The Burnside Blog
"Creative Class" Author To Speak in PDX
If you like baseball stats, you’d love Richard Florida. Whereas the unsexy metrics employed by masters of demography and economic forecasting are most often expressed by algorithms and other things I don’t understand, Richard Florida has made following the course of our new creative economy as easy as tracking Mo Vaughn’s batting average. Seriously.
Florida’s approach has set a new standard. Instead of measuring economic growth in GDP and total economic output, Florida’s metrics include diversity and creativity, which he says, attract the so-called “Creative Class” to a metropolitan area. Creative class members include inventors, designers, architects, writers, creative professionals and other so-called knowledge workers who many economists say are the primary players in a new economy. While some have passed off Florida’s research as “fluff”, his message has been well received in civic and entrepreneurial circles. In any event, Portland fares well by his criteria, and this is good news as the region is predicted to swell by one million residents (That’s 10 Greshams dude) by 2030. Let’s hope we don’t run out of ranch dressing.
Florida will speak this Wednesday morning to 500 business and civic leaders at the Portland Art Museum as part of the Greenlight Greater Portland Economic Summit “Pursuing The Future: The Outlook For Greater Portland.” The Summit will feature the release of the 2008 Prosperity Index, wherein Portland is compared to nine other American cities, using criteria similar to Richard Florida’s. For more information, visit the website.
