By Anand Bhat
When Leslie Cochran, the most famous homeless man in Austin, Texas, died last year, the city, whose unofficial slogan was “Keep Austin Weird,” became a little less weird and quite a bit more square. Cochran, the icon for “weird” Austin, ran for mayor every election and crashed on the street in front of my apartment. He cross-dressed; he wore pink thongs. And his obituary ran in the New York Times.
That New York Times obituary may have been final blow for Austin’s reputation. When the New York-Hollywood media set starts to notice a fun place, they’re liable to suck all the coolness out; at a minimum, they’ll wrap a velvet rope around it and start charging for entry.
Richard Florida, an urban studies professor, preached a vision for transforming more urban areas into “weird” cities like Austin. His theory was that cities needed to recruit what he called “the Creative Class” to Rust Belt cities like Pittsburgh, where Florida used to teach at Carnegie Mellon University. The Creative Class, he argued, would bring the new economy to these cities. They would work in industries that require thinking, creativity and high levels of formal education. And they would make those cities cool.
A city is cool, according to Florida, when it combines diversity, tolerance, outdoor activities, arts, nightlife, and walkability. You need gays and rock bands, as it were, for your town to attract workers with the high social capital and job skills regions need to grow. [blocktext align=”left”]What has the Creative Class done for America’s cities? It has made them more monochromatic and less middle-class. [/blocktext]Austin was the example Florida pointed to: it was already intrinsically the coolest when Florida first articulated his Creative Class theory in 2002 (second only to San Francisco). That reputation had been built in the 1970s when cheap pot, rent, and beer brought the music scene it is known for today.
Florida’s book made a huge splash amongst policymakers and the media when it was published in 2002. He turned his book into a consulting company and then abandoned Pittsburgh for the University of Toronto.
Over a decade later, what has the Creative Class done for America’s cities? It has made them more monochromatic and less middle-class. In 2005, Joel Kotkin pointed out that San Francisco (Florida’s #1 example) had become an ephemeral city with no middle class, children, or jobs. It had transformed itself into an entertainment and eating center, an adult Disneyland created by driving up the rent and pushing minorities and the middle class out.
Florida has since admitted the theory of the Creative Class only benefits the Creative Class. And statistics bear this out: Austin is the only city in Texas that has become less diverse and more white over the past ten years. East Austin (historically a Mexican-American neighborhood) is one of the most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in the United States.
Last year, I moved from Austin to Cleveland. In my brief time here, I see both the promise and peril of a re-imagined Rust Belt city. Downtown apartments are scarce, but foreclosed homes are plentiful. But I am hopeful Cleveland will avoid Austin’s fate because it differs from every other city I have lived in. It has unity and community, something missing in Richard Florida’s other ephemeral cities.
Cleveland has authenticity. It has people who root for the home team and are loyal until the end, no matter how awful the team plays. [blocktext align=”right”]Focusing on a narrow sliver of the population to save Cleveland will not work.[/blocktext]Events, food drives and public celebrations are happenings for the whole city. Cleveland has farmers’ markets that accept food stamps and urban agriculture in the projects. It has the magic of being able to walk around the Taste of Tremont or Wade Oval Wednesdays with whites and blacks getting along and the old and young gathering as a complete community. I have not heard the disdainful glances or suspicious mutterings about “other people” I heard in the South. Events in town grow organically and naturally in a unique way from the neighborhoods they are based in.
Let’s hope Cleveland doesn’t become the next victim of the Creative Class. I am not saying that tolerance, arts, walkability, and creativity suck. All cities need these assets. The New Urbanism movement of re-creating lost spaces and planning development with the environment in mind has improved nearly every American city. But focusing on a narrow sliver of the population to save Cleveland will not work. And the side effects of attracting wealthy outsiders here may just make life more unpleasant, and the rent much higher, for the poorest in our city.
Cool costs too much. It costs personality and pushes out locals for out-of-towners obsessed with “the local thing to do” while the actual markers of local flavor pass away to make room for placeless markers of upscale “cosmopolitan” urbanity. You know, the weird stuff, like a pink thong-wearing homeless mayoral candidate.
True Austinites swore to never let their town turn into Dallas, but that did not stop the city from subsidizing a mall with a Neiman Marcus. Focusing on the city’s fundamentals and authentic flavor and independent businesses was how it became cool. And it is how Cleveland will revive as well. Revitalizing a city with dramatic top-down gestures may attract attention, but bottom-up community will attract people. Maybe the next time the New York Times writes about how cool Cleveland is, we should cheer a bit less. More character, more weird, and less cool is the prescription we should seek.
Anand Bhat works as an internal medicine resident at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland.
As a former Austinite, I agree 100% with the idea that what has happened to Austin has not improved life for many of its residents, and it isn’t a formula that I’d like to see happen anywhere else.
However, I am completely confused as to what this has to do with Leslie’s obit. Leslie’s fame was not confined to Central Texas, and a NYT obit for a lively American folk character is very appropriate. Maybe it’s the Texan in me, but I see no point in hiding a light under a bushel. I’d hope that Cleveland could celebrate Cleveland in a greater way without some sort of fear of becoming too cool.
(And yes, his death was a great blow, but the thong man cyclist is still doing his thing on Lamar. Even among the glitter of new condos, hairy-man-butt-hope lives on.)
