COOL CITIES AREN’T SO COOL

For years, Richard Florida has been a proponent of the Creative Class. His theory is cities with designers and artists and hair stylists and the like fare better than cities based on older economy. Places like Baltimore, Berlin, San Francisco, and Detroit put the emphasis on jazz clubs and art museums and luxury hotels to attract the new, smart, creative workers, and those cities are better for it, Florida argues. Now comes the counter argument. Joel Kotkin says Florida’s data is all from the late ’90s, dot-com boom. That time is over, he says, and those cities are going to pay the price if they neglect the infrastructure families need, like schools and transportation and a strong middle class. No, Dallas isn’t mentioned in the story, but it could/should be.