Richard Florida

Toronto is one of 20 North American cities – and the only one in Canada – still being considered by online retail giant Amazon for its second North American headquarters. But experts at the ��Ƶ say that doesn’t mean T-dot, to borrow a dated moniker, is a long shot – far from it, in fact.

“I think we’re actually in the top five,” says University Professor Richard Florida, who is the director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at U of T’s Rotman School of Management, citing the Toronto region's top universities, diverse local culture and an open Canadian immigration policy.

Read about how U of T's AI-focused research played a role

Florida adds Toronto’s biggest competitors are likely to be New York City, with its status as a global financial centre, or Washington, D.C., with its proximity to American political power. He says Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles comprise a second tier of competition.

Read about how Toronto stacks up to the competition

Read about how Amazon would fit into the Toronto-Waterloo corridor

While some have suggested U.S. President Donald Trump's America-first bent makes it politically risky for Amazon to pick a non-American locale, Brail stresses that politics often cuts both ways. In other words, it may depend on whether Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is keen to avoid the White House's wrath or is eager to take a stand against Trumpian policies that irk many in Silicon Valley, particularly surrounding immigration.

Ruben Gaetani is an assistant professor with the department of management at U of T Mississauga who is cross-appointed to Rotman. He argues that Amazon, an increasingly global player, could conceivably give itself a brand boost by locating in Toronto given the current unpopularity of Trump’s America outside the United States.

“The U.S. is a more business-friendly country,” says Gaetani. “We have to admit that. Taxation is lower, particularly for high income people. But overall I don’t think this is what Amazon is really concerned about.”

One thing is clear: The city Amazon chooses will likely be forever changed by its arrival – though not everyone will benefit.

Gaetani’s research shows the presence of innovative, high-growth firms like Amazon contributes to income disparities and urban segregation as young professionals cluster around high-paying employers and bid up local housing prices. Desirable services like new parks, schools, high-end shops and hip restaurants inevitably follow in their footsteps.

However, Gaetani says that doesn’t mean cities like Toronto should avoid attracting companies like Amazon, which are critical to the knowledge economy. Rather, he says it means politicians need to work extra hard to make sure the benefits are shared as equally as possible.

“For each park that’s built in a high-income neighbourhood, there should be an equivalent park built in a low-income neighbourhood,” he says.

Public transit is also key, adds Gaetani, since it allows workers to spread out more evenly across an urban area.

And while Torontonians like to complain about their civic infrastructure – the Toronto Transit Commission included – Gaetani argues that Toronto is actually in a much better position than many of the other U.S. cities on the list.

In the end, a handful of decision-makers at Amazon will decide who wins the HQ2 sweepstakes, which many have criticized for pitting cities against each other in a reality TV show-style format.

Brail, for one, praised Toronto for not getting sucked into offering big tax breaks or other incentives, which she argues are “great for Amazon” but bad for everyone else.

“New Jersey offered US$7 billion in incentives and some cities offered to change their names,” she says.

“But Toronto had an incredibly respectful, co-ordinated, collaborative proposal that really highlighted our strengths and didn’t give away anything other than an offer to partner and be a good location.”

Win or lose, the impressive bid puts “Toronto on the map for a lot of other potential investments,” said David Wolfe, professor of political science at U of T Mississauga and co-director of the Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs.

See Wolfe's interview with CTV

U of T’s Richard Florida wants to help you find the best place to live with his new online course

Romi Levine — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 12:14:28 +0000

U of T’s Richard Florida wants to help you find the best place to live with his new online course

Romi Levine Tue, 06/20/2017 - 08:14

Cutline

University Professor Richard Florida and his team have designed an online course on city building through Coursera (photo by Jamie Hogge)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

It took more than two years and multiple redesigns for ��Ƶ University Professor Richard Florida and his team to perfect their massive online open course (MOOC) – which debuted last week on Coursera.

“It was an incredible learning experience,” says Florida, who is the director of cities at the Rotman School of Management's Martin Prosperity Institute. “I learned so much about how to make a course, how to use visuals, how not to overwhelm people with reading and writing, and how to give them information they need – that's been the really cool thing for me.”

