Frost on Florida
Before The Great Calamity, Richard Florida’s “Rise of the Creative Class” was hot. Since then, there have been numerous sequels and prequels, but, nonetheless the frost has set in—illustrated by the recent article “The Ruse of the Creative Class” in the January 4th edition of “The American Prospect.”
Description to prescription.
It’s elementary that Florida described something at least partially correct. Footloose and fancy free, often gay, young urban professionals, nomadically migrating to the Boulders… hipster “creatives”…. Innovators…. Ah. Now, let’s write a prescription to nest these nestlings (I know… some Buddhists, an AC-DC Rinpoche, artsy cafés… a University… some IT professionals….) description to prescription… hey! It’s a living…
If we recreate what works, will it work? Sadly, or happily, no. The so-called PostModern aesthetic had as its fundamentum that in fact the original is its recreation—the recreational vehicle theory, as one might say. I interpret The Great Calamity as a general nausée of and by the PostModern aesthetic in urban design as well as architecture—and of course the internal representation of these—personal experience.
