Q&A: Florida sees a 'different' role for government

Richard Florida has been the toast of city conferences from Toronto to Auckland since he wrote "The Rise of the Creative Class: And How it's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life."

His 2002 best-seller, hotly debated among urban gurus, argues that economically healthy cities such as San Francisco and Boston have prospered in part by focusing on attracting talented people who are looking for friendly, lively, interesting and socially tolerant places to live.

Florida, who is leaving CMU after 17 years to take a public policy faculty position with George Mason University near Washington, D.C., broadly defines the "creative class" as the 38 million Americans who make their living as scientists, engineers, architects, educators, writers, artists and entertainers.

A severe critic of Pittsburgh's heavy-handed urban redevelopment schemes and soulmate of urban guru Jane Jacobs, he describes himself as a John Kerry-leaning fiscal conservative and social liberal who believes "government should enable people." I talked to him at length last week; here are some highlights:

Q: What, in a line or two, is "Rise of the Creative Class" about:

A: The book says that creativity is the source of economic wealth. It is the driving force of economic wealth. It has been somewhat misconstrued as homage to the New Economy or the "Creative Class," but that's a misrepresentation. The book says that every single human being is creative, and that "the key to economic wealth and growth is to tap the creative furnace that lies deep inside every human being."

Q: What have you learned since you wrote it.

A: One is that the creative economy is quite global. I looked at it as a domestic manifestation or phenomenon, when it is global. The United States faces fierce competition in the creative age. Countries such as Canada and certainly Australia and New Zealand are abandoning their long legacies of social welfarism and developing societies that try to mix entrepreneurship with openness.

We were once the only country that allowed you to come here if you were politically and culturally persecuted, if you have a good idea, if you want to pursue economic opportunity, and let you be yourself and build your dreams. Other countries are wising up to that -- that's what my new book will be saying.

In some sense, Pittsburgh is a very important microcosm for the United States to look at. Here is a place that had incredible technology, incredible research and incredible economic might, and in less than 50 years lost it all -- mainly because it became the kind of place that people felt they could no longer better themselves and realize their dreams.

Q: Of Pittsburgh's current problems, what is the worst?

A: It's leadership, broadly. It's a combination of both civic and political leadership. There is a reluctance for anyone to lead and the leadership we have remains, at best, wedded to a 1950s model of economic revitalization.

Q: Is there anything that City Hall ...

A: You have to get rid of the mayor. There's no confidence in the mayor. It's just ... he has to go.

Q: Are there any answers in your book to Pittsburgh's problems?

A: The whole idea of Davey Lawrence and Richard Mellon worked well 50 years ago, it can't work today. You've got to go out there and harness the energy of people. (Councilman) Bill Peduto said this very well. He said, "Look Mr. Mayor. All you have to do is get these people involved. Don't fight them." That's where the key is.

Another thing we have to do is become a city that is committed to openness and diversity and that welcomes immigrants. We have to be a city that will let gay people feel comfortable coming out of the closet and being themselves. We have to be the kind of city where young women feel like they have a role. We can't be a 1950s country club city anymore.

Q: When you talk about government, you always seem to be talking about government not as tool but as a "squelcher" that is in the way.

A: Where I share common ground with some Republicans and libertarians, is that I think old-style government programs have become a huge impediment to leveraging the creative age and allowing it to emerge. That said, I think there is still a role for government to set up the parameters in which market-based actions take place.

Let me give you some examples: Some of the New Deal programs which spurred suburban development by providing lower-cost mortgage loans, New Deal programs which leveraged highway construction. New Deal programs which actually boosted wages and ushered in occupation and safety and health (rules) -- and I might say this contentiously to a libertarian -- allowed people to join unions and allowed their wages to go up. All of those things helped build a U.S. mass-production Industrial Age economy.

I think we need to think about programs like that today -- programs that are not telling people what to do and restricting their behavior, but programs that are actually enabling our economy to grow and prosper.

Q: Sounds like the Founding Fathers to me.

A: Yeah. If you asked me what the problems of our current structure are, I'd say it is oriented toward large-scale political institutions and large companies when it should be oriented to entrepreneurial efforts, small firms and to people's energy. We have to move away from large-scale government programs to community-oriented efforts.

Q: Have you learned anything from your critics, either from the left or right?

A: I've learned that this whole notion of creativity and the creative class can be misconstrued as being elitist, and it is not. It's not the way it was intended. It gets masked by this idea that the creative class is elitist, that it's about bohemians, that it's about latte bars, that it's about nightlife districts, that it's about young yuppie people. That's not what it's about.

If you look at the critics of my work, look at where they come from, they come from the socially conservative right and they come from the far left.

I can show you two quotes, one coming from the Democratic Leadership Council's Blueprint magazine and the other coming from the (conservative Manhattan Institute's) City Journal. Both critiques are political. And both critiques are essentially saying, "Don't let the genie out of the bottle. Don't let these creative people get their way. Let's control, control, control. Let's squelch."