[COMM-ORG] Toronto, Richard Florida and community resonses

[Discussion list for COMM-ORG]

[ed:  Richard and Peter continue the discussion.]

From: Richard Layman <rlaymandc at yahoo.com>


Ugh.  I am not a sociologist (although from time to time I consider 
trying to get an M.A. in the subject--although the program pickings in 
the DC region are slim) and I don't want to get into an extended 
discussion with Prof. Dreier on the subject as he's likely read a lot 
more than I have (i.e., Terry Nichols Clark's work on the entertainment 
city, Judd & Fainstein's _The Tourist City_, papers by Malcolm Miles, 
etc.) in this area.

Here's the thing... to subscribe fully to either the Richard Florida 
perspective or the "ground up-the people are beautiful" perspective on 
the matter of urban revitalization is a losing game because the reality 
is somewhere in the middle.

If you take the top-down perspective as do most local political and 
economic elites (a la Molotch and "City as a Growth Machine") then the 
people and artists lose out in response to the dominance of real estate 
interests driving the agenda.

If you take the community building perspective of the grassroots, then 
you focus your time and attention on social and community building, 
often to the exclusion of significant focus on revitalization.  You 
spend money and you don't make any, and it's arguable that in the 
context of the regional landscape, neighborhoods become better off as a 
result of community building art projects (there are exceptions maybe, 
like the Mural Arts Project in Philadelphia).

We must face the reality that despite current trends, the last 50 years 
of economic, financial, and development policies have favored suburbs 
over center cities.  We must also accept that most cities have limited 
revenue streams (property and sales taxes; but DC also has 100% of its 
local income tax, plus county, state, and federal funding for various 
projects) and in order to remain economically viable in the face of many 
difficult demands, the property tax base of residential and commercial 
districts has to be stabilized and increased.

This is reality.  That's what I try to deal with.  How do I ameliorate 
the worst excesses of capitalism while trying to be relatively true to 
participatory democracy while also trying to express and maintain fealty 
to broader objectives and concerns rather than interest group on 
neighborhood parochialism?  That's the conundrum that we face on the ground.

So no, Richard Florida's work doesn't do it for me, but then neither 
does art as community building (i.e., this past blog entry 
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2007/01/you-gotta-have-community-building.html 
).

I am for synthesis, for grabbing what I can use from academic 
interpretation and work in the field to forge a better way forward.

Just because the Growth Machine uses Florida's work in some ways doesn't 
mean that it doesn't have staying power.  And while it is important to 
criticize any possible failings within the work, I would rather see 
attention paid on what we can do at the grassroots level to better 
represent our interests..  (i.e., taking on the perspective of the 
advance of the community development movement through works like 
Temali's _Community Economic Development Handbook_)

I guess this makes me a "neoliberal."  But on the other hand, I don't 
see capitalism failing any time soon (sure right now we are in the midst 
of a capitalist crisis and the levers of the state are being manipulated 
in order to assist the capitalist system in responding to the crisis) or 
within my lifetime and I have to deal and work to wage a way forward or 
otherwise I will lose my sanity, or at the least become unproductive.

Richard Layman
DC

****************************

From: "Peter Dreier" <dreier at oxy.edu>


As I wrote in my original email, Richard Florida's ideas promote
gentrification and help business groups and city official justify the
agenda of the "growth coalition," while confirming journalists'
self-image as part of the "creative class."  Whether Florida initially
intended this to happen isn't important. He's seized the opportunity to
become a shill for the business-led growth coalitions. The rest is
fluff.  

Florida's ideas promote the idea that city governments have to compete
with each other to attract the "the best and the brightest," the kind of
mindless entrepreneurialism that pits cities against each other for
private investment, allowing business to play Russian Roulette with
local governments, to the detriment of taxpayers and working people.

