{"id":378,"date":"2011-01-13T21:00:50","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T21:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicurbanism\/?p=378"},"modified":"2012-11-11T05:05:50","modified_gmt":"2012-11-11T05:05:50","slug":"making-the-scene-in-the-creative-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/2011\/01\/13\/making-the-scene-in-the-creative-city\/","title":{"rendered":"making the scene in the creative city"},"content":{"rendered":"

In exploring how cities sustain musical creativity, you eventually get around to the creative city thesis. This is most commonly associated with Richard Florida, the regional planning professor and urban consultant who contends in books like\u00a0The Rise of the Creative Class<\/em>\u00a0that the most prosperous cities and regions are the ones with the highest density of creative class members: artists, writers, scientists, scholars, designers, architects, and others who innovate new forms and new uses, plus the professionals (doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.) who exercise discretionary judgment as part of their work. Places that draw this creative workforce, he argues, do so because they offer the lifestyles, amenities, and social ambiance that this population seeks; in turn, the employers, industrial activity, and regional competitiveness follow the creative class.<\/p>\n

Florida has taken heat for some of his policy implications, his consulting side business, and\u2014let\u2019s be frank\u2014the wide attention his ideas have received. In truth, his argument isn\u2019t as revolutionary as it\u2019s sometimes portrayed. Most geographers studying the economy\u2019s cutting edges have long recognized the general importance of clustering skilled workers (see, for instance, the work of Allan J. Scott).<\/p>\n

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Personally, I\u2019ve met Richard Florida, he blurbed my first book, and I\u2019m happy to credit him with synthesizing an often jargon-filled scholarship (again, see the work of Allan J. Scott!), backing it up with catchy data (his \u201cGay Index\u201d will have to be the subject of another post), and clearly explaining it to a broad non-academic audience. I make finer distinctions, different conceptualizations, and certain counterclaims when\u00a0responding to his work as an academic<\/a>, but I think he and many other scholars are on-the-money in rejecting old wisdoms about creativity, technical, artistic, or otherwise. For instance, think about how we might associate these claims to high-tech engineers but not rock musicians:<\/p>\n

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  1. Creativity results from individual talent.<\/li>\n
  2. Creative talent is independent of locational setting or social networks.<\/li>\n
  3. With the proverbial punch of the clock, creative talent can be turned on, continuously exercised, rationally managed, and then turned off.<\/li>\n
  4. Creative workers care less about lifestyle opportunities or supportive cultures and more about low taxes, cheap real estate, and good schools for the kids.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In fact high-tech engineers and rock musicians, it turns out, aren\u2019t so different in how they relate to the people they work with, the populations and neighborhoods they live among, and the locational amenities they can take advantage of\u2014which is positively, interactively, and synergistically. Much of the \u201crevolutionary\u201d impact of Florida\u2019s creative city thesis can be understood by this generalizing sweep.<\/p>\n

    This provides a moment to consider the multidisciplinarity of this blog\u2019s perspective on musical urbanism. In many ways, I share the generalizing approach illustrated by Florida\u2019s creative city thesis. After all, this is what the social sciences are about (or at least, for the eggheads among you, the structuralist and nomothetic traditions in the social sciences). Beneath the individuality of human biography and the novelty of day-to-day life, social life is organized by broader patterns, shared contexts, and common forces. These can be helpfully understood through universal, abstract descriptions of social life\u2014the stuff of hypothesis-testing, theory-building, and other intellectual activities that scientists care deeply about. An abstract, generalized view of social life is also intrinsic to any discussion of policy proposals. If the lessons of, say, New York City couldn\u2019t be understood in universal, abstract terms, then they\u2019d have no relevance to, say, Cleveland or Barcelona.<\/p>\n

    Music enchants us with its particularity\u2014a melody like no other, an especially tantalizing arrangement or production, a song that we associate with a specific time and place in our lives. Arguably cities work the same way, or at least \u201cgreat cities\u201d do (is there a musical equivalent to the\u00a0concern for placelessness<\/a>?). It can seem odd or even antithetical to consider music through an abstracting, universalizing lens as ethnomusicologists or cognitive psychologists are wont to do.\u00a0\u00a0Richard Florida doesn\u2019t tackle music this way, but he does think about the setting for musical creativity\u00a0in such a manner<\/a>:<\/p>\n