Pimping Creativity
Wed Jan 04, 2006 at 01:50:12 AM PDT
In yesterday's
diary I mentioned Richard Florida in a discussion of tolerance as a positive community-building ingredient. Florida often appears in posts dealing with urban planning, and his name is usually attached to the "Creative Economy" phenomenon (Google that phrase and you'll see how prevalent it is among city planners). I might nit-pick Florida's definitions and methodology (as some readers here do), but I accept his basic premise - that communities which invest in education, the environment, historic preservation, culture, and other quality-of-life assets attract the talent that fosters a robust economy and healthy social setting.
So we should appreciate Florida drawing attention to, and validating, good libraries and schools, clean air and water, vibrant downtowns, tolerance, and diversity (for all people, not only urban loft-living elites). Thanks in part to Florida's popularity and rock star status, it's also heartening to see at city planning meetings that cultural, educational, and environmental advocates no longer have to convince governments that, yes, they ARE important!
But it's also clear from these meetings that much of the development industry's support is tepid, nor do they have the foggiest notion how to identify and enhance the "creative" part of the "Creative Economy" - and then use it responsibly. Others simply misinterpret or dilute what Florida and others mean, marginalizing what many who work in the creative sector really care about.
A result of that manipulation is that the Creative Economy discussion is often just surface, not substance. It's a focus on marketing at the expense of product, on use at the expense of sustainability, on the superficial and shallow at the expense of the deep and authentic. All of it, undermining genuine creativity. Even Florida acknowledges that good ideas can be distorted, warped, and turned against themselves:
Left unchecked and without appropriate forms of human intervention, this creativity-based system may well make...our problems worse.
In other words, this essentially sound concept can be hijacked by forces that don't, or choose not to, invest in them, financially or conceptually. If communities don't embrace the Creative Economy in a truly "creative" manner, by listening to voices beyond conventional economic boosters, they risk having a progressive and potentially positive practice co-opted by forces not exactly friendly to creativity. (What else is new?)
As an example: some planners interpret the Creative Class as only cutting edge whiz kids. That's part of it, not all, but the rest is often ignored. Cities invest huge sums of money to lure high-tech plants and build hip techno-utopias, and while their reports are sprinkled with Creative Economy lingo, the aim is often just more growth, not developing what's already there (and I'd offer up that the distinction between growth and development defines the Creative Economy). As is often the case, those who truly make place "place" get the short end of the stick - historic districts, parks, libraries, affordable housing, schools, small businesses, and cultural amenities.
A related perversion is what's happened to New Urbanism, a mostly sensible political platform. But to hear some planners, New Urbanism is just adding awnings and benches to make towns look like Mayberry RFD - all veneer. Sure, there are different schools of New Urbanism (some admittedly goofy), but at its root it's mostly about preserving heritage, reuse and infill, mixed-use, and getting rid of the car! Yet developers simply add porches and benches and then use phrases like "New Urbanism" to market the same vanilla, car-dependent pods, usually named for the thing they displaced: Wild Oaks Park, Quail Run Village, Granite Mountain Commons, or Towne Centre (always with an "e" on "town" and "center" spelled the British way).
With respect to the Creative Economy, meaning is being rewritten. One reason, I suspect, is that investing in creativity is incompatible with Industrial Age economics. The phrase itself - creativity and economics - is a paradox. Creativity takes a long time, the economy doesn't allow most companies to look beyond the next quarter. Creativity is subversive, thriving in tolerant settings, something corporatism rarely endorses. Creativity's rewards are largely intrinsic, not the same incentive system that drives Wall Street. We're trying to fit an imaginative peg into a fixed hole.
Face it, the growth industry hasn't donned the creativity garb because it's suddenly grown interested in culture, diversity, and the environment, but because research shows that creative cities enjoy strong economies. But if that's all it is, creativity becomes a mere pimp for economic growth, which means the tail CAN wag the dog, and communities risk compromising the very thing that stimulates economic development. (Recall so-called ecotourism programs that ruined the environment - the exact opposite of true ecotourism's mission.) The creative sector and the economic sector can use one another (that's what using is all about), but all the talk I've heard about win-win is mostly win-lose (and you know who's on the short end).
Be skeptical, even when the PR sounds good. The "Creative Economy" is a two-word phrase and we should privilege - or at the very least not exclude - the first one. City planning is not just "can we?" questions for economists, but "should we?" questions for creative community stewards. As economist Florida writes:
The deep and enduring changes of our age are not technological but social and cultural.
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