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Sunday, October 27, 2002

City's Multitalented People Could Drive Economic Growth

By Anthony DellaFlora
Of the Journal
    Editor's Note: Author Richard Florida's new book has set off a nationwide discussion about the importance of arts and lifestyle to the economic development of a community. Journal assistant arts editor Anthony DellaFlora examines how many Albuquerqueans — artists and businesspeople alike — are working toward that goal.
    Sparky Wilson Rose, self-described serial entrepreneur, has a simple formula for success.
    "I'm a musician and an artist," said Rose, who is also executive director of Verde Studios, an Albuquerque marketing company. "If you get a bunch of creative people around and there's enough capitalists around, money will happen."
    Amanda Kooser is assistant technology editor for California-based Entrepreneur magazine and works from her home in Albuquerque. She also writes music and performs with her Americana band, Edith Grove, at various local nightspots.
    When Randy Burge is not consulting with technology businesses, he's sculpting, and selling his work in Santa Fe galleries.
    David Plummer sings and plays lead guitar for the Sunday Blues Band. He's also deputy director of electronic systems at Sandia National Laboratories.
    These are the people who will drive the economic engine of tomorrow's successful cities, says the author of a new best-selling book that has caused a stir among reviewers and civic leaders around the country.
    Economic development expert Richard Florida contends that talented people will look for creative places to locate, and Albuquerque is one of the top spots in the nation for attracting such folks.
    Florida rates Albuquerque number eight of all cities in the country, and number one for its size, on his "creativity index," a measure of potential economic growth. (Santa Fe also ranks number one in cities of its size.)
    Albuquerque, the only medium-sized city in the top 10, is ranked ahead of New York City, and with the likes of Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Austin; San Francisco, and other cities considered to be on the leading edge of the new economy.
    Dan Hartley, a recently retired Sandia Labs executive, describes his son-in-law as a prime example of a member of Florida's "creative class."
    "He's a Ph.D. computer scientist from Oxford University, a Rhodes Scholar, plays the violin, a ballroom dancer," Hartley said. "You think of a Ph.D. scientist or engineer in the old days as not having other interests. But they do, they clearly do."
   
'Constant stimulation'
    In his book, "The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life", Florida contends that economies of the future will be centered on creative people.
    He writes that this creative class seeks "constant and chronic stimulation," that the challenge for communities is to attract and retain such people and the companies that foster them.
    Toward that end, the quality of life in a community is as important to the economy as tax incentives and the presence of high-tech industry.
    "Keep your tax incentives and highway interchanges; we will go where the highly skilled people are," Florida quotes Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as saying.
    Mike Skaggs, CEO of Albuquerque-based NextGen, a company focusing on bringing high-paying technology jobs to New Mexico, says Florida is on target.
    Most companies are still working on the old model that business ventures will be driven by cost, the less the better.
    "That's yesterday. That's not today. What's driving today is talent," Skaggs said. "If you can't attract the human talent, you're in a world of hurt. That's the big change in economic development."
    Underlying Florida's theory of economic development is research suggesting that the economy is moving from a corporate-centered system defined by large companies to a more people-driven one.
    Not that large companies are going to disappear. But Florida asserts that access to talented and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron was to steelmakers.
   
Where they live
    A critical mass of creative-class workers can have an effect at many levels.
    The intellectual ferment that occurs when poets and programmers mesh, or musicians and lawyers network, or entrepreneurs and eggheads collide is what sparks innovation and creativity, and thus, an economy, Florida argues.
    The creative class also drives urban revitalization.
    But what attracts and keeps the creative class is not what previous generations of workers wanted, according to Florida.
    Creative-class types want intellectual stimulation and the opportunity to interact with other creative people. They want a thriving artistic and cultural scene. They want to be able to in-line skate by day and see a homegrown punk band by night. Predominantly single, they often prefer urban living — a downtown loft instead of a four-bedroom tract home in the suburbs. They prefer an open, diverse community, where gays and minorities are welcomed.
    Albuquerque, Florida contends, is one of those places where the creative class comes to work and live. Based on his "creativity index," a measure of economic development potential, Albuquerque and Santa Fe are ripe for an influx of more creative-class members, and the economic growth that goes with it.
    Rose, who's started four businesses, said he came here from the San Francisco Bay Area, a hub of the new economy, because he saw a business void and a chance to fill it.
    But the lifestyle weighed heavily in his decision, too. He said a good music scene and arts scene were essential. "It's totally paramount to me and my wife," he said.
    Kooser agrees. One reason she's living here is because the arts scene in her former city, Long Beach, Calif., was so stultifying.
    "I came to Albuquerque and people were friendlier. I was really impressed with the music scene and the poetry scene. The poetry here is incredible," she said.
    "I couldn't find a way to access that out in the L.A. area. I'm sure it's out there, but who wants to drive two hours to try to find it, try to break into a culture that isn't really welcoming?"
    Hartley said Sandia began noticing the shift in employee preferences in the '90s.
    "It's clear that people today are much more interested in a complete lifestyle than they used to be," he said. "As we bring people to town, whether they're from Princeton, New Jersey, or Berkeley, California, or Atlanta, Georgia — major places that have universities — they expect to see a vibrant center of a living area, that's what they're used to.
    "We need to have that here to make us be competitive, to get those best students from some of the best schools."
    It's part of the formula — along with more high-tech jobs — for keeping the state's college graduates here, too, said Burge, a former employee of the state's Economic Development Department.
    "That social/cultural scene becomes very important, and that's what these people, young college graduates, are leaving to these other regions for, the economy and for the culture."
   
