- Hardcover: 374 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books Inc.,U.S. (19 Feb 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0465003524
- ISBN-13: 978-0465003525
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.3 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 355,473 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Who's Your City?
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Product Description
Review
"Planetizen.com," Top 10 Books - 2009
"This book should be read by anyone considering making a move. More importantly, it should be read by cities to get them thinking about what it is they do best, what kind of people they're attracting, and whether they want - or need - to change."
"This book should be read by anyone considering making a move. More importantly, it should be read by cities to get them thinking about what it is they do best, what kind of people they're attracting, and whether they want - or need - to change."
"BusinessWeek,,"."reading "Who's Your City?" feels like a cross between relationship counseling and a personality exam meant to determine the best career path: It asks as many questions as it answers."
"BookPage,,"."Florida's down-to-earth writing and 10-step plan for choosing the place that fits best will help make deciding where to settle a most enjoyable endeavor."
Product Description
From the best-selling author of "The Rise of the Creative Class", a brilliant new book on the surprising importance of place, with advice on how to find the right place for you.It's a mantra of the age of globalization that where we live doesn't matter. We can innovate just as easily from a ski chalet in the Alps or a cottage in Provence as in the office of a Silicon Valley startup.According to Richard Florida, this is wrong. Globalization is not flattening the world; in fact, place is increasingly relevant to the global economy and our individual lives. Where we live determines the jobs and careers we have access to, the people we meet and the "mating markets" in which we participate. And everything we think we know about cities and their economic roles is up for grabs."Who's Your City?" is the first book to report on the growing body of research on what qualities of cities and towns actually make people happy in their lives. Choosing a place to live is as important as choosing a spouse or career, but until now, no one has rigorously explored this powerful component of subjective well-being to uncover what people want, need, and get out of the places they live. For everyone from urban planners and mayors to recent graduates, this book will be the essential guide to how people choose where to live, and what those choices mean to their lives and their communities.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Seems to have been written by a young woman as it has a lot of mating and dating and how to meet people references. Divides us into four or five personality types and suggested we all live together by type or not...as apparently success is based on multiple types ... whatever....seems like balony to me. Barely touched on what I thought was the most important idea of values of a city and how cities attract
or repel people based on their laws and how they are carried out. For example, treatment of strays (NYC or Los Angeles), right of self defence (Dallas or London) or even right of way for traffic over pedestrians or vice versa. Not a law as such, but the extensive cycle lane network of Amsterdam and Northern Europe barely got a mention and its brilliant. If you have a good education you should be able to get a girl wherever you go and distilling life location choices of the well educated down to girl and job seems (I hope) overly simplistic.
I gave it three stars as I did get something out of the book although I had to do a lot of reading to get it. A good editor could take out 30% and not diminish the book any as it is repetitive. It reinforced that mobility is increased with education which gave me hope. I am probably being harsh as its a hugely complex topic, but what can I say, maybe I'm cranky as I am not in the right city.
or repel people based on their laws and how they are carried out. For example, treatment of strays (NYC or Los Angeles), right of self defence (Dallas or London) or even right of way for traffic over pedestrians or vice versa. Not a law as such, but the extensive cycle lane network of Amsterdam and Northern Europe barely got a mention and its brilliant. If you have a good education you should be able to get a girl wherever you go and distilling life location choices of the well educated down to girl and job seems (I hope) overly simplistic.
I gave it three stars as I did get something out of the book although I had to do a lot of reading to get it. A good editor could take out 30% and not diminish the book any as it is repetitive. It reinforced that mobility is increased with education which gave me hope. I am probably being harsh as its a hugely complex topic, but what can I say, maybe I'm cranky as I am not in the right city.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Florida continues his creative class discussion in Who's your city. He makes a good point about how the place where we live has dramatic effect in what we can achieve both in personal and in work life. The book is well written and convincing.