City and You: Find Your Best Place draws from Florida’s extensive research and writings on what makes cities successful and prosperous, and presents it through video, short assignments and interactive features.

Read about Richard Florida's latest book

Since 2012, U of T scholars, including the “godfather of deep learning,” ��Ƶ, have taught MOOCs on sites like Coursera and Edx. The courses are usually free, short – generally lasting just four to eight weeks – and incredibly popular. The most recent data from 2015 says almost two million people from all over the world have accessed the online courses.

U of T News spoke to Florida about why he decided to create the course and what people can learn from taking it.

What was your motivation behind creating this course?

First of all, we know, our cities are our most important economic and social unit. It's where business takes place, where economy is growing. We're putting billions of people in cities. We're spending trillions of dollars building cities. But in terms of your own life, I think the place you live is the most important decision you'll ever make. It's the most expensive decision you'll ever make. A house costs the most money – it's where you raise your kids – but no one gives it that much thought.

My field of urbanism, city planning, urban studies has all this incredible information bottled up. That's why I founded CityLab at the Atlantic – a website that talks about cities and urbanism – and I thought the next thing I could do was to build a course on the City101 – the hook on that is not just the city, but why the place you live is so important.

Do you have a specific audience in mind you're looking to reach?

Everybody. The world. Every single sentient person I think needs to hear this – and that's why the course is designed to appeal to every person throughout the world to help them understand more about what cities are and why urbanization is important, and help them to understand why the place they live in is so important to their life and their kids' lives.

What would you want the biggest takeaway from the course to be?

Making sure people find the best place for them and their family. Maybe they're in it – so it will confirm that, maybe they're not. They need to think about how they might find their way to a better place and how to find the place that will make them the most successful, the most productive, the most happy and create the greatest amount of joy and well-being for them.

What would you say to people who would be apprehensive about packing up and moving to a new city?

There's the mobile, who are looking to find a place, this course is for them. There's the people rooted around friends and family. And, there are people who are stuck, quite frankly and can't move.

For people who are rooted in their places, the course has a big component on how to make the place you live better fit you. It might not mean you move to a new city. It may mean you think about a new neighbourhood, but it may mean you get actively involved in your community and try to make it better. Whatever it is, understanding why you're there, what it means to you, whether you like it or not, and how easy it is to move or stay there and fix it, is really important.

Taking on inequality: Richard Florida talks ‘The New Urban Crisis’ at U of T event

Romi Levine — Tue, 09 May 2017 18:00:27 +0000

Taking on inequality: Richard Florida talks ‘The New Urban Crisis’ at U of T event

Romi Levine Tue, 05/09/2017 - 14:00

Cutline

Richard Florida's 'The New Urban Crisis' addresses the growing global inequality in cities (photo by Romi Levine)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Martin Prosperity Institute

Rotman School of Management

Last week, Toronto Life magazine published an article about an empty, house-less plot of land in the Annex neighbourhood listed for $5 million.

The story might have seemed unbelievable just a few years ago, but many Torontonians have seemingly grown accustomed to sky-high real-estate prices as the city’s decade-long housing boom rolls on.

“These neighbourhoods that were vibrant, middle-class, integrated, cohesive neighbourhoods have been obliterated,” Richard Florida told an audience at Desautels Hall in the ��Ƶ’s Rotman School of Management as part of the "Shift Disturbers" speaker series.

Florida, a University Professor and the director of cities at the Rotman School of Management's Martin Prosperity Institute, presented findings from his latest book, The New Urban Crisis, to a full house on Monday.

See highlights of the media coverage of The New Urban Crisis

His 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, which stressed the importance of bringing creative professionals – like artists and architects – back to urban centres, was influential in shaping the way that urbanists thought about cities, said U of T President Meric Gertler at the event.

“Its insights have been adopted and applied by policymakers and planners and politicians around the world,” he said. “In hindsight, it also documented the emergence of a dynamic that may now be threatening to undermine the very prosperity we all strive for.”

That threat to prosperity is what Florida tackles in The New Urban Crisis. This new realization started with late former Mayor Rob Ford.

