In a four-year, $6 mil­lion study of thir­teen cities across Europe called “Accom­mo­dat­ing Cre­ative Knowl­edge,” that was pub­lished in 2011, researchers found one of Florida’s cen­tral ideas—the migra­tion of cre­ative work­ers to places that are tol­er­ant, open and diverse—was sim­ply not happening.
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Today, Cre­ative Class doc­trine has become so deeply engrained in the cul­ture that few ques­tion it. Why, with­out any solid evi­dence, did a whole gen­er­a­tion of pol­icy mak­ers swal­low the cre­ative Kool-Aid so enthu­si­as­ti­cally? One rea­son is that when Florida’s first book came out, few experts both­ered debunk­ing it, because it didn’t seem worth debunk­ing. “In the aca­d­e­mic and urban plan­ning world,” says Peck, “peo­ple are slightly embar­rassed about the Florida stuff.” Most econ­o­mists and pub­lic pol­icy schol­ars just didn’t take it seriously.
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Look­ing back, it was strangely lib­er­at­ing to have real­ized that the Cre­ative Class was a myth. It was fun for a while and, unfounded as it was, a few good things may even have come out of it. Some cities built bike paths. Oth­ers poured money into their arts com­mu­ni­ties. I’m all for bik­ing and the arts, as was every­one I spoke to for this story. In fact, they were at pains to point out that they were not opposed to the things Florida was advo­cat­ing. “To be against this,” said Jamie Peck, “is like being against moth­er­hood and apple pie. You’re against cre­ativ­ity? You’re against gays and lesbians?

You’re against parks and bike paths?” Michele Hoy­man echoed the sen­ti­ment. “There are a whole vari­ety of rea­sons to have arts as a cen­ter­piece of your city. One is to make it a tourist des­ti­na­tion. Another is if you want to revi­tal­ize a neigh­bor­hood. Retail is fine as a revi­tal­iza­tion strat­egy, but it doesn’t have a very good mul­ti­plier effect. It’s not going to save a city that’s com­pletely dying.”

“Even as an arts advo­cate,” said Mel Gray, “I want to do it for the right rea­sons.” The right rea­son, we can now say, is that these things are good in them­selves. They have intrin­sic value. They make the place we live more inter­est­ing, live­lier, health­ier and more humane. They make it better.

They do not make it more profitable.