For the first half he writes in pretty universal manner focusing in the relationship between creativity and regions. His main message is that the world is not becoming flat but instead spikier. Regions are specializing and benefiting from physical proximity of talented individuals. This he covers in part at an international level.
The latter half of the book is devoted to his studies and at this point he goes too much into detail. He explains in detail which cities rank as the best places to live for young single professionals, young couples, parents with kids and empty nesters. From an European perspective this is too much details, too little synthesis. Also at this point he focuses only on US regions.
Important topic and a well written book but it could have been focused differently.
For the first half he writes in pretty universal manner focusing in the relationship between creativity and regions. His main message is that the world is not becoming flat but instead spikier. Regions are specializing and benefiting from physical proximity of talented individuals. This he covers in part at an international level.
The latter half of the book is devoted to his studies and at this point he goes too much into detail. He explains in detail which cities rank as the best places to live for young single professionals, young couples, parents with kids and empty nesters. From an European perspective this is too much details, too little synthesis. Also at this point he focuses only on US regions.
Important topic and a well written book but it could have been focused differently.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
No wonder Florida is so fawned over by real estate agents. This book is really pitched at them, and written in language that even they can understand. It doesn't even come close to being a serious study of the issues or an analysis of the data.
Regardless of the (many) methodological flaws, the logical ones are considerably worse: by Florida's own admission, it turns out that people can be (and are) happy living just about anywhere. Forget the dramatic suggestions that a third of people don't like where they live: a third of people just don't like anything except not liking things, places or people...And that cities around the world, even nasty ones that I hate (like Toronto) don't decline that quickly or inexorably, because there is money to be made in their regeneration. Or that his branded cities have a shelflife (been to Barcelona recently? 21st century version of Florence these days, after having been hyped to death as a creative place and now fatally dependent on tourism rather than creativity to make ends meet). Or that most people in the great cities of the world were actually born there, and not speaking the language is going to mean a huge investment if you want to live in Prague or Paris.
But what is truly obnoxious about this book is the way it seeks to add to the pressure and paranoia of modern living. Not only should you be worried that you have married the wrong person, work in the wrong profession, are bringing up your kids wrong, wearing the wrong clothes or using the wrong technology. Florida wants to make you even more anxious by threatening you that you have made the wrong investment in time, money and energy in the city that you, loser, have chosen to inhabit. Your lack of thought about this matter shows how much you need people like Florida to explain the complexities of modern living to you. In small words.
A treasure trove of banalities for realtors, a superficial primer for city planners and a means of inducing panic in Americans who can no longer think for themselves, this has the wrong tone and the wrong ideas about place.
Regardless of the (many) methodological flaws, the logical ones are considerably worse: by Florida's own admission, it turns out that people can be (and are) happy living just about anywhere. Forget the dramatic suggestions that a third of people don't like where they live: a third of people just don't like anything except not liking things, places or people...And that cities around the world, even nasty ones that I hate (like Toronto) don't decline that quickly or inexorably, because there is money to be made in their regeneration. Or that his branded cities have a shelflife (been to Barcelona recently? 21st century version of Florence these days, after having been hyped to death as a creative place and now fatally dependent on tourism rather than creativity to make ends meet). Or that most people in the great cities of the world were actually born there, and not speaking the language is going to mean a huge investment if you want to live in Prague or Paris.
But what is truly obnoxious about this book is the way it seeks to add to the pressure and paranoia of modern living. Not only should you be worried that you have married the wrong person, work in the wrong profession, are bringing up your kids wrong, wearing the wrong clothes or using the wrong technology. Florida wants to make you even more anxious by threatening you that you have made the wrong investment in time, money and energy in the city that you, loser, have chosen to inhabit. Your lack of thought about this matter shows how much you need people like Florida to explain the complexities of modern living to you. In small words.
A treasure trove of banalities for realtors, a superficial primer for city planners and a means of inducing panic in Americans who can no longer think for themselves, this has the wrong tone and the wrong ideas about place.
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