Thank you for addressing such a timely topic. I have lived in Washington DC and have seen such monumental changes in the neighborhoods over this time. I can only imagine what cities will look like in the three years to come. I look forward to today’s broadcast — Tom, your team is always ON POINT!

I remember a map of BOS-WAS in 7th grade (1971). What else in new?

It’s clear that the chip designers, bio-tech researchers, green energy scientists, etc. can work remotely, and or in small hubs (RTP, Austin, Boulder-Denver). These workers definitley don’t need to work in a Megalopolis. And in fact don’t. The retail space is too expensive. How many bio-tech start-ups in Manhattan?

What’s not clear is what the other 99.9% of the people, who are not knowledge workers are going to do. I’ve heard this guy spouting this stuff for 10 years. He’s just retreading it because of the current economic crisis. Where’s the beef?

I live in the greater Milwaukee area. A classic rust belt area. I see our area much more diversified than before, and connected to Chicago in an increasing manner. I am working on the web and I am writing this from a wifi connected coffee shop in a the wonderful lake country just west of Milwaukee. I believe in America and Wisconsin, we will survive and thrive in the future. But we need 21st century political and business leadership to move forward. One last comment. I have used India subcontractors for some of my web development. After that experience, I will be buying American for these services in the future.

I had Dr. Florida as a teacher at CMU back in the early 90s and have followed his work every since.

After studying with him, I moved to Ann Arbor Michigan to work in an organization focused on economic development and helping the Rust Belt. What they did then did not work.

What do you think those universities should do differently this time around to make a difference? Battery technology, green, what?

Economic crisis always disrupts the economic geography of production and its attendant patterns of consumption. This is not new. However, it’s not just creativity that turns places around, but the ability for creative labor to integrate into a division of labor. Production is the motor force. The theories associated with who’s your city and the creative class discount the spatial dynamics of production and work, that is economic geography of production and the mutually reinforcing interplay between the location of firms and the location of labor.

What about Friedman’s ‘Entrepreneur Stimulus Plan’.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opinion/22friedman.html?_r=2&em

What this man is talking about is not going to happen.
The burbs are to entrenched and the car is the way the majority of people get around. Your not going to get millions of people to move or change to make this happen.

It’s pie in the sky for some sectors.

I live in Boston but on the outskirts of the city and there is no decent public transportation, there is no money going into light rail. I live about 10 minutes from a the train but it’s a huge old diesels and it cost over $5 to go 4 stops to downtown Boston. It never runs on time or on weekends. What is wrong with this picture?

WOW! What Carl in Nashville said in a really heartening phoned-in addition to the discussion. We’re looking at an opportunity for change and a good deal of our energy should be invested in humanizing our communities and our travel/mobility.

We’ve been in the grip of corporate growth even as we individual Americans have felt diminished and battered. Time to change that balance of power.

Great discussion today. I am hopeful for the future in the post-crash economy. I just returned from an event outside San Diego. My friends drove me to the Amtrak station where I boarded alongside several people with bicycles. I got out off in LA, took a bus to LAX, flew to Boston, took the MBTA Silver Line to my office, and will ride my own bicycle home for the final link.

So many solutions to our problems may be solved with Intermodal transportation solutions that include walking and bicycles. The metro areas which embrace this shall survive.

Of note is that President Obama is the first president since Kennedy to come from a Northern urban base. That, combined with the certain reduction in traditional energy reserves, will spark a need to retrofit our landscape.

Mr. Florida unrolls an important map for the next 30 years.

Great topic. Great discussion.

Thanks,

Richard Fries

Do we need downtowns with business, law and financial firms all clustered in one place anymore? I used to work for large law firms in DC and in Boston and it is all e-mails, blackberries, phones, faxes, scanners. What is the difference where you are located this day and age? If good public transport is not in the cards perhaps those businesses should disperse all over the place? At least the traffic will not be concentrated in one narrow bottleneck each morning and evening.

Efficient high speed rail needs Eminent Domain to straighten the curves.

Sorry, because turns and curves are the limiting factor in high speed rail efficiency.

