Richard Florida knows cities. He’s an urban planner; a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management; a distinguished scholar-in-residence at UT’s School of Cities; and an academic advisor to Boston Consulting Group’s Henderson Institute. He’s perhaps best known for coining “creative class,” a phrase that encompasses roughly 30% of the U.S. workforce and refers to those who create “meaningful new forms.” This was supposed to be the hip, affluent, white-collar demographic that every city planner wanted to attract and build around. That idea didn’t quite materialize, but it still looms large in the sociology and urban design spheres.
Now, Florida has a theory on remote work and what it’s doing to all the superstar cities (and their downtowns) that were supposed to be doomed by all the missing foot traffic. That’s simply shortsighted, he says.
