By Richard Florida
I don't know why I bought this book. It is not that you need to read a whole array of data and research in order to make up an argument in favor of moving out of your city if things are not working well there.
Urbanist and journalist Richard Florida posits that, contrary to the popular argument of the "World is Flat", despite hyperconnectivity, location matters more than ever, since resources and innovation tend to cluster in specific places; therefore, he decision where to live affects all of us in big ways, much more than our decision for a life partner or career. Besides, cities have personalities that could match ours or not.
And that's it; that's the only thing you need to know before saving yourself up your time to read this book. The rest is just research and data that supports these arguments. I really like Mr. Florida's works, but this was too much for too little.
Amazon Page for details
My Rating: 6/10
Click Here to Read My Notes
I don't know why I bought this book. It is not that you need to read a whole array of data and research in order to make up an argument in favor of moving out of your city if things are not working well there.
Urbanist and journalist Richard Florida posits that, contrary to the popular argument of the "World is Flat", despite hyperconnectivity, location matters more than ever, since resources and innovation tend to cluster in specific places; therefore, he decision where to live affects all of us in big ways, much more than our decision for a life partner or career. Besides, cities have personalities that could match ours or not.
And that's it; that's the only thing you need to know before saving yourself up your time to read this book. The rest is just research and data that supports these arguments. I really like Mr. Florida's works, but this was too much for too little.
Amazon Page for details
My Rating: 6/10
Click Here to Read My Notes
Creative people cluster not simply because they like to be around each other, or because they all happen to prefer cosmopolitan centers with lots of amenities, though both of those things tend to be true. Creative people and companies cluster because of the powerful productivity advantages, economies of scale, and knowledge spillovers such density brings.
Technically, a megaregion must meet two key criteria. First, it must be a contiguous lighted area with more than one major city or metropolitan region.
Second, it must produce more than $100 billion in LRP.
IF WE POSTULATE ONLY THE USUAL LIST OF ECONOMIC forces,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas wrote in 1988, “cities should fly apart.”1 After all, Lucas reminds us, land “is always far cheaper outside cities than inside.”
Why, then, don’t businesses and people move en masse out to where costs are substantially lower? Lucas answers his question with another, equally simple observation: “What can people be paying Manhattan or downtown Chicago rents for, if not to be around other people?”
Ever since Alfred Marshall’s seminal writings, economists have thought of cities as clusters, or “agglomerations,” of firms, factories, and industries.
Subsequent economics research has shown that companies perceive less benefit from being around other companies than from gaining access to a common pool of talent.
When people—especially talented and creative ones—come together, ideas flow more freely, and as a result individual and aggregate talents increase exponentially; the end result amounts to much more than the sum of the parts.
The city, Jacobs argued, is a complex, self-organizing ecology whose form cannot be predetermined or controlled from the outside. Its diversity is the true source of innovation and economic growth.
For the foreseeable future, megaregions will be the economic units that structure and orient the world economy.
Megaregions will become more congested and pricier, causing greater social and economic segregation.
The mobile possess the means, resources, and inclination to seek out and move to locations where they can leverage their talents. They are not necessarily born mobile, nor are they invariably rich. The mobile understand that the pursuit of economic opportunity often requires them to move.
The Hungarian-born investor George Soros has said many times that had he stayed in his home country he would have amounted to little because there was no infrastructure through which he could leverage his talents.
Many people with the means to move choose to stay rooted. Some are satisfied with their lives, even though they know they could potentially do better elsewhere. This isn’t always a bad thing; research indicates that being near family and friends and seeing them regularly can increase wellbeing and happiness.
In the past, a person’s status was largely determined by place of birth. In today’s highly mobile and interconnected society, one’s life chances are significantly affected by the ability to move and relocate as well.
The leading reason people in the United States move is for housing. According to the 2000 census, over half (51.6 percent) of all people who move do so for that reason. They are renters wanting to own, young couples wanting to upgrade, and retirees looking to downsize.
The study found that seeing friends or relatives in person almost every day is worth more than six figures in additional income. For example, Powdthavee found that if you relocate from a city where you regularly see your family and friends to one where you do not, you would need to earn $133,000 just to make up for the lack of happiness incurred by the distance.