“I wake up one morning and Rob Ford was elected mayor – holy moly! That was the moment. Where did Rob Ford come from?” said Florida.

Ford, he concluded, was a product of a divided city.

“A city where the creative class, my creative class – knowledge workers, professionals, young people, the highly educated the affluent and the advantaged – occupy the area of the downtown core and the areas around the university and Yorkville and of course it extended around the subway stops and of course we have great suburbs around natural amenities like coastlines and waterfronts, green spaces,” he said.

But bringing affluence into the city also meant pushing other groups of people out.

“Those who are pushed outside into the remaining disadvantaged areas of the city that weren't served by transit, were dislocated, or into the far-off periphery, they were growing angry, they were growing anxious,” said Florida. “The city wasn't serving them, it was serving a privileged elite and that's where the germ of the new urban crisis came from.”

Florida draws on an extensive body of research, including that of U of T Professor David Hulchanski who studies the divides caused by economic and social inequality.

In the years following Ford's election, it became evident the same problems were arising in cities all over North America. That same anger from those who felt left behind, Florida said, also elected Donald Trump.

This “winner-take-all” urbanism sees a small group of urban centres thriving while others fail to catch up.

“In Canada, the five largest metros produce 50 per cent of GDP,” said Florida.

Cities are grappling with housing affordability, the suburbs are becoming more impoverished and urban slums are popping up all over the world, he said.

But there are solutions to this urban crisis. Florida suggests that cities like Toronto should become more dense rather than depend on suburban sprawl, they should commit to building affordable rental housing, invest in public transit and pay service workers more to rebuild the middle class.

“What the book tries to do is create a narrative and really make the case to mayors and urban leaders, city builders, that this is the kind of framework we need,” Florida said.

“The only way we are going to grapple with this is to put power in the hands of local people.”

U of T's Richard Florida delves into inequality and rising housing prices in cities

ullahnor — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 17:45:48 +0000

U of T's Richard Florida delves into inequality and rising housing prices in cities

ullahnor Wed, 04/12/2017 - 13:45

Cutline

Richard Florida's new book, “The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle-Class” is gaining media attention (photo by VV Nincic via Flickr)

Topic

Rotman School of Management

Books

The latest book by U of T's Richard Florida, The New Urban Crisis, is gaining attention for exploring the dark side of the back-to-the-city movement – one that has led to rising housing prices, economic disparity and the decline of middle-class neighbourhoods.

Excerpts of the book have appeared in the The Atlantic's CityLab and Florida has been featured in the Toronto Star and Toronto Life.

Florida also appeared this week on National Public Radio's Morning Edition.

“The middle class in this country has declined,” he told host Steve Inskeep. “But, more importantly to me, the middle-class neighborhoods, those platforms for the American dream, have been decimated.”

Check the NPR interview

Read excerpts from his new book at CityLab

Florida, a University Professor and director of cities at the Rotman School of Management's Martin Prosperity Institute, has for years promoted what he calls the creative class. For cities to prosper, he argued in his groundbreaking book, The Rise of the Creative Class, they needed to attract techies, innovators and entrepreneurs.

Read his op-ed in the Globe and Mail

In his new book, he argues that the same forces that attracted that creative class are now creating inequality in superstar cities such as New York, London, Paris and Toronto.

“I began to see the back-to-the-city movement as something that conferred a disproportionate share of its benefits on a small group of places and people,” he writes. “Virtually all our cities suffer from growing economic divides. Tens of millions of Americans remain locked in persistent poverty.

“Across the great majority of cities and suburbs alike, the middle class is declining. Our economic landscape is splintering into small areas of affluence and concentrated advantage, and much larger areas of poverty and concentrated disadvantage.”

The new urban crisis is leading to the rise of populism, Florida says, in the form of Brexit, Donald Trump’s presidential victory, and in Toronto's case, Rob Ford.

