There are interesting conversations bubbling about the contrary positions of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and Rise of the Creative Class author Richard Florida (Wired magazine’s Chris Anderson weighs in on the debate, as well).
Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, suggests that technology, transportation, and travel are increasingly ”flattening” the world, diminishing the need for any business or individual to be in a major metropolitan area, and changing the face of competition in the U.S. and around the world. In the October Atlantic Monthly, Florida counters that the world isn’t flattening, but is in fact growing ever more concentrated in creative centers (which looks mighty ”spiky” when mapped on a graph). Florida’s four-page article is available for download from his Creative Class web site (or just grab the PDF here). Says Florida:
By almost any measure the international economic landscape is not at all flat. On the contrary, our world is amazingly ”spiky.” In terms of both sheer economic horsepower and cutting-edge innovation, surprisingly few regions truly matter in today’s global economy. What’s more, the tallest peaks—the cities and regions that drive the world economy—are growing ever higher, while the valleys mostly languish.
John Hagel suggests that both perspectives are skewed by their static view of the world, distracting them from the intricate dynamics of what’s really going on. Certainly, population is concentrating around major hubs around the globe, but innovation and creative clusters are also sparking where they hadn’t before…not enough to show up in a spike, perhaps, but enough to make a meaningful difference.
Why should the artful manager give a hoot? Both authors are exploring the shape and distribution of people and creative energy over the coming decades. That has real importance to the fortunes and vitality of place-based cultural organizations. In one view, wealth, innovation, and creative productivity spread away from major centers and scatter around the world. In the other view, these essential resources aggregate in fewer and fewer places. So, since you likely can’t move your building, do you expect your audience and assets to grow or disperse over the next decade?
I’m a fan of both Friedman & Florida and find that, despite the eye-catching antagonism of their titles, they are describing the same dynamic phenomena and acknowledge that they are happening (rather than happened). This is the value of the work of both men: They take incidents and place them in a context in which they can be understood as part of larger trends amounting to fundamental change — and they agree that the change, however it is defined, IS fundamental. (I do think, for the record, that Tommy Friedman may be the most important American journalist since Edward R. Murrow.)
The implications for the arts are manifold. Here’s just one: With the decline of the workplace as a source of socialization, there are only two buildings in the community in which people who have not chosen to associate with one another gather to share a profound experience in real time — the stadium and the theater. So, wherever it is located, the theater is an increasingly vital force in maintaining the sense of localized mutuality on which society is built.