I heard about Professor Florida's work because he was a guest speaker at IBM's Forum on Global Leadership held in London this month - I was able to watch a video of his talk, which unfortunately is not available outside IBM's firewalls. To me, there are two key points to the book:
First, it refutes, or at least tempers the argument made by Friedman in "The World is Flat." Telecommunications and technology may have removed the barriers of location from participation in commerce today, but there still are clusters of population that often dominate a particular domain.
For example, film making in LA or Mumbai. Investing in NY or London. Music in Nashville or Detroit, or for starting out in music, Austin. Computer technology in Silicon Valley, Bangalore, and to some extent (mostly semi-conductor), Austin.
Second, it gives weight to an important life decision - the "where" factor. On life's big decisions, the obvious items are "what" - what do you do for your career - and "who" - with whom you'll spend your life (i.e., significant other). Florida argues that where "... has an equal, if not greater, effect on our economic future, happiness, and overall life outcome."
This isn't only in the context of locating where the work is. Sure, if you're heart's set on being an investment banker, then El Paso offers few choices compared to New York. But there are other factors at play. I found the Powdthavee study [p87] to be of particular interest; it estimates the monetary value equivalent of seeing friends or relatives frequently. According to this University of London study, "seeing friends or relatives in person almost every day is worth more than six figures in additional income."
For example, "if you relocate from a city where you regularly see your family and friends to one where you would not, you would need to earn $133,000 [more] just to make up for the lack of happiness..."
Presumably this explains why I live in Austin Texas (even when my office has been - and continues to be - in other cities).
Some of the interesting insights from the studies that inform Florida's writing include the importance of an artistic, bohemian community to making a city livable. Openness is particularly important - "a communal sense of tolerance and acceptance of diversity." This is, along with its especially high invention rate (measured by US patents), why Austin Texas is one of the desirable cities in Florida's lists.
Austin places high in rank for both "all households" and "gay and lesbian" households in best places for families with children, for empty nesters, for singles (because there are so many young people in their first jobs), and in all these categories, it scores equally well for gay and lesbian as well as all households. On the other had, for retirees over 65 years of age, Austin fell off the list. Guess the key is to be like Willy Nelson - the age isn't the issue, just make sure you don't retire.
