Agenda

Both Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat and Richard Florida’s Flight of the Creative Class conclude with a call to action, an inspirational message that those of us who recognize the massive changes transforming our society have a responsibility to do something. But what?

About 15 years ago, I read Paul Tsongas’s essay A Call to Economic Arms and it inspired me to volunteer on his campaign and ultimately serve as an alternate delegate at the 1992 Democratic Convention. Later, I helped organize one of the first local chapters of the deficit reduction group, The Concord Coalition, in Tacoma, WA.

The challenge today is more complex than the still unresolved and worsening debt crisis. My sense as to why the debt/deficit issue never really caught fire was that many people believe we’ll just grow out of it. There is plenty of talk about “future generations” bearing the burden, etc. but nobody really gets it or cares. We have some vague idea that Social Security is going to crap out on us, but most people my age and younger just assume Social Security will be gone by the time we retire anyway. Anyone who expects Social Security to be providing for their retirement should start stocking up on Top Ramen now.

But the future described by Florida, and the wrenching economic changes already underway in terms of “flattening” the world threaten our future in much more concrete ways. At the same time, they present great opportunities to develop our society into a future of economic and social growth. In terms of ideas, it is intellectually-stimulating to read of how globalization will make more creative work possible…and I think Florida hits the nail on the head when he identifies the dangerous widening chasm between the highly-paid, intellectually-rewarded creative class and the disrespected, underpaid, and taken-for-granted service class.

But what can we do about it? What can I do about it?

I found a story in Toledo of 29-year old Joe McNamara who won election to city council talking economic development and creative class ideas. Check this out:

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There is more discussion of the election at Politics in Mudville. Now clearly, the guy has a lot of other things going on to get elected, but it is inspiring to see someone taking action at the local level to translate ideas into reality.

Based on McNamara’s video above, it appears Toledo is a city of over 300,000 people without an economic development director. My town of about 14,000 hired an economic development director in 2004 and has been working actively with developers to plan growth. The biggest outcome here is the Westwood Station project that will build a huge new urbanism mini city within our town. But I’m still not sure what, if any, creative class influence there will be. It’s possible the idea is for people to just hop on the train to go to downtown Boston.