Key points
- Florida measures the creative class with the three Ts: talent, technology, bohemian, melting pot and gay indices combined in a creativity index.
- Glaeser found the effect vanishes once university graduates are controlled for; Hoyman and Faricy found no relationship with growth.
- The cities that attracted the most creative class are the most unequal and least affordable, as Florida himself acknowledged in 2017.
The creative class, according to Richard Florida, is the group of workers whose function is to create new ideas, technology or content, scientists, engineers, architects, designers, artists and knowledge professionals, and his thesis in The Rise of the Creative Class (2002) is that cities that attract it prosper and those that do not decline. Florida calculated that the group made up around 30 % of the American workforce, some 38 million people, and argued that, unlike the industrial age in which people followed firms, firms now follow talent and talent chooses open, diverse places with urban life. The question is whether that theory describes the future of cities or a recipe for inequality, and the answer requires looking at how it is measured.
The three Ts and the indices: how Florida measures the creative class
The measurement apparatus is the book's most original part. Florida summed up the conditions of growth in the three Ts, technology, talent and tolerance, and built indices for each: the talent index with the share of university graduates, the technology index with the concentration of high tech, and for tolerance the bohemian index, which counts artists and musicians, the melting pot index, which measures the foreign-born population, and the gay index, developed with the demographer Gary Gates, which measures the share of same-sex couples as an indicator of openness. Combined in a creativity index, they placed San Francisco, Austin, San Diego, Boston and Seattle at the top, and the correlation between tolerance and growth was the finding that travelled the world.
From theory to fast policy: Cool Cities and the consultancy
The recipe quickly became policy. Florida founded a consultancy and dozens of cities commissioned creative strategies, Michigan launched its Cool Cities programme in 2003, and mayors across Europe and the Americas invested in arts districts, bike lanes, festivals and tolerance marketing to attract young professionals. The geographer Jamie Peck described that diffusion in 2005 as fast policy: a cheap package, compatible with any government and requiring no action on inequality, ideal for cities in competition. The creative class became the brand of early twenty-first-century urbanism.
Glaeser, Hoyman and Faricy, Storper and Markusen: what the evidence says
The later evidence was less kind. The economist Edward Glaeser re-analysed Florida's data and found that the creative class effect disappeared once the share of university graduates was controlled for: what predicts growth is human capital, not bohemia. Michele Hoyman and Christopher Faricy found in 2009 no relationship between the presence of the creative class and growth in employment or income across American metropolitan areas. Michael Storper and Allen Scott argued in 2009 that causality runs the other way, people follow jobs, and Ann Markusen criticised the category itself, which groups poets and accountants by occupation and not by creativity. Florida has acknowledged in later work that the correlation did not prove causation.
Winning cities and the service class: the recipe for inequality
The distributive cost is the gravest critique. The cities that attracted the most creative class are also those with the highest income inequality and the least affordable housing, and Florida himself documented in The New Urban Crisis (2017) that the success of winning cities was expelling the service class that sustains them. Creative policies subsidised professionals' consumption, cafés, lofts, arts districts, while the wages of cleaners, waiters and carers, whom Florida classifies as the service class, did not keep up with the housing prices those same professionals drove up.
The counterargument deserves a hearing: Florida was right that talent concentrates and that urban quality of life, openness and diversity matter for the economy, and many of his recommendations, public space, culture, tolerance, are good in themselves. The lesson is that the theory described a real correlation and turned it into a recipe that did not grow on its own: attracting talent without affordable housing or decent wages for those who serve that talent produces richer and more unequal cities. The future of cities, if the creative class is part of it, depends on who is allowed to stay when it arrives.
Frequently asked questions
What is Richard Florida's creative class?
The group of workers whose function is to create ideas, technology or content, scientists, engineers, designers, artists and knowledge professionals, around 30 % of the American workforce by his calculation; Florida argues that firms follow talent and that talent chooses technological, skilled and tolerant cities.
Has the creative class theory survived empirical testing?
Poorly: Glaeser showed the effect disappears once education is controlled for, Hoyman and Faricy found no relationship with growth, Storper and Scott argue that people follow jobs and not the reverse, and creative cities turned out to be the most unequal.