Need the three Ts
    Florida's basic premise is that cities need the three Ts — technology, talent and tolerance — working in concert.
    "Each is a necessary condition. To compete and win, you need to do all three."
    Florida cites Austin as an example of what the recipe can produce.
    "They just hit on all three cylinders," Florida said. "They created a vision and they acted on the vision."
    The city's economic development plan was somewhat traditional, he said. It promoted high-tech industry and encouraged the growth of the University of Texas into a world-class university. But the community also played up lifestyle amenities, like the famous Sixth Street music scene.
    "There's an irreverence, there is a kind of gravitation to the weird and the different and a celebration of that, I think, in Austin," he added.
    "But if you just end up with wacky and diverse, you've got New Orleans or Miami. If you just end up with technology and stodgy, you've got Pittsburgh. The real key is you've got to be open and diverse and creative and exciting, but you also have to have technology quite on the cutting edge."
    "I think the interesting thing is that you are small and you're doing OK," Florida said of Albuquerque. "I think that clearly you're placed to be a place like an Austin."
    Some creative Albuquerqueans say revitalizing Downtown will play a big role.
    "There is starting to be a nice nucleus of things to do Downtown, to help draw people, and I think that's important," said venture capitalist Tom Stephenson, who's returned to Albuquerque after several years in Austin.
    "Austin is a huge networking town. People are out there every night, having drinks, doing whatever," Stephenson said. "For creative people, that interaction is an important part, and frankly, from a business formation standpoint, in my business, you want to see some of that frothiness, and people need to be getting together and getting connected."
    While some Downtown boosters worry about the effects of the city's noise ordinance on the music scene, the area has seen a rebirth, with new restaurants, new residential construction, artists' studios, a movie theater, a renovated KiMo theater and a proposed charter high school.
    Sandia's Plummer said potential employees want to see a lively entertainment district. "It could be Downtown, it could have been Nob Hill. It could be both, or some contiguous thing. But having an identified genuine entertainment district is important."
   
Importance of tolerance
    Florida's third T — tolerance — is a new part of the economic equation, and also is one of Albuquerque's strengths.
    "Nobody had ever picked up on the diversity issue and tolerance issue," said Skaggs. "We all knew we (in Albuquerque) were culturally very diverse, we just didn't understand how that was to be depicted as an asset."
    The importance is that talented people seek an environment open to differences, Florida said.
    Many highly creative people may have grown up feeling like outsiders, he said, so when sizing up a community, acceptance of diversity and of gays in particular signals that "nonstandard" people are welcome.
    Albuquerque ranks 14 out of 268 cities on Florida's gay index.
    Albuquerque is a very tolerant city, agreed former Albuquerque mayor David Rusk, who now works for The Brookings Institution.
    He's done studies showing that Albuquerque ranks as the most integrated metro area for African-Americans of the 100 largest in the country, and the most integrated for Hispanics of any metro area with at least 20 percent Hispanics.
    "Albuquerque is arguably the most racially, ethnically, economically integrated region in the country, taking all these various factors into account," Rusk said. At worst, it's in the top six, he added.
    When Gap moved its financial headquarters to Albuquerque last year, it was looking for a good place to do business at a reasonable price.
    But it was also looking for a tolerant community, said Michael Zientek, vice president of corporate shared services.
    "Certainly a diverse population, a community that was open, that was widely accepting of all people was important to us, just because that reflects the company's culture and ideas," Zientek said. "We talked about access to providing more job opportunities for minorities, an open environment for gays and lesbians. It all kind of comes into place. I don't think that was an overriding reason for coming here, but it certainly was strongly in the plus category."
    He basically agrees with Florida's assertion.
    "The city that is open to gays or whatever the case might be is also maybe a city that is just open to trying new things and being open to new ideas," Zientek said. "If that's the case, I would say you're open to alternative lifestyles, minorities, new industries, different entertainment venues. All of which say, 'you know what, pretty much anything goes. Let's give it a try.' ''