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The Three T’s: Technology, Talent and Tolerance

In 2002, the world focused its attention on the work of Richard Florida and his Rise of the Creative Class. Attributing the success of the new economy to Creative Class workers, Florida argues that high-tech urban regions are defined by their creative workforce that produce “new forms or designs that are readily transferable and widely useful—such as designing a product that can be widely made, sold and used; coming up with a theorem or strategy that can be applied in many cases; or composing music that can be performed again and again” . He argues that his theory differs from human capital theories such as Glaeser by identifying a particular type of human capital, the creative worker who drives economic growth . Using patents, the Milken Institute’s Tech-Pole scores, and the location quotient of Creative Class members and same-sex partnered households, Florida finds a strong connection between the presence of creatives, innovation, tolerance and high-tech output. He calls this connection the Three T’s or technology, talent and tolerance.

To measure openness and tolerance, Florida and Gates use a gay index comprised of the relative number of same-sex partnered households in metropolitan areas. They found the gay index to be a leading indicator of a city’s position in the technology rankings and a leading indicator of creative workers . Implicit in this argument is that gays pick and move to cities by their perception of how tolerant those cities will be towards their lifestyle. Areas with higher concentrations of gays and lesbians must be more tolerant. More tolerant cities attract members of the Creative Class . Gays walking hand-in-hand on the street signal to creatives that an area is open and tolerant towards diversity. In his later works, Florida broadens the gay index to a diversity measure, adding bohemians (artists, writers, actors, producers, dancers, etc) and foreign-born immigrants. Using location quotients at the metropolitan level, he finds that his composite measure of diversity is strongly correlated to the location of creative professionals . As innovative rule-breakers themselves, creatives view these environments as places where they too can be individuals and define themselves through their own unique identities. Areas with this social milieu stimulate and further the creative environment. The gay index attempts to indirectly measure the open environment that creatives say are vital to creative centers or places where they want to live, work and play.

What is Tolerance?

What is tolerance? In Florida’s definition, tolerance occurs when people from different backgrounds collide on the street. Similarly, Wilson describes tolerance as the willingness “to ‘put up with’ or allow expression of ideas or interests that one rejects, and willingness to treat others according to universalistic criteria that are independent of any particular difference between self and others in values and attitudes” (ibid pg 117). The urban experience is the theoretical ‘means’ that population affects tolerance through the individual’s experience of ‘rubbing shoulders’ with other residents . This rubbing of shoulders occurs in cities with critical masses of diversity, which explains why Florida uses same-sex partnered households as indirect measures of tolerance. The more of these groups concentrated into an urban area, the higher the probability that its residents will interact or rub shoulders with people different from themselves. Florida’s top creative cities have strong immigrant, gay and lesbian, and artist communities. San Francisco hosts Chinatown (Asian), Mission (Hispanic), Castro (Gay) and the upper and lower Haight (bohemian). New York city has its Chinatown, the Barrio, Chelsea, Greenwich village, and lower Soho. Enclaves of each of these communities can be found in Chicago, Boston, Washington DC, Los Angeles and so on.

Dating back to studies by Park , Wirth and Jacobs , research shows a strong connection between diversity and urbanism. People from cities are more willing to grant political rights and understand views of diverse groups than those living in rural, less populous centers . Research shows that people who grow up in cities tend to be more accepting and ‘tolerant.’ They are also more knowledgeable about different subcultures, and have greater experiences interacting with people who are different from themselves. Cities are spaces where subcultures based on ethnicity, lifestyle, sexual orientation, values, religion and race concentrate which enables interaction to occur much more so than in smaller communities where critical masses do not exist .

However, when critical masses of minority groups concentrate, research tends to view these enclaves in terms of segregation. It is generally acknowledged that the spatial segregation of diverse groups, such as blacks or immigrants, is intolerant. Immigrants spatially concentrate due to intolerance by the host society, in order to assimilate language and cultural customs . Blacks are concentrated mostly due to historical practices of segregation, land deeds, steering and white flight . Historically, gays wishing to be ‘out’ gravitated to certain regions and then within those regions, to border vacuums, public parks, and spaces ignored by the larger heterosexist population . When gays created gay space and became visible, hate crimes and political backlash ensued . This suggests two disparate themes. On the one hand, cities are known to be tolerant, because they have large numbers of minorities. Yet, regions with larger populations of a subgroup, like immigrants, also tend to display greater group concentration, which can be associated with crime, poverty, and hate crimes. This suggests that at the metropolitan level, the city and its residents may be more politically and even socially tolerant of diversity; however, at the neighborhood level, the segregation of communities suggests balkanization or the lack of ‘rubbing shoulders’ residentially. What draws these groups in large numbers to certain regions where they are more likely to concentrate in a way that suggests intolerance? How does this play into political tolerance? Social tolerance? Moreover, how can a metropolitan region be considered tolerant, if its neighborhoods are residentially segregated, even if they host ‘diverse’ scenes?