Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life [Paperback]

Richard Florida (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2009

In the age of globalization, some claim that where you live doesnt matter: Alaska, Idaho, and Alabama are interchangeable. The world is, after all, flat. Not so fast. Place, argues the great urbanist Richard Florida, is not only important, its more important than ever. In fact, choosing a place to live is as important to your happiness as choosing a spouse or career. And some regions, recent surveys show, really are happier than others. In Whos Your City, Creative Class guru Richard Florida reports on this growing body of research that tells us what qualities of cities and towns actually make people happyand he explains how to use these ideas to make your own choices. This indispensable guide to how people can choose where to live and what those choices mean to their lives and their communities is essential reading for everyone from urban planners and mayors to recent graduates.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Choosing a spouse and choosing a career are important life decisions—but perhaps even more predictive of our all-round personal happiness is our choice of living location, argues Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class) in this informative if somewhat dry tome. As globalization makes the world effectively smaller, economic growth concentrates in certain mega-regions of large superstar cities, leaving other regions in the proverbial dust. The areas where we live are also affected by our increasingly mobile culture, housing priorities that change as we age (from starter homes to family-friendly suburbs to empty nests and finally retirement centers) and the global economy. Few of the author's conclusions are new—people gather where they can make friends with others like them, personality types tend to cluster—type A to urban areas, type B to rural—and the book's tone wanders from broad, Friedmanesque discussion of the world economy to home-buying advice as well as statistic-and-theory-heavy text as though unsure of its intended audience. Yet the author opens up a complex, underexamined subject along the way. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The world is not flat, and Richard Florida is the man to tell you why where you choose to live is more important than ever. Passionate and thoughtful, this book is an indispensable guide to the way our cities really work. The spirit of Jane Jacobs lives on."
--Tim Harford, "Financial Times" columnist and author of The Logic of Life
"This book says all that I could never put into words about why certain cities sing to certain people. If I could talk like Florida writes, I wouldn't have needed a campaign staff."
--John Hickenlooper, Mayor of the City of Denver
"Who's Your City? is another breakthrough idea by urban life genius Richard Florida. The power of place has everything to do with our success well beyond our own recognition. If you are contemplating a move or know someone who is, or are even vaguely interested in the idea of place as self, this book is a must read."
--Mario Batali, Chef and Restaurateur
"The world is not flat. Three-dimensional 'place' matters more than ever, not less than before. Richard Florida gets it exactly right -- again -- in Who's Your City?. As a long time advocate of Florida's position here, I will send it to colleagues by the score!"
--Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence
.,."the author opens up a complex, under examined subject..."
-- "Publishers Weekly" (December 17, 2007)
.,."this thought-provoking and seminal work will surely be studied, not only by scholars but more importantly by consumers pondering a move..."
--"Washington Post"

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; Reprint edition (June 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465018092
• ISBN-13: 978-0465018093
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #165,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Author of the bestselling The Rise of the Creative Class and Who's Your City? Richard Florida is a regular columnist for The Atlantic. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and other publications. His multiple awards and accolades include the Harvard Business Review's Breakthrough Idea of the Year. He was named one of Esquire magazine's Best and Brightest (2005) and one of BusinessWeek's Voices of Innovation (2006). He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

177 of 178 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but has too many mistakes, September 5, 2008

By 

T. Stroll (Oakland, Calif., USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life (Hardcover)

It's frustrating to read books like this. Florida's insightful observations are undermined by the number of errors in this book.

Florida melds psychology, sociology, and economics to try to determine the importance of humanity's displacement from rural areas to cities and, now, megalopolises. Some of the ground he covers is well-trod, but he comes up with a number of ideas that I find insightful. I particularly liked his categorization of urban districts into such places as, e.g., strollervilles (wealthy neighborhoods full of two-year-olds being strolled around by nannies while Daddy is at the law firm and Mommy is either working or doing something else), designer digs (e.g., Aspen, La Jolla), ethnic enclaves (think Fremont, Calif.), preservation-burgs, and boho-burbs (chic neighborhoods, often on old streetcar lines, with lively shopping areas; e.g., the Sellwood district and N.W. 23rd Ave. in Portland, Ore.). The Rockridge neighborhood in Oakland, Calif., is both a strollerville and a boho-burb. Florida goes beyond the usual accolades one might expect to be conferred on such places to point out their drawbacks. It's very well done.

If only Florida and his publisher had taken better care to vet the manuscript before publishing it! I'd read only a few pages before I started noticing typos: paarticular, New "Dehli" (must have excellent pastrami sandwiches), São "Paolo," Brazil (must have changed its official language to Italian). Then I started noticing factual oddities: Seoul, Korea, described in two different and seemingly mutually exclusive categories; San Francisco described as a place in which single women predominate when the accompanying map shows just the opposite. By the end of the book, the number of glitches had made me suspicious of every empirical datum Florida was presenting--so that when I read his statistic that only 1 in 20 U.S. households contains someone living alone, I couldn't trust it. It sounded too low. I went to the Internet and found an Associated Press report that "About 27.2 million Americans lived alone in 2000, accounting for about 26 percent of all households . . . ." That sounds right. A Population Reference Bureau web page confirms that Florida's statistic is highly inaccurate.

In summary, the book is well worth reading for Florida's impressionistic observations, but I'd be careful about relying on any conclusion he draws that is based on empirical data.

112 of 122 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where to live and why, February 27, 2008

By 

Michael Wells - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life (Hardcover)

Richard Florida does it again. In his bestselling "Rise of the Creative Class", he demonstrated the world's move to a creativity-based economy. But also that this emerging economy is increasingly concentrated in about a dozen cities in the US, and two or three dozen worldwide.

