Chronicler of the Creative Class

An Interview with Richard Florida

by Carl Frankel and illustrations by Jason Cring, August 27, 2010

The urban studies theorist Richard Florida isn’t from the city. Born to a working-class family in New Jersey, he earned his PhD from Columbia University, taught for years at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, and is currently a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

Florida first came into the public eye with the 2002 publication of The Rise of the Creative Class, in which he argued that high concentrations of creative people are what drive the success of metropolitan regions. Since then, Florida’s star has continued to rise with the publication of follow-up books, including the wryly titled Who’s Your City?

Florida’s latest offering is The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity. It frames the current economic crisis in the context of previous bust-and-recovery cycles beginning in the 1870s and 1930s, respectively. Florida argues that we are heading toward a third “Reset,” driven by the creative class and likely to produce a step-change in our values and where and how we conduct our lives.
We caught up with Florida recently to discuss The Great Reset. Here’s what he had to tell us.