With his rock-star looks and positions as senior editor of The Atlantic, head of the University of Toronto's Martin Prosperity Institute, and visiting professor at New York University, Richard Florida is the highest-profile urbanist in the country—and has been for over a decade. In all my travels, he and his creative-class theory are nigh universally cited. To the extent that civic leaders across America understand the criticality of human capital and talent in the 21st-century economy, it's because of him.
In his 2002 bestseller, The Rise of the Creative Class, Florida described how the world economy was being transformed by high-performing workers who specialize in innovation. Though he originally distinguished this creative class from white-collar knowledge workers generally, today the two terms are largely synonymous in the public mind and Florida's analyses. In effect, he developed a sexy way to talk about the increasing criticality of talent to economic success—and it catapulted him to superstardom.
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