Ever since his landmark book The Rise of the Creative Class was published in 2002, Florida, who is also the director of cities at the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto and a senior editor at The Atlantic, has been urging broke cities to attract the “creative class” in order to revive themselves. And since there’s quite literally almost no US city more broke than Detroit, maybe it’s no surprise that, as one activist told me, “they love some Richard Florida here.”
The creative class is great and all but who pours the coffee, preps the food, watches the streets?
