My first encounter with Richard Florida was in a Global Studies (Cities and Globalization) class taken at St. Lawrence University. Even though his ideas came across to me as “elitist” and “naïve”, I did not completely disregard his theories. Since then Richard Florida has been at the back of my mind, and I have tried my best to keep my “eyes” and “ears” open to anything that will assist me in making sense of his ideas. Thus, needless to say the first name that came up to my mind when I saw this article in the Shanghai Daily was Richard Florida.

For those of you who haven't heard of him before, Richard Florida is an economist and a sociologist who has written a number of books on the “creative class”. His most famous claim/theory remains that attracting large populations of what he terms as the “creative class” is the key to economic success. In other words, he argues that economic growth today is no longer dependent on industry, but rather it depends on the “creative economy” or the ability of cities and regions to attract highly talented, skilled and creative people. At a glance, it might seem that his theory is just a mere re-statement of the “human capital” theory, however further examination indicates that his “creative capital” theory is very different from the “human capital” theory; the most significant difference being, his argument that creative people choose specific places to live and work at. In simpler terms, creative people flock to specific places, and in doing so they increase the economic success of that place.

The question then is, who could be considered to be a part of this creative class? For Florida this term breaks down into two major categories: The Super Creative Core (SCC) and the Creative Professionals (CP). SCC is a larger group that constitutes a number of different occupations that requires active and full engagement in the creative process (science, engineering, education, research, computer programming etc), while the CP constitutes of professionals filling in knowledge based occupations(health care professionals, business and finance and legal workers). In other words the SCC engages in both problem solving as well as problem finding, while the CP mainly engages in problem solving only.

Going back to the more important question of the relation between creative class and their location, Florida uses a 3T model to explain why the creative class tend to flock to specific places. He argues that technology, talent and tolerance is what determines the ability of a city to attract the creative class. Technology is measured using the “Tech-Pole Index” which counts the number of high tech firms in a city, talent is measured through the “Bohemian Index” which counts the number of poets, writers, musicians and the likes. Tolerance is measured using the “Gay Index”, basically counting the number of people who identifies as being gay or lesbian.

Even though Florida's ideas seems elitist, exclusive and naïve, the main reason why it was hard for me to completely disregard his ideas was the fact that it did make sense at some levels. When one looks at the most economically prosperous regions of the world, there certainly is a difference between those places and the less prosperous places in terms of the levels of technology, talent and tolerance. Think of cities such as New York, Toronto, San Francisco, and you will come to realize that maybe there is some truth to his claims, even though it might not be as simple as he makes it out be.

The news about Pudong headhunting for financial talent made me think about the question:

Is Shanghai a city that the creative class would like to live in?

Even though Florida's theories were based on research done in cities of North America, can one extend his theories and models to cities in developing nations such as Shanghai?

There is no doubt that Shanghai is the financial and commercial hub of China. The city account for a large proportion of the nations output and innovation and every year there are thousands of people migrating into the city. However, I wonder how well Shanghai will do on the Tech-Pole, Bohemian and the Gay Index.

Some of the first questions that popped up into my mind during my first few weeks here in Shanghai were:

Were are the musicians? Where are the street performers? Where are all the gay people?

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