[.ca] Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making ... (ISBN 0307356965)

Not much new here.:
While I enjoyed the "Rise of the Creative Class" this book adds little that is new, and ends up concluding that where you decide to live is important - hard to disagree with that, but I expected more.

who's your city : with explanations and applications:
Richard Florida practices what he preaches, by moving from Newark New Jersey to Toronto. He is reported to be interested in applying his theories to Canadian cities. With more immigrants than most American cities, high concentrations of the most creative types of employment, government funding for small business and the arts, low crime, good public schools and a large urban middle class, Canada's biggest cities seem well poised to take advantage of the trends he describes. Educated as an urban planner at Columbia University, Richard Florida is offering advice on how to pick the right place to live. He has organized his book around three key ideas of, the importance of place in the global economy, the diversification and specialization for quality of life, and the mobile nature of society giving you more choice where to live. As a realtor myself, I found both his anecdotal style of illustrating his concepts enjoyable , and his action steps to implement his suggested options enlightening . For example he provides lists of cities clustered into mega regions throughout the world to choose from . His discussion of the lifestyle considerations is supported by a " notes" section linking it to personality websites, for those who would like to try them. To make an informed choice he includes a "Place Finder" as a self rating check list to help you organize and evaluate your potential choices.

Help me:
Ostensibly "Who's Your City?" is a self-help book intended to facilitate using career preferences, relationships, personality and life-stage to find the optimum place to live. But alas, Dr. Florida is not part of the helping professions. Rather, he is an academic researcher and the book is primarily a rundown of his and others research. The self-help is a last chapter add on that is skimpy and not thought out. For example; step seven advises observing people's behaviour in a targeted city to determine the level of trust in the city but we are not advised to actually visit the city until step ten. The book is more successful as a review of some important global trends. Dr. Florida's key point is that where we chose to live is as important a decision as what we chose to do and who we chose as a life partner. Obvious perhaps but, as Dr. Florida points out, historically we have not given the decision of where to live sufficient attention. Topics covered to support his argument include; the formation of "mega-regions" through "clustering" of like minded individuals, the creative class' affect on mega-regions and vice versa and the effect of location on happiness. All are presented adequately with a liberal measure of anecdotes. After reading the book I have to agree with his premise. A minor complaint: despite Dr. Florida's contention that where to live is now a global decision and despite his current location in Toronto, Canada or any of the world outside the U.S. are not considered as possible choices of where to live. It does not seem unreasonable to think there are at least a few plausible options beyond the U.S.

A very enjoyable walk through "Who's Your City":
I enjoyed Florida's first two books as they brought clarity to a few things I had been thinking about regarding latent creative talent and the benefits of encouraging everyone to use it. In his latest work, we find that our location matters to many things including our collaborative potential and elements of subjective well-being which is in many ways intuitive, but Florida brings his keen observations and signature enthusiasm to the topic, while drawing upon an array of other relevant experts to make his case. Recommended.