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Richard Florida: Toronto could use a good civic crisis
May 22 2010
Richard Florida
Read More: http://www.thestar.com/news/insight...florida-toronto-could-use-a-good-civic-crisis
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I've lived in Toronto for three years. Every passing day, I'm discovering new dimensions to this great city. I count our decision to move here among the best of my life. But the more I look at our city and region, the more I recognize the challenges we face, especially in light of how the tectonic economic events of the past 18 months are recasting the role of cities and regions worldwide, which I lay out in my new book, The Great Reset. I hold up Toronto as an example of an older Frost Belt city that has effectively made the transition to a new economy based on finance, media, service, technology and design-intensive manufacturing.
But resets are times when the fortunes of cities, regions and nations change dramatically. They are times of chaos and suffering, but also of tremendous innovation. We hear the phrase “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” — first articulated by Stanford economist Paul Romer, and later picked up by President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel — a lot these days. But how does Toronto reset itself? I worry that as cities from New York to London, San Francisco to Shanghai, strive to remake themselves for a new age, our very success may be making us too complacent.
The crisis and reset we are going through are comparable in magnitude to the Panic and Long Depression of the 1870s and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The pain of job loss and dislocation in both of those periods was far worse than what we feel now. But both were the most innovative decades of the past two centuries. We invented new technologies, new transportation systems, new infrastructure and new ways of living and working.
It's the latter — or what geographers call a new “spatial fix” — that powers true recovery and lasting prosperity. As I show in The Great Reset, it was not just New Deal spending or World War II mobilization or even incredible waves of innovation that powered our unprecedented prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s; it was our suburban way of life. As millions of families bought houses and moved to suburbia, they created demand for the cars, refrigerators, washers, dryers, TVs and stereos coming off the booming assembly lines.
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A Starbucks barista. In the U.S. companies like Whole Foods have managed to make service jobs more rewarding. That's one of the key challenges facing our regional economy, argues Richard Florida.
May 22 2010
Richard Florida
Read More: http://www.thestar.com/news/insight...florida-toronto-could-use-a-good-civic-crisis
##################################
I've lived in Toronto for three years. Every passing day, I'm discovering new dimensions to this great city. I count our decision to move here among the best of my life. But the more I look at our city and region, the more I recognize the challenges we face, especially in light of how the tectonic economic events of the past 18 months are recasting the role of cities and regions worldwide, which I lay out in my new book, The Great Reset. I hold up Toronto as an example of an older Frost Belt city that has effectively made the transition to a new economy based on finance, media, service, technology and design-intensive manufacturing.
But resets are times when the fortunes of cities, regions and nations change dramatically. They are times of chaos and suffering, but also of tremendous innovation. We hear the phrase “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” — first articulated by Stanford economist Paul Romer, and later picked up by President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel — a lot these days. But how does Toronto reset itself? I worry that as cities from New York to London, San Francisco to Shanghai, strive to remake themselves for a new age, our very success may be making us too complacent.
The crisis and reset we are going through are comparable in magnitude to the Panic and Long Depression of the 1870s and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The pain of job loss and dislocation in both of those periods was far worse than what we feel now. But both were the most innovative decades of the past two centuries. We invented new technologies, new transportation systems, new infrastructure and new ways of living and working.
It's the latter — or what geographers call a new “spatial fix” — that powers true recovery and lasting prosperity. As I show in The Great Reset, it was not just New Deal spending or World War II mobilization or even incredible waves of innovation that powered our unprecedented prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s; it was our suburban way of life. As millions of families bought houses and moved to suburbia, they created demand for the cars, refrigerators, washers, dryers, TVs and stereos coming off the booming assembly lines.
##################################
A Starbucks barista. In the U.S. companies like Whole Foods have managed to make service jobs more rewarding. That's one of the key challenges facing our regional economy, argues Richard Florida.
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