Cool vs. uncool cities

Bill Fulton has this interesting discussion of a debate about urban planning:

To succeed in the 21st Century, do cities really have to be cool, as Richard Florida argues? Or do they have to be uncool, as Joel Kotkin insists? Maybe they have to be both.

A few years ago, a little-known academic named Richard Florida turned the economic development world upside down by publishing a book called The Rise of the Creative Class. In a nutshell, Florida’s argument was that to be successful today, cities have to be cool.

The engine of the American economy, he claimed, was creativity. The United States had produced a “creative class” of close to 40 million highly educated professionals who focus on researching and creating innovative products. In his followup book, Cities and the Creative Class, he argued those professionals were increasingly concentrated in cities with certain “cool” attributes, including an arts and culture scene, bohemian enclaves and even large gay populations. . . .

The minute Florida declared that cities had to be cool, however, it was only a matter of time before Joel Kotkin starting writing that cities wouldn’t succeed unless they were un-cool. Kotkin had long been a fan of what he calls “nerdistans” – boring suburbs (he always seems to mention Irvine) that nevertheless house some of the most powerful drivers of the American economy, especially in the tech sectors. But Florida’s work really revved him up. In a typical article for the Manhattan Institute last year, Kotkin called the cool cities idea “shtick” and suggested that the creative class “by the time they get into their 30s, may be more interested in economic opportunity, a single family house and procreation than remaining ‘hip and cool’ urbanites.” . . .

Successful economic development in the 21st Century will require that American cities understand the creative class and how to attract and retain them just as Florida suggests. At the same time, obviously, cities cannot ignore basic infrastructure while subsidizing art galleries and gay bars. . . .

It’s no surprise that, as a resident of New York, I basically agree with Richard Florida on this. Also, I recall Joel Kotkin as the author of this news article where he does not adjust prices for inflation.

As a social scientist, I suppose my question is how to measure these things.