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| Document Type: | General |
| Publish Date: | December 2005 |
| Primary Author: | Jamie Peck |
| Edited By: | Saba Bilquis |
| Published By: | International Journal of Urban and Regional Research |
Florida’s argument in The Rise of the Creative Class is, at the same time, straightforward and rather elusive. Its gist is that we have entered an age of creativity, comprehended as a new and distinctive phase of capitalist development, in which the driving forces of economic development are not simply technological and organizational, but human. In essence, the book seeks to describe a new economy, in which human creativity has become the ‘defining feature of economic life . . . [It] has come to be valued — and systems have evolved to encourage and harness it — because new technologies, new industries, new wealth and all other good economic things flow from it’ (Florida, 2002: 21). Creative types have always been critical to capitalist growth, of course, but in the past few decades, so the argument here goes, they have grown both in number and influence, such that they now account for some 38 million US workers (or about 30% of the workforce), and therefore justify proper-noun status ‘the Creative Class has become the dominant class in society (Florida, 2002: ix). This discovery has been made, the challenge is to understand what makes the members of this class tick, how they like to spend their money, their (precious) time, and what they want.