{"id":2827,"date":"2008-12-09T11:00:30","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T16:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/2008\/12\/09\/kingwell-vs-florida\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T15:08:07","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T20:08:07","slug":"kingwell-vs-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2008\/12\/09\/kingwell-vs-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"Kingwell vs. Florida?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

In an article in The Walrus<\/em><\/a> earlier this year, Mark Kingwell<\/a> referred to fellow urban thinker\/public intellectual\/University of Toronto professor\/sometime Globe and Mail<\/em> columnist Richard Florida<\/a> as a “huckster”. Kingwell later republished his article in the uTOpia<\/em><\/a>-for-boomers collection Toronto: A City Becoming<\/em><\/a>, which the editors mischievously placed immediately after Florida’s own contribution, presumably to highlight the sense of rivalry between them.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote a famous essay called “The Hedgehog and the Fox<\/a>” 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.<\/p>\n

Florida has one big idea, the “creative class<\/a>“, 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> embody this contrast nicely — Florida’s short, accessible, and focused, but perhaps simplistic; Kingwell’s long, playful, but rather meandering.<\/p>\n

In the more contemporary metaphor of psychological disorders, Florida would be obsessive-compulsive, Kingwell attention-deficit.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n


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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 highlightContinue reading “Kingwell vs. Florida?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4006,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21758,21759],"tags":[532,424,8311,8312,313,8310,504,3612,26,61,2712,4274,19,506,270],"class_list":["post-2827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-features","tag-berlin","tag-columnist","tag-craftsman","tag-genuine-product","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-good-salesman","tag-jane-jacobs","tag-mark-kingwell","tag-people","tag-reviews","tag-richard-florida","tag-social-scientist","tag-toronto","tag-united-states","tag-university-of-toronto"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nKingwell vs. Florida? - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2008\/12\/09\/kingwell-vs-florida\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kingwell vs. Florida? - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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”. 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