Joel Kotkin is the author of THE CITY: A GLOBAL HISTORY from Modern Library. He is also author of the widely acclaimed, best-selling book, THE NEW GEOGRAPHY, How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping the American Landscape (Random House, 2000). Kotkin is an Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and is a highly respected speaker and futurist. He consults for many leading economic development organizations, private companies, regions and cities. In addition, Kotkin serves as senior advisor to the Planning Center, a major planning, design and environmental consulting firm based in Costa Mesa, California.

Kotkin says...

...The key factor in “creative class” theory, concocted by academic Richard Florida, is that if you are hip, cool and “tolerant,” at least to people with the right liberal social views, your city will flourish. Reporters, urban developers, gay activists and arts foundations naturally love this idea. Sometime they use it to push their agenda—not necessarily with Dr. Florida’s endorsement—for such things as new publicly financed arts venues, subsidized lofts, restaurants, clubs and street festivals. Yet depressingly few have considered the evidence about whether the theory actually works. Many of the cities that have long been at the top of the “creative class” list of “cool cities”—San Francisco and Boston, for example—have over the past five years had among the most sluggish rates of economic growth. Other municipalities that have swallowed the creative class kool aid, such as those embracing Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm’s “cool cities” initiative in that beleaguered state, have fared even worse...

The article can be found at...

http://www.joelkotkin.com/Urban_Affairs/COAH%20The%20Creative%20Class%20Canard.htm