Some people Florida because hehas become famous. So what? Whether an
academic becomes famous -- even famous for 15 minutes -- isn't the
issue.  The question should be: famous for what?  What ideas and agendas
is she or he promoting? And who is listening? It would be great if some
academics became famous promoting a progressive agenda. Bill Wilson is
certainly in this category -- he's widely quoted, has written op-eds in
major papers,  has been invited to the White House, and his ideas have
helped shape public debate and public policy. He's done this without any
hucksterism - and with a clear agenda of using government to improve
living conditions for the poor and working class and to help heal racial
divisions.  Myron Orfield and David Rusk, both one-time elected
officials, have turned their ideas about fair-share regionalism into
books and a consulting business, each of them working with grassroots
community organizing groups. If they get some media attention for it,
good for them!!  Robert Putnam's early ideas about "bowling alone"
struck a nerve with the media, academics, and even some politicians like
President Clinton. Since the 1990s, the controversy over his ideas,
including "social capital," has triggered a small industry of "social
capital" researchers.  If that means that academics are paying more
attention to finding ways to promote more grassroots civic and political
engagement -- most importantly, union and community organizing,
including organizing among liberal faith based groups in PICO, Gamaliel
and IAF -- great. 

Let's put Florida's fame in some broader perspective. The Toronto Star
article (http://www.thestar.com/article/656837)  that I cited in the
original email that started this discussion mentioned that Florida was
recruited to the University of Toronto to head something called the
"Martin Prosperity Institute," a think tank created just for him.
According to an article in  Canadian Business magazine ("City Slickers,"
March 31, 2008), found via ProQuest, the Martin Prosperity Institute has
an endowment of $120 million. Another article in the same publications
("The Most 25 Influential People in Business," June 15, 2009) says the
Institute was started by a $50 million grant from the Ontonio provincial
government. They soon got another $18 million from a Canadian
businessperson named Rotman. Soon after he arrived in Canada, the
Toronto Globe and Mail, Canada's most influential newspaper, signed
Florida on as a columnist.  A little Google-ing led me to the  Martin
Prosperity Institute's website
(http://martinprosperity.org/about-the-institute), where I learned that
it is affiliated with the university's business school.   According to
the website, the Martin Prosperity Institute's executive director, Jim
Milway, "brings more than thirty years of business and public policy
experience to the Institute. He began his career in marketing management
with General Foods (now Kraft) and Unilever. For most of his career he
has consulted to senior decision makers in areas of business strategy as
a partner in The Canada Consulting Group and The Boston Consulting
Group, and in his own firm." 

Big corporations, right-wing foundations, and conservative government
officials have more money than liberal counterparts to pour into think
tanks and endowed professorships. That's why people associated with
those conservative institutions in the US - like the Heritage Foundation
and American Enterprise Institute  and Reason Foundation -- got so much
recognition in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. The most obvious example is
Charles Murray, whose bogus ideas about welfare captured the zeitgeist
of the Reagan era and were taken seriously by journalists and
policymakers. Another is Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School
professor, who became well-known in the 1990s for his articles and books
claiming that we would revitalize inner cities by getting the government
out of the way. That some ideas-people become media stars is an
accident. In Murray's case, it was part of a highly-orchestrated effort
by the Right to pay for, and market, their ideas, and to promote their
"stars."  Contemporary versions of Murray get lots of attention on Fox
News, CNN, and even the mainstream media, promoting a right-wing agenda
of deregulation and opposition to progressive ideas -- even bashing
Obama's health care reform plan as "socialism."  The right-wing attacks
on ACORN, that reached a peak during last year's election but are still
going on, are part of the same process, as I explained in an article in
The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081110/dreier_atlas.

