[URBAN NOTE] "The Interview: Richard Florida and the Future of Toronto"

[rfmcdonald]

Thanks to Facebook's Alex for linking to Urban Toronto's interview with Toronto-based urbanist Richard Florida, looking at the problems of an increasingly class- and neighbourhood-fragmented Toronto.

31 years after Jane Jacobs wrote Cities and the Wealth of Nations, it is still surprising to discuss macroeconomics and urban design in the same breath. Discussions of GDP, productivity, and innovation, are virtually never linked—in a structurally meaningful way, at least—to the health and vibrancy of urban environments. What's more, as the rate of technological development accelerates, particularly in terms of internet connectivity and communications, some theorists believe that the importance of geographic location as an economic factor is destined to diminish.

In The World is Flat, for example, Tom Friedman argues that globalization and technological development have made many geographic boundaries obsolete, diminishing the importance of place in the global economy. With many corporations asserting a global presence and technology allowing meetings, transactions, and the exchange of knowledge to be conducted from practically any location. A corollary of this line of reasoning is that the clustering of wealth and talent would give way to a globally 'level playing field' of commerce and innovation.

Richard Florida at the Martin Prosperity Institute, image by Lorne Bridgman, cou
Richard Florida at the Martin Prosperity Institute, image by Lorne Bridgman, courtesy of creative class.com

By contrast, Richard Florida argues that "cities form the fundamental economic container of 21st century economies, and the world is becoming 'spikier' than ever before." Indeed, as economic inequality increases throughout the world, "prosperity and innovation are also becoming more geographically clustered." Even in the supposedly 'flattening' age of social media and instant communication, the very companies that produce today's most disruptive and groundbreaking technologies jockey for prime position in tech innovation hubs like California's Silicon Valley, as "quality of place becomes increasingly important."

Meanwhile, here in Toronto—as in many cities throughout the world—the "geography of urban landscapes is also becoming increasingly stratified," Florida notes. Citing David Hulchanski's landmark 'Three Cities Report,' Florida notes that the recent intensification of "a long-term trend towards a prosperous urban core, surrounded by an eroding middle-class, which is itself bordered by increasingly impoverished outer areas."

As Toronto's—and, indeed, the world's—wealth becomes increasingly polarized, "the geographic boundaries of prosperity are also becoming more starkly defined, with increasingly concentrated clusters of affluence surrounded by the comparatively financially depleted areas that make up most of the world." To better understand this phenomenon—and, more broadly, the relationship between geography and prosperity—Florida proposes a radical new economic paradigm in which the the cultural geography of cities is not merely considered an aesthetic consequence of a society's economic system, but rather a critical socio-economic determinant in its own right.