Eugene McCann (2007) seeks to problematize emerging policy discourses associated with Richard Florida’s creative class thesis, couching them within an urban political context, pitting creative class proponents against other local actors for limited public resources. McCann argues that Florida’s research has (among other things) conflated what had historically been two separate issues relating to urban politics: city-regionalism and livability. That is, the ability of city-regions to compete for “creative capital” is associated with high levels of livability, which is increasingly measured in terms of the amenities available within a city-region. This new discourse has had a noticeable impact on the local political arena, which McCann illustrates with an empirical examination of creative class übercity Austin, Texas.
Austin’s remarkable growth in the 1990’s was a model of sorts for Florida’s incipient creative class thesis. In turn, the thesis came to have sway over the direction of local policy. Through a series of interviews with local residents, McCann describes a political arena dominated by high-tech firms demanding new suburban office parks, anti-sprawl environmentalists, and residents of inner-city neighborhoods. It created a dynamic pitting economic growth against a newly implemented “smart growth” strategy that sought to curb suburban sprawl by gentrifying urban neighborhoods, making them more palatable to high-tech firms wishing to locate in Austin. This would increase the urban tax base while simultaneously protecting one of the region’s most important recreational amenities, the rough and hilly central Texas countryside.
Politicians attempted to enact change at the regional scale by focusing on the neighborhood scale, demonstrating that a “complex and contingent urban political geography” (p. 192) underscores the concept of city-regionalism. McCann emphasizes that, in this political environment, socio-economic inequality became a crucial aspect of the contested definition of “livability”. He laments that Florida offers no policy recommendations for closing this persistent wealth gap, but highlights that livability in the city-region is yet again the prescribed solution, further reinforcing the fusion of discourses.
This paper is topical because of its application of Florida’s creative class thesis to the concept of the city-region. McCann asserts that city-regionalism has gained even more traction and support in policy discourses because of the very popularity of the creative class thesis. It becomes, then, a process of reinforcing and reproducing the conceptualization of the city as a region. Additionally, McCann takes aim at the homogenizing and essentializing tendencies of the creative class thesis, particularly in the way in which it identifies economic development with the presence of high concentrations of creative capital. Rather than evisioning the city-region as a heterogeneous place with multiple identities and a diverse array of citizens from multiple socio-economic backgrounds, the creative class thesis re-imagines the city-region as a site of entertainment and amenity consumption by an elite class of talented, self-actualized, mobile, and atomized individuals.
Indeed, for all its self-promotion as a city of unique amenities that appeal to young professionals, McCann shows that Austin’s economic success is rooted in an economic development plan originating in the 1950’s. This plan emphasized a local economy based on white-collar jobs, a low cost of living, the presence of state government institutions, and the proximity to a large public research university. These attributes are strikingly comparable to the commonly conceived strengths of Columbus’ own local economy, which has enjoyed similar increases in population and economic growth in the face of a struggling state economy.
Austin’s development strategy is, on its face, quite admirable. Attempting to reduce sprawl by limiting exurban development even when such development is demanded by coveted high-tech firms takes enormous restraint on the part of local politicians and business elites. In terms of the creative city-region, this protects the environment and its recreational amenities while filling in the economically depressed and “underutilized” neighborhoods of the urban core. However, gentrification remains a highly contentious issue for impoverished urban residents who have spent decades creating lifestyles and homes for themselves in the otherwise neglected urban core. The neoliberal stance of Florida’s thesis does not make room for these marginalized classes of the working poor. Rather, it merely claims that their creative potential remains untapped, and that the means of upward mobility is a matter of pulling themselves up by their own creative bootstraps.
McCann forces us to consider the very nature of livability. Is measured in terms of the ability of the creative class to access certain recreational amenities, or the ability of a broad range of local residents to access quality education, healthcare, and job opportunities? These latter issues are effectively beyond the power of the city governments to effect change, dependent upon policies enacted at the state or federal level. But if the city-region is, in fact, engaged in a process of “hollowing out” the national state, then city governments are capable of focusing their attention away from the accumulation of creative capital from elsewhere and toward the distribution of essential public services to indigenous residents. In the process, such cities may unwittingly increase the quantity and quality of local creative capital, finding it to be uncharacteristically loyal to and rooted in the local culture.
Reference
McCann, E. (2007). “Inequality and Politics in the Creative City-Region: Questions of Livability and State Strategy.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31 (1): 188-196.
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