Some folks believe that Florida has the marginal formula for making
cities "livable." Most European cities are more livable than their U.S.
counterparts. Why? It is because they are located in countries with
social democratic governments and policies. They believe in economic
growth AND redistribution.  They have much lower poverty rates overall.
(Yes, poverty in some places - like Amsterdam and Paris - is mostly in
the suburbs, but the overall poverty rate is MUCH lower than the US
rate). They have universal heatlh insurance. They have much better
public transit. A large part of their housing stock is subsidized
"social housing," not only for the poor, but also for the middle class.
As a result, their neighborhoods (and their schools) are much more
economically integrated. Canada has done a reasonably good job of
absorbing lots of immigrants in its major cities, with very little of
the immigrant-bashing that goes on in the US, especially among
right-wingers. European countries have been more ambivalent about
immigration, but even immigrants are entitled to decent housing and
health care, something not achieved in the U.S.  In Europe, national
(and, to some extent, regional) governments pay for most city services.
They don't expect cities to pay for parks, schools, and housing through
local property taxes. They pay higher (and more progressive) taxes than
US residents, but they get a lot for their money. Polls show that, in
general, they are pleased with their government policies..  Amsterdam,
Copenhagen, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Paris, Vancouver, etc. are different
from each other, reflecting their national cultures, and none of them
are paradise, but all of them are much more livable than their U.S.
counterparts.  Florida has absolutely nothing to say about any of this.

Peter Dreier
_____________________________________
Peter Dreier
Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics
Chair, Urban & Environmental Policy Program
Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, CA 90041
Phone: (323) 259-2913
FAX: (323) 259-2734
Website: http://employees.oxy.edu/dreier
 
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great
moral crises maintain their neutrality" - Dante


