In One Fell Swoop, Two Redwoods Fall

From The New York Times, December 2004:

"Southeast from [Socks City] is Shenzhou, which is the world's necktie capital. To the west is Sweater City and Kid's Clothing City. To the south, in the low-rent district, is Underwear City. . . . The niche cities reflect China's ability to form 'lump' economies, where clusters or networks of businesses feed off each other."

From The Economist, February 2009:

"Over the past decade it has become one of the world's fastest-whirring economic engines--a global hub in the manufacture of clothing, shoes and electronics--serviced by tens of millions of migrant workers. Now the region is undergoing an equally remarkable contraction. In the past year, thousands of factories, perhaps one-third to one-half of the total, have closed."

From The Economist, February 2009:

"In the past ten years, obedient to the findings of urban sociologists, American cities have tripped over themselves vying for young, creative people. They have revitalised downtowns and sponsored gay-pride parades. They might have been better off building retirement homes."

Urban and regional development have been dominated for the past decade by two gigantically seductive ideas: the cluster concept as developed by Michael Porter, and the creative class concept as developed by Richard Florida. Porter told mayors that clusters were the "new" way of approaching economic growth; Florida dazzled city councils with tales of the "creative class" and their uniquely instigative role in restoring vibrancy to downtowns.

Now, just because areas that exemplified these ideas--the manufacturing clusters of China and many American municipalities--have run aground during this recession doesn't mean Porter and Florida's theories are prima facie wrong. But the difficulties facing cluster regions and creative cities should prompt reflection on their merit.

It has never really made sense to me how the notion of clusters is particularly "new" to theories of urban economic growth. As James Vance, among others, has long pointed out, clusters are a hallmark of commercially successful cities going back to at least the medieval urban revolution. And as I have noted before, since the beginning of human civilization, cities have been coterminous with creativity. In short, clustered economic activity and creative occupations are actually reasons why cities exist, not necessarily new theories for how cities can grow. Can it make sense--aside from dubious empirical evidence and, now, economic decline--for us to tell cities to be more city-like in their quests for growth?

Finally, the real problem with the cluster and creative class ideas isn't in their descriptive validity, but their prescriptive methods for cultivating clusters and attracting the creative class. Cities are the paragon of messy capitalism--they appear orderly, to be sure, and urban planning does in fact take some measure of order as its objective. But the economic development of cities does not spring from decreed clusters or appointed "creatives"--it happens because of messiness. That is, the unanticipated interactions among many different factors. Delft, an economic jewel in seventeen-century Netherlands, became a creative cluster of science, art, and various industries not through any sort of industrial planning, but through unforeseen overlaps (synergies, I suppose) and connections. It was "development" in the truest sense (a subject for another day). 

Comments

[Michael F. Martin]

So long as face to face remains superior to any other form of communication, cities aren't going anywhere. The need for privacy too, suggests that centers of power like D.C. are just getting started in their growth. But how did the ratio of urban to rural growth change as a result of the diaspora of knowledge made possible by the printing press? Instead of knowledge being centered in one city, it started a competition among several.

[Mike Caton]

The shrinking of factory towns in China is hardly a falsification of Porter and Florida.

[Dane Stangler]

Mike,
I didn't say it did. I said the emptying out of China's uber-clusters prompted reflection on the merit of Porter's ideas (not Florida's). Clusters are coeval with cities, but Porter's strategy asks cities to set out and create clusters de novo, the sustainability of which is likely inferior to those which develop on their own.

[Michael F. Martin]

That makes sense. I wasn't really picking on anything in what you wrote. Just commenting. Thanks for the link.

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