Read the Toronto Life Q & A

Read the Toronto Star op-ed

U of T cities experts explore the legacy of Jane Jacobs

Romi Levine — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 20:48:23 +0000

U of T cities experts explore the legacy of Jane Jacobs

Romi Levine Wed, 11/16/2016 - 15:48

Cutline

Jane Jacobs outside her home on Spadina Road just north of Bloor Street in 1968 (photo by Frank Lennon/Toronto Star via Getty)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

City & Culture

Cities

Urban Studies

Geography and Planning

Jane Jacobs

Richard Florida

Shauna Brail

Jane Jacobs’s contribution to city building is undeniable – the famed urbanist influenced generations of academics, city planners and activists.

To help mark what would have been her 100th birthday, the ��Ƶ brought together a panel of city experts. The Nov. 14 event was part of a larger series of events to commemorate Jacobs's legacy that have been taking place in New York City – where she lived much of her life – and Toronto – where she spent the last 37 years before her death in 2006.

Here in Toronto, Jacobs was influential in halting construction of the Spadina Expressway in 1971 – a clash that pitted downtown dwellers against suburbanites. Her views on what makes a livable city have been adopted by city projects like the almost two-kilometre park set to be built under the Gardiner Expressway.

“Jane Jacobs was an individual who stood out and stood up in support of people and places," said Shauna Brail, an associate professor-teaching stream and the director of the urban studies program at Innis College. “She stood for ideas like inclusivity and authenticity.”

The Faculty of Arts & Science's urban studies program organized a panel discussion called, “A Good City? Toronto Tensions,” in partnership with the department of geography & planning, the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management and the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

The event was moderated by Brail, who is also the urban affairs adviser to President Meric Gertler.

Panelists included:

Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute and a professor at Rotman School of Management
Erica Allen-Kim, historian of modern architecture and urban design, and assistant professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design
Michael Piper, an architect and urban designer, and assistant professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design
Paul Hess, associate professor in the Faculty of Arts & Science's department of geography & planning
Patricia O’Campo, professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

Professor Richard Florida speaking at the event (photo by Romi Levine)

Jacobs, who moved to Toronto in 1968, stressed the importance of city centres and main streets to connect neighbourhoods, said Allen-Kim.

“Jacobs sought to understand the underlying order of the city’s ecology, the way that the most economically vital neighbourhoods were interdependent with other parts of the city, region, and even other countries,” she said.

For Florida, Jacobs’s impact is a lot more personal.

“I got to know Jane pretty well before I moved to Toronto,” he said.

Jacobs told him that real power comes from urban centres.

“The reason economies grow is it comes from new work, new innovations, technological big things – those things don’t come from companies. They come from people being together in cities,” Florida said, recounting a conversation he had with Jacobs.

Florida said Jacobs was always a decade ahead of her time. In her last book, Dark Age Ahead, she made some prescient observations about the world we live in today, Florida said, drawing comparisons to the recent U.S. election.

“I think given these divides – not just in the United States – this divide in Toronto, one of the most progressive, diverse, socially cohesive cities on the planet, it begs us to at least open our minds and think about how we build great urban neighbourhoods for everyone," he said. "How do we build great suburban neighbourhoods? How do we not lecture at people that 'my view' or 'your view' is better?”

Jacobs was not without foes – often taking aim at planners and architects for favouring design over sociability. Today, however, some of her former adversaries are now her biggest fans, said Hess.

The ideas in her book Death and Life of Great American Cities have now become “planning orthodoxy,” he said.

“It’s really very interesting that a book written in 1961 as an attack on planning is actually an inspiration to planning students wanting to come in and change the world,” Hess said.

One of the best ways to honour Jacobs is through the citizen-led city walks held globally in her name, he said.

“Jane’s Walk… can be used as her real legacy in her call to pay attention to the daily lives of neighbourhoods and streets, and the people who live in them.”

Although Jacobs did not address public health issues, the field could learn a lot from her, O'Campo said, emphasizing how important it is to “consider the needs, wants and desires of people and community residents.”

Jacobs’s ideas were both critical and caring, which are hard qualities for city builders to balance today, Piper said.

“The challenge I believe is to find ways to design without having to replace, to embrace the contrarian ethos that seeks to understand the world as it exists yet still be able to critique aspects of our cities that, as professionals, we deem to be problematic,” he said.