{"id":38294,"date":"2017-04-27T03:00:47","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T07:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=38294"},"modified":"2018-05-17T21:56:47","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T01:56:47","slug":"richard-florida-has-a-new-book-that-advises-cities-on-what-to-do-about-problems-that-result-from-advice-he-gave-them-in-his-previous-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/04\/27\/richard-florida-has-a-new-book-that-advises-cities-on-what-to-do-about-problems-that-result-from-advice-he-gave-them-in-his-previous-books\/","title":{"rendered":"“Richard Florida has a new book [that] advises cities on what to do about problems that result from advice he gave them in his previous books”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley<\/a> hits this one out of the ballpark:<\/p>\n

Gadabout urbanist Richard Florida has a new book: The New Urban Crisis<\/em>. It advises cities on what to do about problems that result from advice he gave them in his previous books, notably The Rise of the Creative Class<\/em>. Stuff your downtown core full of creative types and you shall prosper, the University of Toronto professor advised, and many cities listened. Now some face a \u201ccrisis of their own success,\u201d he told a Toronto breakfast crowd at the Urban Land Institute\u2019s Electric Cities Symposium: the blue-collar types who make the creative class\u2019s artisanal baked goods and mind their children have been \u201cpushed\u201d ever further into the suburbs. Economic and geographic inequality results, and Rob Ford\/Donald Trump\/Brexit-style resentment can build.<\/p>\n

Florida\u2019s many critics have long warned this was a flaw in his vision. But now Florida says he finds it \u201cterrifying,\u201d so he\u2019s off on another book tour.<\/p>\n

If I sound a bit peevish, it\u2019s because I find him rather insufferable. Critics have poked holes in much of his research, but much more of it strikes me as overly complex analysis and measurement of fairly basic, intuitive phenomena that are common to dynamic and not-so-dynamic cities. While the remarkable urban revivals in recent decades in New York and Pittsburgh, and nascent ones in Detroit and Newark, are all very interesting, I\u2019ve never understood what they have to teach us about Canadian cities. Their cores never \u201chollowed out\u201d in the first place, necessitating wholesale renewal. When I listen to Florida talk, I hear Lyle Lanley trying to sell Springfield a monorail.<\/p>\n

In any event, his prescriptions for the GTA are not exactly visionary: more transit, more affordable housing, densification over NIMBYism and more decision-making autonomy for cities. \u201cThe key today is shifting power from provinces to cities,\u201d Florida writes in a Canadian-focused paper linked to the new book. That made it all the more galling to watch his post-speech \u201cfireside chat\u201d with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, whose tires he pumped well beyond their recommended PSI.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know this. It\u2019s in your blood,\u201d Florida gushed of her urbanist bona fides<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Well, let\u2019s see. Wynne can certainly claim to have committed many billions in taxpayer money to transit projects. But if there were awards for NIMBYism, Wynne would have one for the nine-figure cancellation of two unpopular gas-fired power plants, during an election campaign of which she was co-chair; and perhaps another for her party\u2019s shameless politicking on transit in Scarborough.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley hits this one out of the ballpark: Gadabout urbanist Richard Florida has a new book: The New Urban Crisis. It advises cities on what to do about problems that result from advice he gave them in his previous books, notably The Rise of the Creative Class. Stuff your downtown core full of creative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25,28],"tags":[426,957,87,527,1207,207],"class_list":["post-38294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-economics","category-media","tag-housing","tag-kathleenwynne","tag-ontario","tag-publictransit","tag-suburbs","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9XE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38295,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38294\/revisions\/38295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}