Many people elect to stay rooted even when it’s economically feasible to move elsewhere. Perhaps they are intuitively aware of the economic value of close social relationships. And many who have moved ultimately decide to return home someday. The draw of home is incredibly powerful—the pull of family ties, the need to take care of aging parents or help with children, the desire to be close to lifelong friends. Strikingly, out of the roughly two hundred detailed locational histories I collected for this book, many of those who had moved around chose to return home later in life.
A second group of jobs, those held by the creative class, is growing even more quickly and is even more important to our nation’s economic growth. This sector includes jobs in science and technology, arts and design, entertainment and media, law, finance, management, health care, and education.
But skill is made up of more than a college degree. On-the-job experience, wisdom and savvy, creativity, ambition, and entrepreneurial talent are among the many qualities that can’t be formally taught but are requisite for success in the creative economy.
THE BIGGEST INVESTMENT MOST PEOPLE EVER MAKE IS their house. But housing prices in Vancouver, London, Moscow, Tokyo, New York, and San Francisco far exceed real estate prices in other regions of those countries. And the gap is getting wider. Why such a wide divergence? It all boils down to that old real estate adage: location, location, location.
Economists say that the price of real estate is the best reflection of the effective demand for a location.
Several years ago, New York Times economic columnist David Leonhardt called me with some questions on this subject. Why weren’t firms and people moving to Buffalo or Cleveland? Basic economics would suggest that at least some cost-sensitive businesses and people would want to take advantage of inexpensive real estate. But most don’t, and for a very basic reason. Housing costs reflect what people are willing to pay to live in a particular location.
As with any investment, the key to getting a great return on real estate is figuring out how to identify the hot spots in advance.
Real estate developers and investors have been interested in my indexes of city and regional performance—like the bohemian index and the gay index—for years.
Albert Ratner, cochairman of the board at Forest City Enterprises, one of the biggest real estate companies in the world, likes to remind me that he alone has promoted The Rise of the Creative Class enough to secure its spot on the best-seller list. Another real estate investor once said of my work, “You have provided a map of where to invest.” That was hardly what I had intended, but it is nonetheless true: by their very nature, my regional indicators identified real estate hot spots.
But beautiful beaches, sidewalk cafés, and bicycle trails aren’t the only indicators of a real estate hot spot. “Want to know where a great place to invest in real estate will be five or ten years from now?” asked a 2007 issue of Business Week.13 “Look at where artists are living now.” The article notes that sociologists and policy makers have long thought of artists, designers, musicians, and writers as urban pioneers—economic cure-alls who stimulate local economies and drive up neighborhood real estate values with their presence.
Many people believe that gays and lesbians do not cause growth but are merely drawn to certain types of places. By using path models (advanced statistical tools that relate independent, intermediary, and dependent variables), we were able to isolate the relationships between the bohemian and gay populations and other factors on housing values and on each other.
Escalating real estate prices can inhibit innovation. Many forms of innovative and creative activity—whether high-tech businesses, art galleries, or musical groups—require the same thing: cheap space. That’s what Jane Jacobs was getting at when she famously wrote, “New ideas require old buildings.”
In his captivating best-seller Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert writes that “most of us make at least three important decisions in our lives: where to live, what to do, and with whom to do it.”
There’s one thing happiness researchers agree on: money does not buy happiness. In wealthier countries, where many citizens already enjoy a relatively high quality of life, individuals tend to seek satisfaction through less tangible things such as personal fulfillment, self-actualization, pleasure, and positive emotions.
But after a certain threshold of income is crossed, the effect of money and material goods on happiness levels out. Higher levels of income or economic growth do not necessarily translate into higher levels of happiness.
Psychological studies suggest that while the correlation between money and happiness is real, conventional wisdom has it backward. It is not that people with more money are happier; it’s that happier people may be better earners: “Part of the typical correlation between income and well-being,” write Diener and Seligman, “is due to well-being causing higher incomes, rather than the other way around. Happy people go on to earn higher incomes than unhappy people.”
Unhappy people tend to channel their time and effort into the pursuit of material goods. They become materialistic, missing out on the relationships and experiences that researchers believe have the greatest effect on personal fulfillment.