On 7/24/2009 12:37 PM, Discussion list for COMM-ORG wrote:
> --------
> This is a COMM-ORG 'colist' message.
> All replies to this message come to COMM-ORG only.
> --------
>  
> [ed:  thanks to Richard and Peter for the discussion.  A bit from me 
> after the two of them.]
>
> From: Richard Layman <rlaymandc at yahoo.com>
>
> All hotshot academics are hucksters of a sort..  The ideas behind 
> Richard Florida's work derive from Jane Jacobs (both _Death and Life_ 
> and _Economy of Cities_), and academic work (urban economics) on 
> agglomeration (i.e., AnnaLee Saxenian, Michael Porter).
>
> The problem is that creative development, economic development, and the 
> arts as challenge to the status quo, community building and 
> self-empowerment, or revitalization is a nuanced process, one that 
> artists/creatives don't have a good handle on, and is a process where 
> their interests usually are subservient to real estate development.
>
> It happens I just spoke on this topic, in a session on "Theatre and 
> Urban Renewal" at the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas 
> conference, held in DC last week.
>
> My basic point is that artists and arts organizations have to represent 
> their own interests first, foremost and always in the process of 
> arts-based revitalization.
>
> Part of my talk is posted here:  
> http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2009/07/art-culture-districts-and.html 
> ; but I have a number of blog entries on the topic of arts and cultural 
> development.  The entries are ostensibly on DC, but the points are 
> extensible.
>
> The thing is that there is a lot of great academic work on the issues of 
> arts and revitalization, but that this work rarely percolates down to 
> the level of practitioners, so they get little benefit from it.  (What I 
> mean are articles published in journals such as Urban Studies or 
> Planning Practice and Research.)  Fortunately, being based in DC I have 
> access to both the Library of Congress and local university libraries, 
> so this work is readily available to me.
>
> The "Social Impact of the Arts Project" at the University of 
> Pennsylvania, in association with The Reinvestment Fund, have produced a 
> number of important papers which synthesize a goodly amount of the solid 
> academic writing on the subject.
>
> Some of these papers are linked in my above cited blog entry.
>
> Prof. Dreier would probably be interested in the point I make about the 
> necessity of developing cultural infrastructure, and that such 
> infrastructure isn't limited to buildings, but includes people, 
> organizations, and capacity building programs and art and artist support 
> organizations.
>
> What is more interesting to me than criticism of Prof. Florida is the 
> recognition that his work, in and of itself, isn't enough to fully 
> support economic development strategies or arts and artist development 
> strategies.
>
> And if I do fully develop the paper, I will submit it to comm-org when 
> it is done.
>
> In the consulting work I do on destination planning, we address arts, 
> culture, and heritage issues extensively, and when we produce final 
> reports, our recommendations support civil society objectives not merely 
> real estate development.
>
> Richard Layman
> Citizens Planning Coalition, DC
> and analyst, Economic Development Visions (a commercial district 
> revitalization planning consulting firm), DC
>
> ********************************
>
> From: "Peter Dreier" <dreier at oxy.edu>
>  
> Florida's concept of "creative class" and "creative cities," and his
> subsequent writings, aren't just about the arts and culture. He's
> pushing an agenda that ignores, trivializes and disses poor and working
> class people. If he were just an academic in an ivory tower, nobody
> would care. But he gets hired as a consultant by cities, for big bucks,
> to advise them on policy and planning.  And so he's part of the problem,
> not the solution, Cities waste lots of taxpayer dollars paying Florida
> to advise them.
>
> This is a mis-use of academic ideas. We don't need some sociological
> theory to figure this out.  He's become a "star" in part because he's
> selling an idea that reflects the self-interest and self-image of
> well-educated journalists who see themselves as part of  his "creative
> class" and city officials who are looking for justifications for
> gentrification. But he's just another huckster who happens to be a good
> writer and good with Census data.
>
> Plus, his ideas promote the idea that city governments have to compete
> with each other to attract the "the best and the bright," the kind of
> mindless entrepenuerialism that pits cities against each other for
> private investment, allowing business to play Russian Roulette with
> local governments, to the detriment of taxpayers and working people.
>
> Bravo to the Toronto Star reporter who, unlike most of his journalistic
> colleagues, sees through Florida's bullshit.
>
> Peter
>
> _____________________________________
> Peter Dreier
> Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics
> Chair, Urban & Environmental Policy Program
> Occidental College
> 1600 Campus Road
> Los Angeles, CA 90041
> Phone: (323) 259-2913
> FAX: (323) 259-2734
> Website: http://employees.oxy.edu/dreier
>  
> "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great
> moral crises maintain their neutrality" - Dante
>
> *************************
>
> [ed:  I want to amplify something that I think appears to some extent in 
> both Peter's and Richard's posts.  More important to me than the 
> question of what the best ideas are is the question of which voices get 
> heard.  Whether we agree or disagree with Florida, Richard, Peter, and I 
> also occupy influential roles and are always in danger of amplifying our 
> own voices rather than the voices of those who have been silenced, just 
> like Florida.  That is what is so interesting about the opposition group 
> that is forming, because it appears to be forming not just in reaction 
> to Florida, but to a deeper problem of how the city and the university 
> filters the voices of city residents.  From a community organizing 
> perspective, you don't build a great city from the voices of a few 
> because their ideas are bad, but because by doing so you silence the 
> many people who should be involved and consequently maintain both 
> knowledge and material inequalities and oppressions.  I've been part of 
> more than a few neighborhood-based groups who want just want Florida 
> wants, but want to be included as participants in creative class 
> development, rather than sidelined by it.  The problem is with the 
> process, as it almost always is. I saw the same thing in New Orleans 
> when they brought Ed Blakely in, who pretty much dismissed the 
> participatory planning efforts that engaged thousands of NO residents 
> spread across the gulf coast (I was an audience member in the convention 
> center when he told them he was in charge and the only ideas that  were 
> going to be in his plan were the ones he liked).  Now, in the end, he 
> included some of those ideas in his own plan, but from my admittedly 
> indirect vantage point, the process once again became problematic.]
>
> On 7/22/2009 9:42 AM, Discussion list for COMM-ORG wrote:
>   
>> --------
>> This is a COMM-ORG 'colist' message.
>> All replies to this message come to COMM-ORG only.
>> --------
>>  
>> [ed:  those of you familiar with Florida's work might find the unspoken 
>> community organizing issues in this article of interest.]
>>
>> From:  "Peter Dreier" <dreier at oxy.edu>
>>
>> Interesting article from the Toronto Star about the hucksterism of Richard
>> Florida's "creative city"
>> work
>>
>> http://www.thestar.com/article/656837
>>
>> Peter
>>
>> ____________________
>> Peter Dreier
>> E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics
>> Director, Urban & Environmental Policy Program
>> Occidental College
>> Los Angeles, CA 90041
>> Phone: (323) 259-2913
>> Email: dreier at oxy.edu
>> Website: http://employees.oxy.edu/dreier
>>
>> "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great
>> moral crises maintain their neutrality" - Dante
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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