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Joe_Cavalry All Day Every Day


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True. Hey!!! I'm one of those.
Debate Score:5
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 True. (1)
 
 Hey!!! I'm one of those. (2)

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The creative class (intellects, artists, gays, hipsters, etc.) cannot revive urb

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/20/richard-florida-concedes-the-limits-of-the-creative-class.html

The creative class (intellects, artists, gays, hipsters, etc.) cannot revive urban areas nor help them spread.

Among the most pervasive notions of the past decade has been that the “creative class” of the skilled, educated and hip would remake and revive American cities.

    The reality is that the benefits that appeal to the creative class benefit mostly that class—and do little to make anyone else any better off.

    One group certain to be flustered by this new perspective will be many of the cities who have been encouraging the arts and entertainment, building bike paths, welcoming minorities and gays—that would attract young college-educated workers. Cities like San Francisco and Seattle, that have become hubs of highly educated migrants, technology, and high-end business services.

    One example might have been Michigan, that sought to cultivate the “creative class” by subsidizing the arts in Detroit and across the state. It didn’t exactly work. “You can put mag wheels on a Gremlin, but that doesn't make it a Mustang.”

    For Rust Belt cities, following the “creative class” meme has not only meant wasted money, but wasted effort and misdirection. Burning money trying to become “cooler” ends up looking something like the metropolitan equivalent to a midlife crisis.

    Perhaps the best that can be said about the creative-class idea is that it follows a real, if overhyped, phenomenon: the movement of young, largely single, childless and sometimes gay people into urban neighborhoods. This Soho-ization—the transformation of older, often industrial urban areas into hip enclaves—is evident in scores of cities. It can legitimately can be credited for boosting real estate values from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Wicker Park in Chicago and Belltown in Seattle to Portland’s Pearl District as well as much of San Francisco.

    Yet this footprint of such “cool” districts that appeal to largely childless, young urbanistas in the core is far smaller in most cities than commonly reported.  In contrast, the suburban areas—between 10 and 20 miles from the center —experienced a much larger growth rate.

 

True.

Side Score: 2
VS.

Hey!!! I'm one of those.

Side Score: 3

Investments in “cool” districts may well appeal to some young professionals, particularly before they get married and have children. But overall, it has done little overall for the urban middle class, much less the working class or the poor.

These limitations of the “hip cool” strategy to drive broad-based economic growth have been evident for years. Conservative critics have pointed out that many creative-class havens often underperform economically compared to their less hip counterparts. More liberal academic analysts have denounced the idea as “ exacerbating inequality and exclusion.” They see it as little more than a neo-liberal recipe of “biscotti and circuses.”

The sad truth is that even in the more plausible “creative class” cities such as New York and San Francisco, the emphasis on “hip cool” and high-end service industries has corresponded with a decline in their middle class and a growing gap between rich and poor. Washington D.C. and San Francisco, perennial poster children for “cool cities,” also have among the highest percentages of poverty of any major urban center—roughly 20 percent—once cost of living is figured in.

On paper, the “creative class” theory worships at the altar of diversity. “The great thing about cities, is that they're diverse. There's diverse people in them.” Yet even leaving aside their lack of economic diversity, the exemplars of “hip cool” world, tend to be vanilla cities with relatively small minority populations. San Francisco, Portland and Seattle are becoming whiter and less ethnically diverse as the rest of the country, and particularly the suburbs, is rapidly diversifying.

Another byproduct of hipster gentrification is the dearth of families. Ten years ago the increasingly “creative class” neighborhood of Bywater was family oriented. Now, it’s “a kiddie wilderness.” In 2000, 968 youngsters lived in the district. Just 10 years later, the number had dropped by 70 percent, to 285.

Unsurprisingly, there’s not much emphasis about families in "cool cities", in part because the basic theory focuses largely on groups like singles, childless young professionals and gays. It largely discounts suburbs, generally the nation’s nurseries, as outdated for the “creative age” and considers homeownership and single family houses, also vastly preferred by families, as fundamentally passé.

Indeed, the places that most attract “the creative class” are also the ones with the fewest families and children, led by San Francisco, Seattle, Manhattan, and rapidly gentrifying Washington, D.C. The very high prices per square foot, understandably celebrated by urban real estate boosters, have made it hard not only on the poor but on middle- and even upper-middle-class families. When you have children, you often have to let go of your bohemian fantasies; it’s hard to imagine being a parent in a place like San Francisco where there are a raging debates about the right of people to walk around naked.

The fastest job growth has taken place in regions—Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Omaha—whose economies are based not on “creative” industries but on less fashionable pursuits such as oil and gas, agriculture and manufacturing.

;)

Side: True.
iamdavidh(4856) Disputed
1 point

Kotkin likes to distract people and play to class and other prejudices with inflammatory language about “hip and cool” places versus suburbs and young sophistos, trendoids, and gays versus real families.

As does Joe, it goes on...

It’s interesting, in that context, to note that his recent report on “post-familialism” was supported by the right-wing philanthropist Howard Ahmanson. Kotkin’s report credits Ahmanson as a “philanthropist”, but Salon dubs him “the avenging angel of the religious right,” a large funder of anti-gay and anti-evolution group and causes.

Basically it's an anti-gay anti social-evolution article. Downtown areas have been crumbling. Young creative types, some of whom happen to be gay and who at the very least don't hold these prejudices, have been revitalizing them. Joe, the religious right, and far right conservatives see GAY! and get scared and feel some sort of primitive need to discredit anything connected, whether it's based in reality or not.

But the fact is that these were areas which were dead, and now they are alive. They were areas which were draining their perspective cities, and now they are giving more than they take.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/03/ideas-trump-resources-when-it-comes-city-growth/4963/

Side: Hey!!! I'm one of those.

I see you are hipster. One of those creative, artsy fartsy type ;)

The article shows that there aren't enough of you "creative" people around to increase the boundaries of these "creative" hubs and fill a multitude of cities ;)

And that's really good because the creative class tends to vote liberal ;)

In either case, the article is filled with sources and statistics unlike your commentary. Which is typical of artistic types who normally don't like to deal with math and are more comfortable with touchy feely stuff ;)

Side: Hey!!! I'm one of those.
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