In "Who's Your City", Florida goes in two directions. First he lays the groundwork, expanding on his research of a clustering force of creative people that is making some regions economic and cultural winners. He explores the emerging "Mega-regions" (Bos-Wash, Northern California, Greater London) that are replacing nations as the organizing force of economic activity. He also plays with the idea that cities have personalities that attract different kinds of people.

Then in the last section Florida brings it all together, and shows why the book got its name. He says where we live is one of three major life decisions (along with choosing a mate and a career), and in fact can have a strong effect on the other two. But most people give it little thought, especially compared to love and work.

Then he gets personal. He gives us a 10-step process for deciding on a new home. To his credit, Florida doesn't assume we should all move to creative class Mecca's like Austin or Seattle. He recognizes that for many people, staying near family and friends is paramount, and that the search for experience isn't for everyone. What he does do is say that this can be a conscious decision.

But if you ARE looking for a new place to live, Florida's 10-point list is certainly the best tool for organizing your thinking -- from identifying what's important to you to generating a short list, researching the options and making a final decision.

Even if you're happy with your city and not planning to move, "Who's Your City" is a fascinating study of how the world is changing, from macroeconomics to popular culture. Recommended for everyone.

46 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Location drives nearly everything read why, May 20, 2008

By 

Gaetan Lion - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who's Your City (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful book. R. Florida counters the theories of the The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. At the beginning, he outlines how just 40 Mega-Regions dominate the World economy. While those account for just 17% of the World's population, they generate two thirds of its GDP and over 85% of its innovation (measured by patents and scientific papers). Additionally, the GDP of those Mega-Regions are growing faster. So, the concentration of economic power in those centers is accelerating. He calls this the "clustering effect." Thus, the World is not flat. It is spiky and getting spikier. Risk taking, creative, and talented people represent the "creative class" a concept he introduced in The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. The creative class members have strong incentives to cluster where the action is (the Mega-Regions). He demonstrates how the main economic scale has shifted from Nations to Mega-Regions and MSA level. The first two Mega-Regions (greater Tokyo and the D.C., New York, Boston corridor) both generate GDPs greater than $2 trillion. They would rank as the 3d and 4th largest World economies second only to the U.S. and Japan.

With other eminent social scientists, he studies the allocation of human resources in the U.S. in many ways. He shares the resulting maps of: a) the U.S. Mega-Regions, b) areas by % of college graduates, c) areas by income, d) areas by % belonging to creative class, e) areas by home prices. He uses similar color coding for each of those five maps that focuses on those different variables. And, the five different maps are very alike. It is as if you are seeing the same map five times, but with different legends. Thus, the high income, educated, creative class clusters within the Mega-Regions of the West Coast and the North East.

Next, R. Florida introduces the reader to the Big 5 Factor psychological model with the factors being: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness to new experience. He invites the reader to take the test at a mentioned website. My whole family took it. And, it was fun and revealing. The website captures the anonymous psychological profiles and zip codes. From this data, Florida and his colleagues create a map of personality types that shows where the conscientious types live, etc... Now, we can add a sixth dimension to the map: Openness. Thus, it is the open-minded, high income, educated, creative class that all clusters in the Mega-Regions of the West Coast and North East. And, that's where the most expensive real estate markets are.

R. Florida analysis states that society is increasingly sorting itself by location. His analysis reminds one of Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) where Hernstein and Murray indicated that society is increasingly stratified by cognitive abilities. Thus, accountants, lawyers, doctors, and investment bankers all have increasingly higher cognitive abilities vs a few decades ago. The same happens within the mentioned Mega-Regions of the West Coast and North East. Individuals with higher capabilities and income opportunities migrate to those areas and bid up local real estate values. Others find themselves priced out and move out of those "Superstar Cities" leaving room for other creative class achievers to move in further bidding up real estate prices. The creative class achievers need to move to those Superstar Cities to fulfill their potential. R. Florida has all those specialized regions mapped out in Figure 7.3: The New Geography of Work. If you want to be an investment banker you need to be in Manhattan. If you are engaged in hi tech you need to be in Silicon Valley.

R. Florida's work relates closely to another of Murray's book Human Accomplishment : The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 where Murray develops a regression model estimating how many luminaries lived at any one time in a specific country. The variables included GDP, human capital (top notch universities), networks (# of political and financial centers), and population of largest city (clustering). R. Florida explains how, why, and where people cluster. Murray explains the historical implication of clustering (# of luminaries in various fields at a specific time period).

In the last few chapters R. Florida focuses on the best places to live for various stages of life. He finds that a few cities perform well on many criteria. The San Francisco Bay Area performs well in 20 different categories. Boston is second ranking well in 13.

Within those last chapters, R. Florida shares many interesting insights. He finally addresses the relationship between likelihood of moving and life stages; a 25 year old is three times more likely than a 45 year old to move. This entails that cities that loose the young adults are loosing talent permanently. Once a college grad leaves town, he is unlikely to come back. Young college grads cluster in just a few cities. Those are the winners in the competition for talent. Empty nesters over 65 are likely to move further than their counterparts a decade younger. Where the Boomers will move as empty nesters will impact real estate prices and culture. He anticipates a mild generation conflict between Boomers and the younger creative class that will inhabit the same communities. Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069is an excellent book that further covers generation conflicts.

He shares other interesting statistics. The real jobless rate for black male high school drop out in their 20s including those in jail was 72% in 2004. Within this same group more are in jail then working. On another topic, chance of a high school graduate marrying a college graduate shrank by 43% between 1940 and the late 70s. People mate increasingly within equal education level. This is causing a rise in household income inequality as education is highly correlated to income.

If you find this review interesting, you'll find the book fascinating.