THE GREAT RESET: HOW NEW WAYS OF LIVING AND WORKING By Richard Florida -- PART 3

THE GREAT RESET: HOW NEW WAYS OF LIVING AND WORKING
By Richard Florida

Review by Steve Wright

Author Richard Florida is a big fan of alternate transportation -- anything from bicycles to safe pedestrian routes to better local and regional trains.

Florida reasons that even if more people are telecommuting, they still will benefit from the ability to conduct commerce by transportation means far less costly and restrictive than the automobile.

The Great Reset says young people, the innovators who will drive our human creativity-based new economy, already are forming new attitudes toward ownership that are less centered on houses and cars.

Florida makes said connectivity will be key to our economic future. He envies European and other nations that are far ahead of the U.S. in terms of high speed rail.

He states that Boston-New York-Washington have already become a super-productive mega-region because of relatively fast trains that connect the densely-populate cities.

Economic figures prove our that these mega-regions have a much higher economic output per capita when compared to sprawled areas.

Florida believes high speed rail could be a key toward reinvigorating the Great Lakes/rust belt region.

Chicago and Pittsburgh -- cities that have successfully shaken off their industrial pasts to become high-tech, high creativity centers -- could help uplift their still-struggling post-industrial neighbors, such as Detroit and Cleveland, with high speed rail connectivity.

Secondly, rail connectivity within the mega-regions.

There are the fast trains along the Boston/New York/Washington corridor that have allowed Washington, in effect, to become a commuter suburb of greater New York.

If you buy into Florida's theories, it is extremely disheartening that several governors and other politicians elected earlier this month are making noise about rejecting billions of dollars of transit funding.

Whether you accept all of Florida's ideas or not, you will enjoy his wit, vigor and clear writing that turns the most mind-numbing of economic research into a feast of thought for the future.

We highly recommend The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive the Post-Crash Prosperity.

Wright is the author of 5,000 published articles on urban life, architecture, public policy, planning and design. He is active in working to make sure universal design, which provides barrier-free access to people with disabilities, is incorporated to the essential and rapidly-evolving practice of sustainability.

RESOURCES

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Great-Reset-Richard-Florida/?isbn=9780061937194

http://www.creativeclass.com/

THE GREAT RESET: HOW NEW WAYS OF LIVING AND WORKING By Richard Florida -- PART 2

THE GREAT RESET: HOW NEW WAYS OF LIVING AND WORKING
By Richard Florida

Review by Steve Wright

Author Richard Florida writes that we must admit that the U.S. is a service-based, not factory economy, so we must work to convert low-paying, unrewarding service jobs into middle class careers that engage workers as a source of innovation.

Florida, the director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, cites some innovative companies that empower even their lowest level retail workers and provide them with the opportunity to be rapidly promoted.

Florida, founder of the Creative Class Group, also believes the American Dream should no longer be homeownership -- it should be mobility.

Mobility, he said, can be achieved by making more people renters instead of homeowners.

Florida states that research proves that government policies incentivizing home ownership can actually be detrimental to the new economy.

He said a family underwater on its home loan is unlikely to sell at a huge financial loss to move to another region or state for better job opportunities.

But that is exactly what it must do in the era of the Great Reset and if more people rented, they could pick up stakes and more to prosperous regions much more quickly and easily.

While he is a progressive known for praising cities that accommodate gays, artists and other urban pioneers, Florida is no fan of the lion's share of the Obama
Administration's stimulus billions being spent on road projects.

Florida said road building is a short-term fell good, not a long-term plan in an era prolonged austerity in which many families will not be able to spend tens of thousands of dollars per year on a two or three automobiles.

He writes that it is better to focus on transportation infrastructure that is not automobile-centered.

Florida prefers big spending on airports, because most of these essential transit hubs for business in America have fallen into disrepair and our nowhere near as efficient or innovative as their foreign counterparts.

TOMORROW: PART 3 -- SALVATION THROUGH TRANSPORATION, INCLUDING HIGH SPEED RAIL

Wright is the author of 5,000 published articles on urban life, architecture, public policy, planning and design. He is active in working to make sure universal design, which provides barrier-free access to people with disabilities, is incorporated to the essential and rapidly-evolving practice of sustainability.

RESOURCES

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Great-Reset-Richard-Florida/?isbn=9780061937194

http://www.creativeclass.com/

THE GREAT RESET: HOW NEW WAYS OF LIVING AND WORKING By Richard Florida

THE GREAT RESET: HOW NEW WAYS OF LIVING AND WORKING
By Richard Florida

Review By Steve Wright

Class: our assignment today is to read 200-plus pages written by an economist who takes us back to the Great Depression of the 1930s and Long Depression of the late 1900s to find answers to what ails us during the Long Recession of the early 21st century.

Sounds about as enticing as sock drawer rearranging or dental work, doesn't it?
Trying to decipher the thoughts of an economist could be a painful exercise in these painful times.

But not if the economist is Richard Florida, author of the highly readable bestsellers The Rise of the Creative Class and Who's Your City?

Florida is an urban thinker who urges us to get past our handwringing over lost factory jobs that are never coming back and peak home values that are not going to rebound.

He would rather that we use the current economic collapse as a catalyst to motivate ourselves to finally focus on a future dependent on creativity, human capital, mobility and innovation.

His The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive the Post-Crash Prosperity calmly and clearly tell us that all the bailouts in the world will not save manufacturing in America.

The Great Reset (Harper Collins, $26.99 in hardback) also explains that while foreclosures are gut-wrenching, we never were better in an era of artificial wealth that inflated the price of a concrete box condo in the Miami sky to half a million dollars when its true value was likely half that.

Florida argues that Americans have to understand that a manufacturing-based economy has been declining for half a century and we can no longer expect to measure prosperity in terms of automobiles being made in Detroit.

TOMORROW PART 2 -- MOBILITY, THE AMERICAN DREAM


Wright is the author of 5,000 published articles on urban life, architecture, public policy, planning and design. He is active in working to make sure universal design, which provides barrier-free access to people with disabilities, is incorporated to the essential and rapidly-evolving practice of sustainability.

RESOURCES:

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Great-Reset-Richard-Florida/?isbn=9780061937194

http://www.creativeclass.com/