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More Creative Class Backlash

Richard Florida vs. the Minotaurs

Travel writer and former Portlander Frank Bures has published an essay attacking that half-forgotten economic development shibboleth, the "creative class." The term was shorthand for theories of the pop economist Richard Florida, whose books espoused the importance of the MacBook-in-the-coffee shop set to society's greater well-being.

"Today," Bures writes, "Cre­ative Class doc­trine has become so deeply engrained in the cul­ture that few question it."

Bures' essay amusingly relates some experiences he and his wife had after moving from Portland to another "creative" city, Madison, Wisconsin:

here
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WWeek 2015