How a More Mobile Work Force Shapes Corporate Location Decisions
and Economic Development

by RON STARNER

If you thought a mobile work force was challenging your company or public agency, you might want to read Richard Florida’s new book.

The challenge is only beginning.

Ron Starner, executive director of IAMC

In Who’s Your City?, the renowned author, speaker and professor reconfigures conventional thinking on corporate site selection and economic development by noting that mobile workers are dictating an accelerated pace of global change.

Florida’s thesis is that the place we choose to live is the single most important decision we will make in our lifetime. It has a profound and lasting effect on the jobs we gain access to, our chosen career paths, our social networking opportunities, the amount of money we will earn and even our happiness.

Florida even identifies five basic personality traits — openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism — and suggests that "geographic clustering" of these traits has occurred in certain city-regions of America. Atlanta, Charlotte and Phoenix, for example, rank highly in agreeableness and conscientiousness, according to the author.

The freedom of personal movement will be one of the biggest forces that companies and communities will face in the decade to come, says Florida, and those organizations that know how to tap into this mobility will be the most competitive.

"What does all this boil down to? For cities and regions, it means that their leadership — political, business and otherwise — must be aware of the powerful role played by psychology," writes Florida. "Places really do have different personalities. Those personalities stem from their economic structure and inform and constrain their futures. It’s a lot easier to go out and attract a new company, or even build a new stadium, than it is to alter the psychological makeup of a region. Regional leaders must become more aware of how their region’s collective personality shapes the kinds of economic activities that it can do and the kinds of people it can attract, satisfy and retain."

As the director of the Martin Prosperity Institute and professor of business and creativity at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, Florida works with a team that tracks trends in business, communities and lifestyles.

For the past six years, he has published his observations in thought-provoking books such as The Rise of the Creative Class, The Flight of the Creative Class and now Who’s Your City? How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.

While most readers will gravitate toward the book’s rankings of cities and regions (including Best Cities for Young Singles, Best Cities for Mid-Career Professionals and Best Cities for Families With Children), the book’s biggest impact may come in the form of some startling facts the author uncovers:

• About 40 million Americans move each year.
• The average American now changes jobs once every three years. For the average 30-year-old, it is now once a year.
• Just 25 city-regions account for two-thirds of the world economy and 95 percent of its innovations.
• The most highly educated and talented people are migrating to just a handful of city-regions around the world.
• Half the people on the planet now live in large urban centers, and that percentage is climbing rapidly.

In a recent interview with the IAMC Dispatch, Florida expounded on this and other topics related to corporate real estate and economic development.

IAMC DISPATCH: What were the most surprising findings in your latest research study?

RICHARD FLORIDA: The fact that 40 million people move every year in this country, and 15 million of us move significantly, meaning that we change cities. Place is important economically and it affects our lives. My own family is a good example. We’ve moved several times. We’ve lived in Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Toronto. My wife is from Detroit. Work is now all about socioeconomic ability for the individual. The question I tried to ask in my book is — how does place fit into the global economy? The world is decentralizing, but the United Nations data we studied showed that 50 percent of the world’s population now lives in urban areas. Highly productive areas and the people who live there are causing a concentration far beyond the concentration of natural resources and transportation systems. Economic activity is much more concentrated in the emerging economies than it is in the developed nations. The U.S. is far more spread out economically than most of the world.

ID: How will these demographic changes affect companies and communities?

FLORIDA: We are in for a period where people will be highly mobile. People today have more choice. The negative is that if you don’t move, your economic opportunity will be far more limited than if you do move. Increasingly, that will be the case. Equally troubling is the fact that we will have a less cohesive society because people and the companies they work for are relocating so frequently. Companies that originally jumped from the North to Southern U.S. locations for labor reasons have since jumped to Mexico and other less costly locations.

Richard Florida Source: www.creativeclass.com

ID: How would you like to see your observations and conclusions used to change the way economic development is pursued?

FLORIDA: In this book, I wanted to turn the tables a bit. This book is economic development for the individual. Just like the way companies spend time on site selection, I would like to see people give location decisions the time and attention they deserve at the individual and family level. The game of attracting companies is also the game of attracting people.

ID: What can a community or region do to make itself more appealing as a destination for entrepreneurs?

FLORIDA: Creative people question everything. They don’t like to be marketed at or talked down to. They are the people who populate the work force at Google. They come up with new inventions. They are artists. They are also the people who are most likely to pick up on a new trend, but they don’t want to see anything that looks like it’s been pushed at them. They are not going to tolerate that kind of top-down marketing. I caution people all the time – it’s not a case of "if you build it they will come." Every community has an authentic and real soul. Every place has its own community type. I live in Washington and Toronto. I’m married, I’m 50, and my wife wants to have kids. I want to live and work around a great university. But every individual has to make that calculation for himself or herself.

ID: Your rankings obviously generate a lot of attention. What do you think is their biggest impact?

FLORIDA: Everyone knows that rankings are not perfect; they are a guidebook. The key is to find the place that best fits you and your lifestyle. People move at three stages of life: the first is after college, the second is when you have kids, and the third big move is when you are an empty nester. We tried to create a set of guidelines for people at each stage of life. We try to give people a range of places to consider. The real ranking is the one that fits you the best. Cities are always interested in this, but the ranking we give a community may not resonate with everyone. They really do get mayors and economic developers thinking, though. My advice is, all of us could do better, including the community of scholars.

ID: What topic do you think you will tackle in your next book?

FLORIDA: I want to dig into the cultural factors. The next book may be on the role of music and music scenes in cities. When I was younger, I played guitar and played in bands all the time. If you want to understand the evolution of the knowledge economy, you have to look at the evolution of the music industry. Look at how musicians form themselves into groups and how they relate to each other. They are very creative people. Look at how musicians cluster and where they choose to live, and we will see how that relates to our lives and what we do.