If not money, what does genuinely make us happy? According to research, a vibrant social life is one source of happiness. People who do things they enjoy with people they like are happier than others. Good physical and mental health is another. Not surprisingly, people who suffer from depression and other mental illnesses report far lower levels of well-being. To a large extent happiness hinges on personal bonds. Loving relationships with a spouse or significant other and with children, as well as a high frequency of meaningful interactions with family members and friends, are essential to happiness. Studies find that on balance, married people are happier than single people. Religion and faith can also have a highly positive effect. Happiness is related to employment, though again, it’s the substance of the work, not the pay, that appears to matter.
Place is the missing link in happiness studies. That is surprising, since so many people take great joy and fulfillment from where they live.
place is a major source of excitement and creative stimulation, an essential component of our psychological well-being.
IT IS ALL WELL AND GOOD TO KNOW THAT PLACE AFFECTS happiness, that the happiest communities tend to be open-minded, vibrant places where people feel free to express themselves and cultivate their identities, and that these communities tend to foster creativity.
Technically, a megaregion must meet two key criteria. First, it must be a contiguous lighted area with more than one major city or metropolitan region.
Second, it must produce more than $100 billion in LRP.
IF WE POSTULATE ONLY THE USUAL LIST OF ECONOMIC forces,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas wrote in 1988, “cities should fly apart.”1 After all, Lucas reminds us, land “is always far cheaper outside cities than inside.”
Why, then, don’t businesses and people move en masse out to where costs are substantially lower? Lucas answers his question with another, equally simple observation: “What can people be paying Manhattan or downtown Chicago rents for, if not to be around other people?”
Ever since Alfred Marshall’s seminal writings, economists have thought of cities as clusters, or “agglomerations,” of firms, factories, and industries.
Subsequent economics research has shown that companies perceive less benefit from being around other companies than from gaining access to a common pool of talent.
When people—especially talented and creative ones—come together, ideas flow more freely, and as a result individual and aggregate talents increase exponentially; the end result amounts to much more than the sum of the parts.
The city, Jacobs argued, is a complex, self-organizing ecology whose form cannot be predetermined or controlled from the outside. Its diversity is the true source of innovation and economic growth.
For the foreseeable future, megaregions will be the economic units that structure and orient the world economy.
Megaregions will become more congested and pricier, causing greater social and economic segregation.
The mobile possess the means, resources, and inclination to seek out and move to locations where they can leverage their talents. They are not necessarily born mobile, nor are they invariably rich. The mobile understand that the pursuit of economic opportunity often requires them to move.
The Hungarian-born investor George Soros has said many times that had he stayed in his home country he would have amounted to little because there was no infrastructure through which he could leverage his talents.
Many people with the means to move choose to stay rooted. Some are satisfied with their lives, even though they know they could potentially do better elsewhere. This isn’t always a bad thing; research indicates that being near family and friends and seeing them regularly can increase wellbeing and happiness.
In the past, a person’s status was largely determined by place of birth. In today’s highly mobile and interconnected society, one’s life chances are significantly affected by the ability to move and relocate as well.
The leading reason people in the United States move is for housing. According to the 2000 census, over half (51.6 percent) of all people who move do so for that reason. They are renters wanting to own, young couples wanting to upgrade, and retirees looking to downsize.
The study found that seeing friends or relatives in person almost every day is worth more than six figures in additional income. For example, Powdthavee found that if you relocate from a city where you regularly see your family and friends to one where you do not, you would need to earn $133,000 just to make up for the lack of happiness incurred by the distance.
Many people elect to stay rooted even when it’s economically feasible to move elsewhere. Perhaps they are intuitively aware of the economic value of close social relationships. And many who have moved ultimately decide to return home someday. The draw of home is incredibly powerful—the pull of family ties, the need to take care of aging parents or help with children, the desire to be close to lifelong friends. Strikingly, out of the roughly two hundred detailed locational histories I collected for this book, many of those who had moved around chose to return home later in life.
A second group of jobs, those held by the creative class, is growing even more quickly and is even more important to our nation’s economic growth. This sector includes jobs in science and technology, arts and design, entertainment and media, law, finance, management, health care, and education.
But skill is made up of more than a college degree. On-the-job experience, wisdom and savvy, creativity, ambition, and entrepreneurial talent are among the many qualities that can’t be formally taught but are requisite for success in the creative economy.
