{"id":5208,"date":"2009-07-04T10:00:47","date_gmt":"2009-07-04T14:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=5208"},"modified":"2013-01-21T14:41:40","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T19:41:40","slug":"critiquing-the-creative-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/07\/04\/critiquing-the-creative-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Critiquing the creative class"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/gadjo\/3669224825\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3370\/3669224825_744e02fa39.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Just as Richard Florida finally thought he was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.houseandhome.com\/videos\/design-decorating\/richard-rana-florida\">comfortably settled<\/a> in Toronto, the city which embraced him with open arms upon his arrival has become increasingly hostile to his theories.\u00a0 Foremost among his critics are the <a href=\"http:\/\/creativeclassstruggle.wordpress.com\/\">Creative Class Struggle<\/a>, a Toronto collective whose explicit purpose is to challenge Richard Florida, the Martin Prosperity Institute at U of T &#8211; created specifically for him &#8211; and his theories on the creative class.<\/p>\n<p>I must admit that upon reading his breakout work, <em>The Rise of the Creative Class<\/em>, putting dollar signs on certain demographic groups and ranking cities based partly on a Bohemian Index made me more than a little uneasy.\u00a0 But, as I was told by another Spacing blogger who attended the recent Creative Class Struggle debate last week, some criticisms are better than others.<\/p>\n<p>Under the radar of the media, however, has been a longstanding critique in academia of Florida&#8217;s creative class that preceded &#8211; and likely inspired &#8211; some of the growing grassroots opposition to Florida&#8217;s work now surfacing in Toronto.\u00a0 Foremost among those is Canadian geographer Jamie Peck, whose 2005 article &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;ct=res&amp;cd=4&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.boell-bw.de%2Ffileadmin%2FHeinrich-Boell-Stiftung%2F2008%2Fcity%2FPeck_Struggling_with_the_creative_class.pdf&amp;ei=FihOSpLJK4aYMainhO4D&amp;usg=AFQjCNFiQ3joQ1zu1TmijS6XoWeMsK3I7w&amp;sig2=oRQ73bSBUkFfEK6SqKI4fw\">Struggling with the Creative Class<\/a>&#8221; threshes out the causes of that uneasiness that many of us feel to Florida&#8217;s theories.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.ca\/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;ct=res&amp;cd=1&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.creativeclass.org%2Frfcgdb%2Farticles%2FRevenge%2520of%2520the%2520Squelchers.pdf&amp;ei=-jtOSpO1LoW2M_XnjO4D&amp;usg=AFQjCNEgiev-wUewkMEf3GYdqsWap5JF4Q&amp;sig2=Fr8-07Trr4tTG3No_m_MXA\">defence of Florida<\/a>, he is in part a victim of his own success.\u00a0 As a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/article\/656837\">recent article in the Star<\/a> points out, he knew before moving to Toronto that most of his critics &#8220;will come from the left,&#8221; rather than from the social conservatives he faced south of the border.\u00a0 Florida also claims in the Star&#8217;s piece that he finds himself &#8220;intuitively agreeing&#8221; with many of the concerns being levelled against him in Toronto.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, it comes down to one key word: correlation.\u00a0 Is Florida simply elaborating on observed economic phenomena (he comes from an economics background) or do his widely popular books that reduce demographics to monetary value implicitly disadvantage underprivileged groups and promote their exclusion from creative &#8211; and prosperous &#8211; cities?<\/p>\n<p><em>The next issue of Spacing magazine will feature an interview with Richard Florida where he addresses many critiques of his work.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Photo by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/gadjo\/\">Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just as Richard Florida finally thought he was comfortably settled in Toronto, the city which embraced him with open arms upon his arrival has become increasingly hostile to his theories.\u00a0 Foremost among his critics are the Creative Class Struggle, a Toronto collective whose explicit purpose is to challenge Richard Florida, the Martin Prosperity Institute at<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/07\/04\/critiquing-the-creative-class\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Critiquing the creative class&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4071,"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":[74,12652,12650,12651,26,2712,12649,405,19],"class_list":["post-5208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-features","tag-creative-spaces-places","tag-geographer","tag-jamie-peck","tag-martin-prosperity-institute","tag-people","tag-richard-florida","tag-sevilla","tag-the-star","tag-toronto"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Critiquing the creative class - Spacing 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