Also, the development of a high speed rail network can parallel the much needed updated electrical grid if a goal of the rail line is to maximize renewable inputs.

For a guy who’s in the research biz, Richard Florida seems to have a personal anecdote for everything.

And yes, the word “depression” is indeed depressing. But why stop at renaming it “reset?” That sounds like the button you press when your bowling ball is stuck in the gutter. Let’s call it “Super Party Happy Time” or something, and we’ll all feel better.

Read TRAIN TIME by John Stilgoe, published by University of Virginia Press. Judging by the book, he would be an excellent guest for the show.

Who with a remaining speck of gray matter cannot see that the big money players and their pocket politicians will never, ever, allow the kind of “new think” being forwarded by the good professor and others to come in and upset the golden applecart they’ve so lovingly built and protected for the past 70 years? Point #1–anyone who can read and admire Tom Friedman should be viewed with suspicion.

Point #2–folks like the good professor (and Friedman) are on the one hand convinced that the world is balanced on the shoulders of an oligarchical ruling class a-la Ayn Rand, while on the other hand expecting the vast “under classes” to simply go along with the program. What they’ve forgotten–or probably never knew in the first place–is that the disappearance of a vibrant middle class is what will finally de-flower the gilded lily the good professor is talking about. I noticed nothing in the interview this morning to indicate that anyone is worried about the steadily declining middle class in this country.

Furthermore, there is nothing I hear in the good professsor’s rhetoric that would suggest a means of support for of his “mega centrist” model including fast rail transportation and all the other goodies he talks about. Who is going to care if they can be whisked between population centers if they don’t have jobs? And since we’re not headed toward great wealth redistribution in America–not while the neocons and their wrong headed ideologies have any degree of control–the good professor is simply dreaming.

Think back. Where was the Western Roman Empire in the Sixth Century? It was a society of the very, very rich at one end and the very, very poor at the other. In other words, no middle class. This could also describe most Third World nations that we see today. And this, professor, is where the future of the great U.S. of A. is headed if we don’t give up our greed and the idea that policy needs to center around the wishes and the whimsy of those in the upper economic eschelons of American society.

So where are we going when this is over? We’re going right back to where we were–with less than we had, but nothing that a little more belt tightening won’t cure. It’s boom and bust, professor–the new wave of the future. And the reason? The reason is because too many in our top heavy society make their fortunes both on the way up and again on the way down. It’s simply too lovely a system for them to give up, and as long as they can keep the under classes satisfied with making do with less, they will continue to milk the system until the cash cows have all run dry.

Michigan already has the infrastructure, the know how, It is a No Brainer!! We Want to work!

thank you mr. florida and ryan stellar and skype

gentrification

The midwest is the new silicon valley!

While an interesting discussion, I wonder why Prof. Florida does not take peak oil and climate change into account. We are on the edge of a huge change. Things will not bounce back in the same way again. We must move to localization and energy scaling down. Please go to Chrismartenson.com/crashcourse for a very interesting and informative course on the intersection between Energy, the Environment and the Economy. It has changed my perspective completely.
Also, I found a comment that Prof. Florida made quite distressing. He said that immigrants made use of “God given resources in the US.White European descendants must remember that these were not God given but taken from the Native peoples already living here.

I am from Africa and working now on a project designed to help villagers in that continent have a better quality of life. I can’t tell how much Dr Florida’s theory about mega regions as being the great future has failed on that part of the world. Towns there are congested and do not offer viable social amenities to populations. As a result, some of the towns-frustrated folks flock back to villages, dragging with them new issues that were thus far unknown to rural populations such as overcrowded schools and hospitals,to name a few, if they exist. Fortunately he pointed out that only less than 20 percent of the world population live in towns. Which in some extent lessens the acuity of the problem.

I wanted to call, but was not able to ask about the author’s opinion about Curitiba in Brasil and their approach to urban development around a bus based transportation system.

Much more flexible than rail and cheaper also.

