Metro Pulse/Cover/The Creative Class

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Knoxville's Creative Class Speaks
We interview a small sampling of "creative class" individuals

Do you live in a creative city?
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The "creative class" is the hot new topic in chambers of commerce across the country. So where's the buzz in Knoxville?

by Scott McNutt

Since June of last year, he's been in high demand. He's on the road four days a week, giving speeches or consulting. He has addressed or will be speaking to audiences made up of government officials, chamber of commerce members, academics, and others in Memphis, Seattle, Boston, Savannah, Louisville, Pittsburgh, New York, Cincinnati, Richmond, Calgary, Auckland, New Zealand, and dozens of other places.

"He" is Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class and How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. Florida is a professor of economic development at Carnegie Mellon University and a columnist for Information Week. He's been a visiting professor at MIT and Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He's written five other books and has spent years studying patterns of economic change. Since The Rise of the Creative Class's publication last June, Florida has become something of a celebrity; a development guru, you might call him.

Of working with Florida, Randy Welker, director of client management for the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, says "Florida helped us put on a seminar about creative places.... Our purpose was to acknowledge that there were alternatives to building stadia and convention centers, and that we might be missing the boat with our young professionals. He did a great job."

There has been some talk about the book in Knoxville. The head of UT's Agriculture Veterinary Medicine Library, Professor Sandy Leach, runs a colloquy on creativity that uses Florida's book as one of its materials, and the local online forum k2k discussed The Rise of the Creative Class last summer. But until the last few weeks, not many Knoxvillians were familiar with the book; one of the largest bookstores in town reports it has sold only five copies during the past year.

That may be beginning to change. Mayoral candidate Bill Haslam has read The Rise if the Creative Class, and speaks of it with familiarity. Mayoral candidate Madeline Rogero based some of her comments in a recent speech on the book. And while at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C., last month, current Mayor Victor Ashe received a copy (as did every other mayor who attended). Richard Florida also spoke at the conference.

But Florida will not be speaking in Knoxville anytime soon.

Knoxville Area Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Mike Edwards has heard of Florida, and The Rise of the Creative Class is "on the list" of things to read, but, with KACP having just announced plans for a regional economic development initiative, he's not rushing out to hire any new consultants. "We're trying to get a handle on how we are doing across the board," before considering new expenditures, Edwards says.

Does Knoxville need a "creative city" guru? Metro Pulse asked a small sampling of creative people or people employed in creative industries what they thought about Knoxville as a creative city—or as a city with potential for creativity. Their replies suggest that Knoxville is already well on its way to "creative city" status, so a guru may not be required. All acknowledged that Knoxville has some obstacles to overcome and some catching up to do, but most of the people Metro Pulse spoke to could cite creative aspects of the city, and almost all had high hopes (expectations, even) for Knoxville's future.

Who Are These Creative Class People and What Do They Want, Anyway?

"The distinguishing characteristic of the creative class is that its members engage in work whose function is to 'create meaningful new forms.'"

That's how Florida defines the creative class in a 2002 Washington Monthly article. Who does that include? It may be easier to identify who isn't in the creative class: the labor and service classes (about two-thirds of the workforce, or 76 million Americans) according to Florida.

The other third of the work force (about 38 million Americans) are supposedly in the creative class. They take home 50 percent of the total income. The "super-creative core" of the class includes a wide range of occupations: scientists, engineers, university professors, artists (in the broadest sense of the term, e.g., actors, writers), designers, architects, plus the "thought leadership" of society, such as "cultural figures, think-tank researchers, analysts, and other opinion-makers." Florida also includes "creative professionals" in the creative class. These individuals can be found in "knowledge-intensive industries," such as health care, business management, and the legal professions.

In his book, Florida points out that we live in an age of frequent job changes and low company loyalty (in his statistics, the creative class changes jobs on average every four years). So when considering employment, the in-demand creative class may consider factors such as the attractiveness of a given locale more important than job inducements. In other words, they may decide it's better to live in a place that's fun for less money than to live a place that's boring for more. In response to this, employers are starting to relocate their companies to areas of concentrated populations of the creative class. "Companies cluster in order to draw from concentrations of talented people who power innovation and economic growth," writes Florida.

So cities should strive to be the sorts of places creative people like to congregate, says Florida. And what do they like? "The people in my focus groups tell me that lifestyle frequently trumps employment when they're choosing where to live. Writes Florida, "Many said they had turned down jobs...that did not afford the variety of 'scene' desired—music scene, art scene, technology scene, outdoors sports scene, and so on." They also look for diverse ethnicities and lifestyles, a vibrant nightlife centered on a street-level culture—indigenous (non-chain) cafes, night spots, bistros, art galleries, and funky little shops packed into an "authentic" urban environment—that is, an urban center that still retains historic buildings, dense residential characteristics, and a vital street life. As Florida puts it, "[focus groups] say these things are signals that a city 'gets it.'"

An openness to new ideas and new people—a community where merit matters more than connections—is desired. A "thick" job market in which creative types can always find a different job (but one that still demands creativity) is also a positive.

