In this panel excerpt, moderator Speaker B asks Richard Florida about the evolution of the creative class since his book The Rise of the Creative Class and how it differs from traditional class concepts. Florida emphasizes that creativity is a universal human trait, historically cumulative, and fundamentally social. He notes that a century ago less than 5% of people could earn a living through creative work; by the book’s publication a third of people in advanced economies could, and today in some Northern European nations up to 50‑70% still lack access to creative opportunities. He argues that cities—whether megacities or small towns—are essential because they provide the social exchange that unlocks collective creativity. The discussion then shifts to Jonathan Reichental, who explains how smart‑city initiatives, particularly the opening of municipal data, can act as a catalyst for the creative class. He highlights the paradox of abundant data versus scarce municipal resources (time, money, skills) and stresses that making data openly available empowers community innovators despite these constraints.
Chapters
The urban life of the sociality.
Thank you so much. Now, the next topic won't strike you as a surprise because we are turning to Richard here, who brought us a masterpiece called The Rise of the Creative Class. And this is our next topic. And my first question is directed to you, of course, because while innovation comes from creative class living in diverse and dense cities. How are cities and the creative class has evolved since your masterpiece, uh, The Rise of the Creative Class, was published? And how is the creative class different from the classic perception of a class?
Yeah. Yeah, great, great question. I think, you know, when you write a 500-page book, which I don't recommend that any of you do because it's really horrible to do and you have to sit in your room for weeks on end and be boring, um, there's a lot of stuff. And, but, and there's a lot of distraction in that book. Right. Um, but there's a message that gets It gets clouded, it gets distorted by the conversation. It's like the same conversation you have to deal with with the 15-minute city. It gets distorted. But here's the message: every single human being is creative. All of us, these little kids playing, boys and girls, men and women, regardless of where on the planet we were born. We are all creative beings. My father had a 7th grade education. He had to go to work during the Great Depression to support his family. He was so much smarter than me. The kids I grew up with in New Jersey who didn't complete elementary or high school because they couldn't learn from a book, they could learn by doing, they were brilliant. You see it in the United States where I'm from, in the history and legacy of African American musicians like John Coltrane or Louis Armstrong or my idol Jimi Hendrix. We can go on down this list. And the horrible tragedy is that— nah, no, I shouldn't say this. The great, the great progress of human history and what I call the creative class means that 100 years ago, less than 5% of people in the world were able to do creative pursuits to make a living. When I wrote the book, a third of the population in advanced countries were able to do this for a living. Now, if you go to the Northern European countries, 50% of the people— but that means 50% or 60% or 70% don't get to use their creativity. So the great challenge and my whole life's work is about how do we tap that creative furnace that lies, and how do we utilize and enable people to find meaning and purpose, and the reason cities are important— and by this I don't mean megacities. When I say city, I mean it can be a small town, a community, a gathering— is because creativity is quintessentially social. It's not something that, that, that is locked up in any of us. We inherit creativity from all those who come before us, right? In the university world or in the scientific world, we have a saying. We say we stand on the shoulders of giants. So creativity is a historical thing which is informed by our past, but it's also a social, a collective resource. I am far more creative in this exchange than I am as an individual. People who write music or play in a band play together because that's the way we— we work in a startup company because we can't do it on our own. So it's quintessentially historical and it's social. So that's my message. And hopefully, as societies progress, at least it looks this way, that more and more human beings can get to not only be creative, but to get to use their creative spark to provide for themselves and their families. That's the message of the book.
Thank you so much. So, turning to Jonathan here, connecting to this topic, my question would be, how can smart cities act as a catalyst for the rise of the creative class?
So let me think. You know, one of the phenomena of cities today is many are embracing this idea of making their data available to their communities. That's kind of a weird thing to say they're making that happen because for many cities that's an obligation. They just haven't stepped up, right? You should know that, you know, there's a lot of scarcity in cities. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough skills. I'm talking about city hall. And yet there's an abundance of data. We have tons of data. So cities have stepped up, a lot of them have around the world, and they say, you know, we have all this data that we collect and create based on the function of running the city, and now we're making it open. We're opening up open data.