Like many other Cleveland residents, I want this city to stay scrappy enough for ungenrtifiable culture to flourish, and I would dread a Cleveland as gentrified as SF, NYC, or Cambridge. But I would hardly lament a Cleveland with more young creative types, more intellectuals, more food trucks, more bike lanes, or more employment. The trend towards “creative class” (bourgeois) self-loathing can sometimes go too far.
I’d also add that no one wants to live in a place that has a watered-down over-commodified washed-out version of itself displace the Real Thing. The danger is that every interesting place will attract outsiders who want a piece (and can afford the real estate). Marx diagnosed this well long ago. But the assumption that it’s the “creative class” that is at fault (rather than greedy landlords, for example) seems deeply problematic to me. This city is made the better by the Cinematheque, The Happy Dog, The Beachland Ballroom, Guide To Kulchur, and indeed Rust Belt Chic & Belt Magazine itself.
What portions of Marx are you referring to?
Great observations overall. However, it’s unfair to blame middle and upper middle class out-of-towners who drive in from the suburbs to enjoy a nice Saturday night dinner for contributing to the dilution of Cleveland’s authenticity. These folks’ hard-earned, disposable cash keeps a lot of small independent businesses in “hot spots” like Tremont, Gordon Square and Ohio City afloat.
When I hear the words “creative class,” I immediately think of hipsters. If Cleveland is losing sight of the very things that make it truly, genuinely cool, blame these pretentious, flannel shirt-wearing, trust fund-financed slackers and the proliferation of bland, unoriginal businesses that cater to them. (Actually, it’s hard to blame any business for making hay by cashing in on a fad.)
Hipsters have more bucks to spend than the average Joe, but they rob the city’s neighborhoods of their authenticity. Granted, we’re only talking about a handful of neighborhoods. You don’t see many hipsters hanging out on the corner of W. 78th and Detroit, or on E. 55th Street. Too “real”, and probably too scary, for most of them.)
Anyone who thinks that catering to hipsters — or relying on the “creative class” to magically turn things around — constitutes a solid economic development plan should ask themselves, “What happens when mommy and daddy’s trust fund money runs out, hipsters/creative classers are forced to get real jobs and have to abandon their trendy lofts for little Cape Cods in Parma or Garfield Heights, and the whole hipster/creative class fad dies out?” Who is going to keep all those $6-a-pint craft beer micro-brews in business? Who’s going to pay $900 for a one-bedroom, walk-up apartment in some crumbling Tremont cottage?
Cleveland and other struggling rust belt cities like Akron, Lorain, Youngstown, etc. would be better-served by concentrating on real economic development/revitalization in the form of promoting the growth of companies that have the capacity to employ lots of people and pay them decent, livable wages.
I agree with everything in this article except for one thing:
“It has unity and community, something missing in Richard Florida’s other ephemeral cities.
Cleveland has authenticity. It has people who root for the home team and are loyal until the end, no matter how awful the team plays.”
I don’t think that will save Cleveland, because as someone who grew up in Austin, that is exactly how I had always described Austin.. until about 4 or 5 years ago. It is the thing that makes a place cool in the first place, and provides fuel for the creative spark that burns at the city’s center. But it is the easiest thing to lose. 115 people are reported to move to Austin every day (some reports estimate the average as high as 158). Austinites can be as unified as they want, but eventually they will be a drop in a bucket of un-unified move-ins.
The good news is, that there is always a very long lived golden age where the balance is maintained before a city becomes so famous for its cool that the flocks of people smother it. And when it is gone, there will be another city to carry the torch for a while. Maybe I’ll move to Cleveland next…
The narrative is a tad off. Cleveland’s pockets are fairly segregated. The west is predominately white, and the east is predominantly black. Downtown, West Side Market, and University Circle are a melting pot at peak times and during some events, but the left and right sides of the map were far from united during my 20-plus years in city limits. As a west-side resident until 2009, I remember, in particular, residents’ disdain for the east and the city’s school system. If the seperation mentality still exists (west vs. east and private vs. public schools), Cleveland’s authenticity is more of a facade. There is a stubbornness buried within residents. They show blind faith in a losing football team, but outside the stadium and tailgates lies a lack of confidence in themselves and lost of faith in civil services. There is an odd sense of entitlement buried within residents, too. They proudly say “Cleveland Rocks,” but rarely support the museum that bears the Rock and Roll name. Leave it to the tourists, I heard endless times.
I have no doubt Cleveland is cool and united in pockets, but do those pockets want to bond together and bring the rest of the city together? The “cool” residents can hopefully lead a unification charge and economic boom, but saying the whole city has “unity and community” is a bit of a stretch, but it can be an attainable goal. Cleveland’s problems are typically pinned to its residents’ exodus for suburbs or other cities, resulting in an severe brain drain and loss of tax base. I, for one, struggled with a decision to leave the city after college. The potential of Cleveland is obvious, but convincing the community will be the hardest part. The lack of diversity in the west and east portions of city limits was always a big problem to me, but, starting the convo to fix this distance is apparently underway, so hopefully the city is acquiring more faith in each other.
This article was written by a young doctor doing his residency at Metro who just came here [and will likely leave for greener pastures ASAP], so…