Perhaps because everyone knows there’s no place like home, I was skeptical of Who’s Your City? (see The Future According to Richard Florida).
Having now read it, I am impressed by author Richard Florida’s ability to take massive amounts of demographic data and present it in ways that can generate both new questions and new answers. His most intriguing notion is that major cities and regions attract people of different personalities, and it affects the economic prospects of the region and the companies in it.
I still, however, loathe the title, not least because Florida doesn’t really talk about cities, but mega-regions, such as the Bos-Wash corridor (despite the name, both are effectively suburbs of New York) or Char-Lanta. A more serious critique concerns the book’s split personality. It is part the vision of a charismatic business thinker, and part a Dr. Phil for your location problem. If you don’t have a location problem, the last part of the book is irrelevant. Having talked with Florida before finishing this review, I understand why the book has this seemingly odd structure: Florida believes that once people understand why picking a place to live may be the most important thing they do, they deserve some help to figure out where they should live (it’s not just a book that says go for the money, but rather be aware that where you decide to live will affect the kind of money you can make, Warren Buffett notwithstanding).
But it creates a major flaw in the book that he veers off into Dr. Phil mode before he’s filled in the big vision.
Still, business readers and especially strategists will find his main arguments provocative. In particular, the chapter “Cities have personalities too” should be closely perused by CEOS, strategists and hiring managers. Far from being the hokey argument I feared, Florida has built a case, based on data, that there really are specific personality types for our major economic regions.
He also argues that regional psychology and sociology have a bigger impact on economic success than technological prowess or development. For instance, the one major personality trait that correlates to economic growth is what is called “open to experience.” It turns out that these types of people tend to abound in areas like Norcal (San Francisco-San Jose), Bos-Wash (Boston-New York-Philadelphia-DC) and Cascadia (Portland-Seattle-Vancouver). They don’t tend to live in Buffalo or Detroit, home to ’squelchers’ that Florida argues are killing them.
Both of these ideas emerge slowly. Florida needs to set up his argument for the overarching importance of place first. He starts by setting himself up as the counterpoint to Tom Friedman’s “The World Is Flat.” The world is not flat, Florida says. Instead, the world is spiky - different regions around the world have and will continue to have advantages over others that will draw them more people and money.
This conflict between flat and spiky is misleading. Friedman is not saying that globalization makes every place equally competitive. What he means by a flat world is that the economic playing field has been leveled by technology and other factors - Indian programmers can stay in India and prosper, Chinese engineers can do the same in China.
In fact, Florida’s book complements Friedman’s, as Florida acknowledges a few chapters in. Friedman tells us the globe is flat in terms of economic competition. Florida refines this argument, showing, for instance, that Delhi is not the threat to other regions that Bangalore is. The trouble is, he doesn’t finish the job: He picks 40 regions around the world as likely winners in the global economy over time. But before telling us how new economic regions are emerging and what they’re likely to specialize in, or even what they all are, he veers off into a discussion of America’s ten major regions and their prospects. He is quite worried about America’s second-tier cities, and thinks many of them will shrink into irrelevance. Detroit is the most obvious case-in-point for him, as it is for practically any urban ill one cares to discuss, and events of the last few months certainly work in his favor.
Perhaps he doesn’t have the data he needs to draw his conclusions, or perhaps he was too intent on keeping this focused for a U.S. audience (he certainly doesn’t think we’ll see a lot of migration from the U.S. to other countries. The big problem is the lack of in-migration we may experience). But the book feels incomplete.
It is, however, consistently well-written, and usually avoids jargon. Florida is especially good at giving thumbnail descriptions of the major economic ideas of people like Robert Solow and Robert Lucas, and of tying them together with urban theorists like Jane Jacobs. He also uses to good effect maps tied to demographic data.
Business readers should at least skim the last part, the self-help part. He sprinkles in some discussion of the demographics of crime and other urban ills, including a short but insightful section on public schools and how they should change.
In this case, there’s enough good stuff that it’s not a terrible thing to leave a reader asking for more.
Big Think Breakdown: “Who’s Your City?” offers several provocative assertions that matter to business. Richard Florida’s theory of the psychology of place alone is worth the price for business people, though it takes up only one chapter. His use of maps to present demographic data is also powerful.