What turns off the creative class? Florida argues that governments that subsidize big-box retailers and build convention centers or sports complexes are turn-offs. "Few of my creative class subjects show significant interest in spectator sports," Florida writes. "[I]n dozens of focus groups and countless interviews, not one...ever mentioned being drawn to a city for the professional sports it offers.... The most recent studies show that stadiums do not generate economic wealth and actually reduce local incomes." Thus, spectator sports and similar entertainment will draw a big yawn. Recruiting any old call-center-type company that comes along leaves the creative class unimpressed, says Florida. Indifferent, paternalistic local governments raise hackles. Sprawl, miles of strip malls and asphalt parking lots, indistinguishable office complexes, generic housing developments, and interstates with bumper-to-bumper traffic will cause creative types to grimace, hunker over the steering wheel, step on the gas, and pass a city by.

Curiously, in the book Florida notes the importance of education, but he says virtually nothing about the relative importance of a good school system. And there are other criticisms of his theories. Some have argued that the economy has not changed to the degree Florida suggests; that most people are still relocating for companies rather than companies relocating for people; that investing in infrastructure cannot be discounted [a topic to which Florida gives little attention]; and that his categorization of what creative people find attractive is suspect.

But again, these are broad generalizations, and Florida acknowledges there will be exceptions in every category. And most cities have some mix of all these elements, attractive and unattractive.

Deciding which cities have more pluses than minuses is where Florida's detailed and quantified analysis begins. To determine how creative a region is, and thus, how desirable it might be to the creative class, Florida and his team developed several indices: the high-tech index, the innovation index, the gay index, and the creative class index.

Their high-tech index ranks metropolitan areas on two factors: (1) on its high-tech industrial output as a percentage of the total U.S. high-tech industrial output; and (2) the percentage of the region's own total economic output that comes from high-tech industries compared to the nationwide percentage. The innovation index is simply a calculation of innovations patented per capita. (Some critics have suggested that using only patents filed in a region is a less-than-acceptable means of rating how "innovative" it is.) As an indication of a region's diversity, Florida uses what some consider an eccentric measure, the gay index. This index measures the under- or over-representation of same sex couples in a region as compared to the United States as a whole. Florida writes, "To some extent, homosexuality represents the last frontier of diversity in our society, and thus a place that welcomes the gay community welcomes all kinds of people.... [O]penness to gay communities is a good indicator of the low entry barriers to human capital that are so important to spurring creativity and generating high-tech growth." Lastly, the creative class measure is the percentage of total jobs the creative class holds in a region. Taken together, these measurements yield Florida's creativity index.

Out of all regions (286 total), Knoxville ranks 111th in the high-tech index, 74th in innovation, and 140th in the creative class. Results for the gay index are not given; rather, the rankings given are from a "diversity index," which combines the gay index with a melting pot index (a measure of the relative percentage of foreign-born people in a region), and "bohemian index," (a ranking based on the number of artististically creative people in a region). Knoxville comes in 103rd on the diversity index. On the creativity index, Knoxville ranks 89th, in the top third of all regions.

The Official Line

Knoxville's creativity ranking doesn't surprise Mike Edwards. Explaining his belief that Knoxville's current creative base is fairly good, he says "This region, if you include Oak Ridge, has more Ph.D.'s per capita than anywhere else in the U.S., I think. We have a well-educated populace. We have Scripps [Networks], and before that, Bagwell [Communications] and Whittle [Communications]. Whittle brought creative people to Knoxville who never left."

Knoxville is not without its drawbacks, he admits. "The thing we have to battle—for a city our size—is, the creative class can go to other, bigger markets where they can move ahead faster. So that's one thing."

But he embraces the general precepts of Florida's book and, overall, Edwards is sanguine about Knoxville's prospects for the future. "We're poised in a great position right now." He ticks off a list of recent developments in our urban core that should appeal to the creative class, especially the more affluent ones: downtown redevelopment, more employers moving downtown, more downtown residential units.

Still, he cautions, "The endgame is retail, restaurants, and [more business downtown]. This is not going to happen without a tremendous amount of effort."

Edwards' views are representative of other city officials contacted. Dale Smith, CEO of the Public Building Authority, has heard Florida lecture but has not read his book. He agrees with Edwards that there is already a creative class in Knoxville. He, too, points to Knoxville's retention of Whittlites and cites downtown's growing residential base and entertainment opportunities as something attractive to creative people.

Smith differs with Edwards, however, on areas where Knoxville needs to improve. Rather than being concerned about creative people leaving, he focuses on things that need to change for Knoxville to be more attractive. One thing he thinks should change is governmental in-fighting. Though he thinks the situation is already getting better, Smith says an improvement would be "reducing the blatant squabbling, you know, city-county, county-school system."

But Smith's other concern is the more serious challenge, in his opinion. Observing that "creative people are probably fairly environmentally conscious," Knoxville, he says, must "improve its focus on environment, water quality."

Before he went to the mayors' conference, via email Mayor Ashe acknowledged that he had not read The Rise of the Creative Class. Nonetheless, the mayor had positive things to say about Knoxville as a creative and diverse city and said that he has done several things to encourage it to be even more so, giving the Title VI enforcement program and a Police Advisory Review Board as examples.