LGBT Book, Film & Video Blog

Florida first cataloged the behavior of this upwardly mobile group, characterized by bohemianism and a tendency to reinvent the workplace, in his 2002 bestseller, "The Rise of the Creative Class." Whereas New York Times columnist David Brooks, then a conservative, had sneeringly dubbed the same demographic "bobos" (bourgeois bohemians) in his 2000 book "Bobos in Paradise," Florida took a different tack. He noted the potential business benefits of open-mindedness, progressive values, and city dwelling, cramming his book with statistical support.

Florida observed that thriving gay communities indicate vibrant creativity in an area. They also have a tendency to prettify borderline neighborhoods -- the technical term, according to "Queer Eye's" Carson Kressley, is "to zhoozh" -- and generate tons of revenue in industries like fashion. None of this surprised many urbanites, though some Americans, unaware of trends in popular culture and oblivious to the Internet, may have been shocked to find that queers and quasi-bohemians do anything other than sin. For an economist like Florida to recognize and quantify the cost benefits of a liberal lifestyle was enough to shock the system.

With "The Rise of the Creative Class," Florida, once a professor at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School of Public Policy, zhoozhed his career, in part because he defined creativity rather loosely. Clearly we have not yet become a nation of Web designers, filmmakers and hair stylists. Florida generously opened the category to include scientists, healthcare professionals and businessmen, on the watered-down assumption that everyone is creative in some way. More than anything, these non-revolutionary ideas established Florida as the "swami," as Karrie Jacobs put it, of the class he defined.

Since 2002, Florida has turned his eye on the once disenfranchised into a franchise, following "Rise" with "Cities and the Creative Class," "The Flight of the Creative Class," and now, breaking the pattern, a volume called "Who's Your City?" a title whose play on the catchphrase "Who's your daddy" implies, a little too erotically, our submissive relationship to place. But by this point he has stretched his ideas so thin that "The Creative Class vs. King Kong" would do just as well.

See Where have all the bohemians gone? Purcahse Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life or The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent or The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life.