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Dayton area has ingredients for creative class, says task force group
Members want to hire think tank Creative Glass Group to turn Dayton into a creative class magnet.
Related: Creative Dayton: Will it work here?
Friday, October 19, 2007
DAYTON — All the ingredients for attracting and growing a creative class in Dayton are already here, say members of a task force working to hire the Creative Glass Group, a Washington, D.C., think tank founded by urban theorist Richard Florida.
"We've figured out in Dayton that no one is going to hand us anything, and that no single entity can turn things around alone," said J.P. Nauseef, president and CEO of the Dayton Development Coalition, a member of the Creative Class Task Force.
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Dayton had a 14.4 percent drop in employment from 1990 to 2000, according to the U.S. Census, and task force members want to hire the think tank to turn Dayton into a creative class magnet as part of its overall plan for growing jobs and turning around the local economy.
"A hundred years ago we were the epicenter for engineering and innovation, we had all these creative people," said David Hopkins, president of Wright State University and a part of the effort. "We did this once in Dayton, and we can rekindle that."
One of the area's major assets, the task force realized, is its high concentration of a diverse group of colleges and universities, which in 2005 contributed nearly $3 billion to the local economy.
"It's always seemed kind of obvious that colleges and universities are the nucleus for the creative class," said Sean Creighton, executive director of the Southwestern Ohio Council for Higher Education, a consortium of 19 institutions in the Miami Valley that convened the task force.
The concept dovetails nicely with the four growth industries targeted by the Dayton Development Coalition for new jobs: aerospace research and development, information technology, advanced materials and manufacturing, and human sciences and health care.
"Adding the creative class talent to the overall plan brings new focus and adds more hope and optimism to where we're headed," Nauseef said.
How does it work?
Once hired — the task force is still raising funds — the group will do a complete economic analysis of Dayton based on creative class theories.
"We count human assets, not companies," said David Miller, chief executive of the Creative Class Group, who already visited Dayton to check it out.
Then through an open application process, the company would find 30 community catalysts — "real, ordinary people, not policy makers," Miller said — to work as change agents.
Results vary. "Some cities find something that takes effect within six months, but usually it takes time," Miller said. 'This is not an easy thing."
Will it work?
Florida argues that cities that don't become cultural magnets will have a hard time surviving, particularly now that they compete with places around the world for employees.
But Florida's theory has critics who say his ideas have no science behind them.
Another Washington, D.C., think tank, the Brookings Institution, recently studied how states are revitalizing older industrial cities and warned that regions must also fix the basics, making sure they have good urban schools and that urban neighborhoods are safe. Otherwise, creative class workers won't come no matter how many assets a community has, it said.
But another study published in August in the Journal of Economic Geography tested the creative class theory and found that results supported the idea that a creative milieu attracting artists "increases an area's economic dynamism."
Austin, Seattle and San Francisco are big magnets because they are cultural centers with thriving arts and recreation scenes.
That's what the task force hopes to achieve.
Dayton has a leg up in that its regional development groups already work well together, Miller said.
"Dayton is lucky to have the leaders who are willing to take this challenge because the alternative is not good"," he said. "You have this group in Dayton... willing to ask tough questions. That's a great start."
About Richard Florida
Job: Professor of business and creativity at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
Previous experience: Florida has held professorships in public policy and regional economic development at George Mason University and Carnegie Mellon University and taught as a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT. He is a former senior scientist with the Gallup Organization. Authored bestselling book, "The Rise of the Creative Class," in 2002.
Education: Bachelor's degree from Rutgers College, doctorate from Columbia University.
