 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | International Bestseller
All places are not created equal.
In this groundbreaking book, Richard Florida shows that where we live is increasingly a crucial factor in our lives, one that fundamentally affects our professional and personal prospects. As well as explaining why place matters now more than ever, Who’s Your City? provides indispensable tools to help you choose the right place for you.
It’s a cliché of the information age that globalization has made place irrelevant, that one can telecommute as effectively from New Zealand as New York. But it’s not true, Richard Florida argues, relying on twenty years of innovative research in urban studies, creativity, and demographic trends. In fact, as new units of economic growth called mega-regions become increasingly specialized, the world is becoming more and more “spiky” — divided between flourishing clusters of talent, education and competitiveness, and moribund “valleys.”
All these places have personalities, Richard Florida explains in the second half of Who’s Your City?, and happiness depends on finding the city in which you can balance your personal and career goals to thrive. More people than ever before now have the opportunity to choose where to live, but at different points in our lives we need different kinds of places, he points out — what a couple of recent college graduates want from their city isn’t necessarily what a retiree is looking for. You have to find the place that suits you best: a boho-burb neighbourhood isn’t likely to be the best fit for patio man.
So, for the first time, Who’s Your City? ranks cities by their fitness for various life stages, rating the best places for singles, young families, and empty nesters. It summarizes the key factors that make place matter to different kinds of people, from professional opportunities to the closeness of family to how well it matches their lifestyle, and provides an in-depth series of steps to help you choose the right place wisely.
Sparkling with Richard Florida’s signature intellectual originality, Who’s Your City? moves from insights to studies to personal anecdotes, from a startling “Singles Map” of the United States to surprising data on the difference aesthetics makes to people’s sense of place. A perceptive and transformative book, it is both a brilliant exploration of the fundamental importance of place and an essential guide to making what may be the most important decision of your life.
From the Hardcover edition. |
Average Customer Rating:   Dispells the Myth of the Totally Flat World - Creative Regions Thrive Great for understanding the intersection of demographics, geography and prosperity. His main premise is there are distinct economic corridors in the world. The main ones based on prosperity 1) Boston-NY-Washington-Phili 2)So-Cal (LA-SD) 3) Nor-Cal (silcon valley) 4)Toronto-Buf-Rochester and more. These are the big ones. Limited view ruins book I heard about this book and thought the concept sounded interesting but, to believe this book is to believe that the world is not interconnected and that your location on earth determines 90% of your fate.
I'd believe this somewhat
1. if the year was 1893 and we weren't a mouseclick from the rest of the world.
2. If people weren't the most powerful part of equation. They are what make one place or the other the happening place to be.
For example who would have thought of the peach groves that become silicon valley as the place to be until a few kids in their garage made it so. On a funny note, who would have thought Minneapolis would be the R&B capital of the world in the 1980s until Prince made it that way.
This book will leave you chasing the trends that already happened. Real success come from finding he next big thing before it happens. Excellent Analysis Richard Florida has given us a thoughful tome on one of the crucial questions most of never ask: where should one live? We spend a lot of time and energy on career and mate choice, but not nearly enough on this crucial question. The "clustering effect" of talented, creative, highly educated people into mega regions around the world has made the concept of place critical for long-term economic and personal success. Everyone should read this book: new college grads, professionals, retirees, everyone. Valuable info from a true scholar Richard Florida has conducted and researched scholarly work on various demographic topics and the beauty of this book is his ability to write in an entertaining and understandable manner. Yes, the book is about where to live, but in the process of discussing this issue the author touches on numerous fascinating trends about ourselves, our country and the world. An excellent read. Better than a self-help book Who's Your City is not a self-help book about where you should live. Instead, this book lays a solid foundation about why location is such an important factor in quality of life. Florida explains how certain places meet the needs of certain personality types, and how people in different life stages have different location needs as well. He explains why where you live is tied to your happiness, financial well being, health, and so on. He places emphasis on the importance of culture, education, transportation, community, and proximity to like-minded people.
If you are familiar with Florida's previous book, it will come as no surprise that he spends some time talking about the "creative economy" and "creative class." Specifically, why these people gravitate to certain regions, and why these regions do so well.
Florida's writing contains some pro-urban bias, so I worry residents of the outer suburbs or rural places may be put off by his perspective. However, all of his findings are based on 20 years of research and virtually everything is backed up with evidence and statistics. Also, the book is surprisingly easy and fast to read.
The book only gets more and more interesting with each chapter. I recommend Who's Your City not only to those thinking of relocating, but to anyone interested in learning about places. |  |
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