I was a bit skeptical about buying Richard Florida's "Rise of the Creative Class" but decided I should read it before cementing an opinion. One of the deciding aspects for Florida determining if an area is open to the creative class is a Tolerance Index. Basically if an area is tolerant to gays, bohemians, immigrants, etc; then it is attractive to the highly mobile and prosperous thought workers.

Another index he came up with is the Creativity Index which is based on a mix of technology, talent and tolerance. Florida writes:

Keep your eyes on countries and the regions within them that seek to attract all sorts of people and nurture creativity: that is now the key element of global competition, more than flows of goods and services or capital. Regions like Toronto and Vancouver already have concentrations of immigrants and bohemians that surpass all US regions. Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, would rank sixth and seventh among US regions on my Creativity Index.

The city on top of his US Creativity Index, Austin, TX, was one of the areas that my wife and I thought to moving to. When I wanted to move out of Virginia I looked at Phoenix, Denver, Portland, San Francisco, southern Texas and Tampa Bay.

Current social conservative politics have led to a welfare state that is increasingly focused on working families with children. This is true of the Howard Government and more recently in the US the $300 rebate (to keep the economy strong or some rubbish) was an extra $300 per child. Richard Florida argues the inverse is true:

Furthermore, one group that has been neglected by most communities, at least until recently, is young people. Young people have typically been thought of as transients who contribute little to a city's bottom line. But in the creative age they matter for two reasons.

First they are workhorses. ... [and] Second, people are staying single longer.

He argues that young people are a driving force behind dynamic creative economies, and are more important economically than the traditional suburban nuclear family to economic wealth and success for a region.

Not exclusively however, and the aspects of a city that attracts the educated youth worker, also attracts the aging worker with a family. Lifestyles do not stop because of child birth. This returns to Florida's main argument where the quality of life in a city or region is a deciding factor in attracting 'the creative class' to the local economy, which inevitably attracts in turn creative companies who want to employ their labor.

Politically I think young people are under-represented and I do believe that there is an element of the world having changed on many of the old politicians that inhabit our political structures such that they are endemically out of touch. The responses to terrorism were not the ones of the abundant libertous age, they were a cold war response. The same with the social welfare of the Howard years, it was typical big-government social engineering.

The Westminster System helps entrench the career politician, Howard being a good example. I don't see that issue changing soon. On the Liberal benches the nearest one to having a real job of the potential leaders is Turnball. The current Prime Minister is another careerist having moved through a professional career in diplomacy to electoral politics.

Limelight Networks is a rising Phoenix startup. They are a CDN that deals in a bunch of customers reputable and not so reputable. The scuttlebutt is that they are moving from their semi-industrial offices by the 10 to a new building at Tempe on Mill right by the Light Rail.

There are now several businesses around the north end of Mill in Tempe by the Light Rail and Tempe Town Lake. Additionally Mill has gone a bit upscale lately and has more high rises and condos to appeal to the wealthy information working yuppies rather than the poor and impoverished Uni Students.

The north end of Mill has all the pubs, restaurants and other light entertainment shops before it blends into Arizona State University's sprawling Tempe campus.

The dynamics on Mill Avenue pretty much match Richard Florida's creative class thesis about economics, technology, information working, startups, universities, walkable suburbs and so forth.

It is interesting as Tempe has targeted that dynamic of creative class wealth. In comparison Old Town Scottsdale has gone for the traditional douche bag wealth and North Scottsdale is more sprawling nuclear family suburban wealth.

I think of the three Tempe and Downtown Phoenix are the best placed to leverage what they have. Which again, will probably make Richard Florida nod his head.