Richard Florida’s article in this March’s Atlantic is an interesting take on the variety of ways of ways US cities will be hit by the current economic crisis.  Starting with the example of New York, Florida suggests that despite the prevalence of these financial institutions, NYC should be hit relatively less hard than other more homogenous cities hard given the diversity of industries it contains (finance, art, high technology, etc.).

Florida’s argument rests on two assumptions.  First, cities with greater industry diversity are less likely to be hit hard given economic recessions.  This is akin to a portfolio argument where diversity lowers risk as you no longer bank (literally)  on one industry doing well (finance for example).  The problems with cities more likely to struggle, such as Detroit, is that they drove (literally) too hard into one industry (automotive).   In these cities, when things go well, they go exceptionally well.  It’s easy to forget that for a time Detroit was considered the Paris of the West for its architectural beauty and economic prosperity.  But, when they go poorly, the world comes crashing down.  For Detroit, unemployment rates are currently over 10%, its major industry players are at risk of bankruptcy, and it has some of the nations highest violent crime statistics.

The second assumption is much more interesting.  Summarizing the research on urban development, Florida writes:

Although the specialization identified by Adam Smith creates powerful efficiency gains… the jostling of many different professions and different types of people, all in a dense environment, is an essential spur to innovation—to the creation of things that are truly new. And innovation, in the long run, is what keeps cities vital and relevant.

What this means is that cities are not just portfolios that emerge segmented for risk, but also social entities that respond positively to this differentiation with increased generativity.  Cities are not only portfolios, but also social entities where diverse individuals interacting results in additional benefits for the growth of that city, over and above the lower risk of economic failure.  In this way, a city might best be conceived a social portfolio.

What you have in a city like Detroit (or unfortunately, many mid-major Midwestern cities, St. Louis included) is a poor social portfolio- resulting from a significant lack of industry diversity, and a lack of concentrated interaction among any diversity. Taken together, these cities are both at higher risk of collapse given the right conditions, and a lower ‘risk’ of growth and innovation.

In tracing out policy recommendations, Florida argues for a decreasing emphasis on homeownership (so people are more fluid in living, moving, changing work), and an increased social commitment to urban over suburban living for its resulting intermingling of ideas. He concludes that these changes will help many cities — thought not beyond repair —  produce generative communities of entrepreneurship.

I can see how some people would look at Florida’s article and only see another articulation of the benefits of growth. While I resonate with critiques of growth for growth’s sake (see Georgetown political theorist Patrick Deneen for one such take), the growth Florida speaks of is in many ways refreshing to me for its emphasis on creation and individuality.

For example, while Deneen does not explicitly take this as his primary critical stance, one powerful argument against capitalism is that it often results in self-alienation for the worker, a stance articulated poignantly in Marx’s earlier work.*  Essentially, Marx argued that as individuals lose control of their work, they lose control of their lives.  This seems like a fair point, and it underlies many of the contemporary critiques of capitalism in popular culture. Take the recent award winning film “Revolutionary Road.”  In this film, we see how work transforms Frank Wheeler from a dreamer, and “the most interesting person” that his wife April ever met, into the corporate cog, all in the pursuit of being first rate, or more appropriately, a fear of being anything less.

But is the creative class growth of Richard Florida easily categorized as something alienating, or might it be best seen as artistic in form?  Might it not be argued, as Florida made the case on NPR’s ‘On Point’ a few nights ago, that this current economic crisis presents opportunities to ‘reset’ the economy into more creative pursuits– things more internally differentiated and away from the process of alienation for workers.  Perhaps that is the flip side of the coin in this recession; While there will be inevitably be a drop-off of many traditional jobs, perhaps those spots will be filled with creative pursuits in both the for and not-for-profit sectors, and consequently, at least for some, a movement away from work as a form of personal alienation.

*- Though not explicit in Deneen’s work, this assumption of capitalism’s alienation seems to underlie many such critiques, especially when the behavioral recommendations often involve greater community investment, closer involvement with customers, small-business approach, captured imaginatively in many of Wendell Berry’s novels.