Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Fast Company Competitive Set



So – here it is – our competitive set for cool cities, according to Fast Company magazine. As interesting as this list is, I love better the article that invited the nominations. It’s a beautiful summary of the vision, the goal, the point of the whole idea of strong dynamic and - yes - creative cities. Excerpts below:


"You're smart, young, newly graduated from a university with the whole world before you. You could settle in a small town with well-tended lawns, pancake suppers, and life on a human scale. Or you could truck it to the big city, with all its din and dog-eat-dog lunacy. Your choice?


Fuhgedaboudit: There is no choice. For all the challenges cities face--congestion, crime, crumbling infrastructure, environmental decay, plus occasional issues with basic civility--they are still where jobs and youth gather, where energy begets even greater energy, where talent masses and collides. Worldwide, the pace of urbanization is only accelerating. This year, for the first time, more of the earth's population will live in cities than in rural areas--a cool 3.2 billion, according to United Nations estimates. "In a world where we can now work anywhere, we're tending to concentrate in fewer and fewer places," says Carol Colletta, president of CEOs for Cities, an advocacy group. "Smart people are choosing to live near smart people."


In other words, there are winners in this battle for the future. We call them Fast Cities. They are cauldrons of creativity where the most important ideas and the organizations of tomorrow are centered. They attract the best and brightest. They are great places to work and live.
What makes a Fast City? It starts with opportunity. Not just bald economic capacity, but a culture that nurtures creative action and game-changing enterprise. Fast Cities are places where entrepreneurs and employees alike can maximize their potential--where the number of patents filed is high, for instance, or where the high-tech sector is expanding.


The second component: innovation. Fast Cities invest in physical, cultural, and intellectual infrastructure that will sustain growth. "The real forces for change in America and around the world are the mayors and the local communities," says Florida, now a professor of public policy at George Mason University.


Finally, Fast Cities have energy, that ethereal thing that happens when creative people collect in one place. The indicators can seem obscure. But they point to environments where fresh thinking stimulates action and, by the way, attracts new talent in a virtuous cycle of creativity."

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