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Places of high creative class populations
Florida's research of census and economic data, presented in works such as The Rise of the Creative Class (2003), Cities and the Creative Class (2004), and The Flight of the Creative Class (2007), as well as Bobos in Paradise, by David Brooks (whose "bobos" roughly correspond to Florida's creative class), and NEO Power by Ross Honeywill that introduces the NEO Neighborhood, have shown that cities which attract and retain the creative class prosper, while those that do not stagnate. This research has been gaining more and more traction among members of the business community, as well as among politicians and urban planners. For instance, Florida and other creative class theorists have been invited to meetings of the National Conference of Mayors and numerous economic development committees, such the Denver mayor's Task Force on Creative Spaces and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm's "Cool Cities" initiative.
In Cities and the Creative Class, Florida devoted several chapters to a discussion of the three main prerequisites of creative cities—though there are many additional qualities which distinguish creative magnets. Basically, for a city to become a magnet for the creative class, it must be an example of "the three 'T's" of Talent (have a highly talented/educated/skilled population), Tolerance (have a diverse community, which has a 'live and let live' ethos), and Technology (have the technological infrastructure necessary to fuel an entrepreneurial culture).
As Florida showed in his books, cities like Buffalo, New Orleans and Louisville are examples of those which have tried to attract the creative class but, in comparison to cities which better exemplify the "three 'T's", have failed. The creative class is looking for cities that better accommodate their cultural, creative, and technological needs—cities such as Chapel Hill, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Austin, Seattle, Toronto, Ontario and Portland, Oregon. Florida also notes that Milwaukee, Wisconsin has all of the ingredients to be a "leading city in a new economy".
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