THE BIGGEST INVESTMENT MOST PEOPLE EVER MAKE IS their house. But housing prices in Vancouver, London, Moscow, Tokyo, New York, and San Francisco far exceed real estate prices in other regions of those countries. And the gap is getting wider. Why such a wide divergence? It all boils down to that old real estate adage: location, location, location.
Economists say that the price of real estate is the best reflection of the effective demand for a location.
Several years ago, New York Times economic columnist David Leonhardt called me with some questions on this subject. Why weren’t firms and people moving to Buffalo or Cleveland? Basic economics would suggest that at least some cost-sensitive businesses and people would want to take advantage of inexpensive real estate. But most don’t, and for a very basic reason. Housing costs reflect what people are willing to pay to live in a particular location.
As with any investment, the key to getting a great return on real estate is figuring out how to identify the hot spots in advance.
Real estate developers and investors have been interested in my indexes of city and regional performance—like the bohemian index and the gay index—for years.
Albert Ratner, cochairman of the board at Forest City Enterprises, one of the biggest real estate companies in the world, likes to remind me that he alone has promoted The Rise of the Creative Class enough to secure its spot on the best-seller list. Another real estate investor once said of my work, “You have provided a map of where to invest.” That was hardly what I had intended, but it is nonetheless true: by their very nature, my regional indicators identified real estate hot spots.
But beautiful beaches, sidewalk cafés, and bicycle trails aren’t the only indicators of a real estate hot spot. “Want to know where a great place to invest in real estate will be five or ten years from now?” asked a 2007 issue of Business Week.13 “Look at where artists are living now.” The article notes that sociologists and policy makers have long thought of artists, designers, musicians, and writers as urban pioneers—economic cure-alls who stimulate local economies and drive up neighborhood real estate values with their presence.
Many people believe that gays and lesbians do not cause growth but are merely drawn to certain types of places. By using path models (advanced statistical tools that relate independent, intermediary, and dependent variables), we were able to isolate the relationships between the bohemian and gay populations and other factors on housing values and on each other.
Escalating real estate prices can inhibit innovation. Many forms of innovative and creative activity—whether high-tech businesses, art galleries, or musical groups—require the same thing: cheap space. That’s what Jane Jacobs was getting at when she famously wrote, “New ideas require old buildings.”
In his captivating best-seller Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert writes that “most of us make at least three important decisions in our lives: where to live, what to do, and with whom to do it.”
There’s one thing happiness researchers agree on: money does not buy happiness. In wealthier countries, where many citizens already enjoy a relatively high quality of life, individuals tend to seek satisfaction through less tangible things such as personal fulfillment, self-actualization, pleasure, and positive emotions.
But after a certain threshold of income is crossed, the effect of money and material goods on happiness levels out. Higher levels of income or economic growth do not necessarily translate into higher levels of happiness.
Psychological studies suggest that while the correlation between money and happiness is real, conventional wisdom has it backward. It is not that people with more money are happier; it’s that happier people may be better earners: “Part of the typical correlation between income and well-being,” write Diener and Seligman, “is due to well-being causing higher incomes, rather than the other way around. Happy people go on to earn higher incomes than unhappy people.”
Unhappy people tend to channel their time and effort into the pursuit of material goods. They become materialistic, missing out on the relationships and experiences that researchers believe have the greatest effect on personal fulfillment.
If not money, what does genuinely make us happy? According to research, a vibrant social life is one source of happiness. People who do things they enjoy with people they like are happier than others. Good physical and mental health is another. Not surprisingly, people who suffer from depression and other mental illnesses report far lower levels of well-being. To a large extent happiness hinges on personal bonds. Loving relationships with a spouse or significant other and with children, as well as a high frequency of meaningful interactions with family members and friends, are essential to happiness. Studies find that on balance, married people are happier than single people. Religion and faith can also have a highly positive effect. Happiness is related to employment, though again, it’s the substance of the work, not the pay, that appears to matter.
Place is the missing link in happiness studies. That is surprising, since so many people take great joy and fulfillment from where they live.
place is a major source of excitement and creative stimulation, an essential component of our psychological well-being.
IT IS ALL WELL AND GOOD TO KNOW THAT PLACE AFFECTS happiness, that the happiest communities tend to be open-minded, vibrant places where people feel free to express themselves and cultivate their identities, and that these communities tend to foster creativity.