[...] he summarizes his points (and also has an interview with Detroit’s Mayor) that you can find linked here. Whether you choose to read the article or listen to the interview, his arguments provoke a lot of [...]

Florida must appeal to the demographic for On Point. Or he’s one of the people like the the right wing think tank gang who solicits call in programs with canned topics designed to sound current.

I’ve heard a number of these “the future is so bright we have to wear shades” guys. And I put down his book on the creative class after a couple of pages.

It’s elitism. What Christian Lander calls “stuff white people like” with a website by that name. It’s pretentious and condescending and quite frankly I don’t know who pays this guy’s tab for food.

Note that “stuff white people like” is about class not race. It’s about the affectations, perquisites and presumed entitlements of this so-called creative class more properly defined as a bloated bourgeoisie.

I thought that Richard Florida made some good points, but was baffled by his statement about, “the great success story of Providence”.

Yes, there’s a mall downtown, but there is also record unemployment, readily apparent corruption, and among the highest taxes anywhere. It’s not walkable (if that were the standard), nor does it have an adequate public transit system. The small city is divided by several interstete highways.

Great Pizza, and some thriving arts, mostly due to the Rhode Island School of Design, but pretty buildings alone do not make for a happy or prosperous citizenry.

What’s the basis of calling Providence a success?

So where goes St. Louis? The city would seemed to be well situated to take advantage of geography, serving as a link between North and South, East and West, rural and urban, agricultural and industrial/technological. A regional center with strong medical, biological and educational resources.

Yet the area seems stymied by a quagmire of political, racial, economic divisiveness and “old boy” curuption. Education has low statewide priority.
“Missourah” views St. Louis as an enemy instead of an economic engine.

Metro area Light rail is so limited that it is useless for the majority of the residents. High speed rail to Chicago, Indianapois, KC, Memphis – not even on the radar as a concept. Carpetbaggers repeatedly profit then walk away, leaving behind failed initatives and civic frustration. It seems that lack of vision, lack of stong leadership and resistance to cooperation will continue to obstruct St. Louis’s path to the RESET.

I would very much like to see speculation on the opportunities in rural America that will arise from the transformation. Speculation based on analysis of the likely spending and other drivers.

[...] do like Richard Florida’s thinking and was recently listening to a discussion he had on NPR. I’ve included it here (as well as the original Atltantic Monthly article) and he speaks [...]

[...] of Management, has given us some new terminology in a recent article in The Atlantic and in an interview last Monday on NPR’s “OnPoint” with Tom [...]

To Jeffe in Boston – I am in NY, which has some similar conditions (on a bigger scale) as Boston. I think we will change because we will have to change. Unless we can come up with a new, renewable way to power cars and trucks, we are headed for big trouble, and for too long, things have been swept under the rug. We also DESPERATELY NEED Check out the work of James H. Kunstler – his views are extreme, but I have yet to see anyone successfully refute them.

To Jeffe in Boston – I am in NY, which has some similar conditions (on a bigger scale) as Boston. I think we will change because we will have to change. Unless we can come up with a new, renewable way to power cars and trucks, we are headed for big trouble, and for too long, things have been swept under the rug. We also DESPERATELY NEED to reduce our populations. World human population has grown from 1 billion to over 6 billion in the last 200 years, and from 3 billion to 6 billion in the last 50 years. This is a disastrous trend. Check out the work of James H. Kunstler – his views are extreme, but I have yet to see anyone successfully refute them.

I came to this game late (I listened to the podcast yesterday), but I have had a chance to listen and read all of the contents. The significant topic that I see missing in all of this commentary is the role of place. Dr. Florida and the rest speak as if the economy: one, is made entirely of jobs and resources, and two, that it can exist above and beyond where and how people live. What happens to communities, families, and the environment when people just pick up and move off? And, to paraphrase Richard Sennett, how can one reasonably expect to develop character and a life of integrity if both place and work are ever changing? We have had a nation of house flippers, to our collective detriment. How much better served are we with job and space flippers?

[...] he was talking about America’s post-crash geography and mentioned that, while recessions have been traditionally bad for the working class, the [...]