it seems to me: social scientists, politically motivated, quickly become hedgehogs; meanwhile, contemporary professional philosophers are prone to operate foxily.
In regards to the social justice and prosperity argument going on here, I actually used to use Florida’s work to argue that economic prosperity requires some degree of ‘social justice’ in the form of affordable housing for the artists and service workers that allow creative class professionals to exist. However, what must be recognized is that this is not real social justice, but is only the kind of liberal-democratic social justice that allows for the continued reproduction of the working class (Marxist-Weberian defintion – see Allahar and Cote, 1998), from whose work surplus value is extracted, part of which is distributed to creative class professionals, or the new middle class information bourgeoisie (Keil, 2000). The labour theory of value is something that is missing from all of Florida’s recent work, with Kingwell also largely failing to deal with this fundamental Marxist concept, though at least maintaining many sympathies with the Frankfurt School of Western Marxists, particularly Walter Benjamin.
Thus, I prefer Kingwell to Florida, but both of them are useless compared to David Harvey, Mike Davis, Neil Smith, Nik Heynen, Stefan Kipfer and other urbanists who are truly dedicated to a Marxist perspective and engage in real urban political issues.