
Richard Florida has a new book coming out in the spring called, The New Urban Crisis.
Noteworthy about the book is that he has changed his tune with respect to the potential of the “creative class” to form the new middle class. Here’s a quote from the Houston Chronicle:
“I got wrong that the creative class could magically restore our cities, become a new middle class like my father’s, and we were going to live happily forever after,” he said. “I could not have anticipated among all this urban growth and revival that there was a dark side to the urban creative revolution, a very deep dark side.” -Richard Florida
Regardless of what you think of the work of Richard Florida, I’m sure this book will be bedside for most urbanists. The focus is on creating a new kind of inclusive urbanism, which is top of mind for so many of us today.
If you’d like to pre-order it, you can do that here.
I’m back and it feels great. I missed blogging the past 2 days. Though, there was something nice about not touching a computer all weekend.
This morning I got up extra early and listened to a brief conversation between Aaron M. Renn of The Urbanophile and urbanist Richard Florida. The topic is New York’s “Great Reset”, and the impetus was a recent report (of the same name) that was put out by New York University.
The conversation starts by talking about the resilience of New York City and its ability to accept and then reinvent itself in the wake of “creative destruction.” Destruction such as the financial crisis of 2008/2009.
But they then go on to talk about the challenges that New York, as well as many other cities, are now facing. Challenges brought about, not by failure, but by their tremendous success. Challenges such as income inequality and the dwindling middle class.
The overarching premise is that we are still in the early stages of a new urban and creative economy. And that there’s lots of work to be done in order to figure out how to make it an inclusive one.
There’s even mention of former Toronto mayor, Rob Ford.
You can listen to the talk below. If you can’t see the embedded play button, click here.
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/221338706" params="color=ff5500" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]

Ace Hotel, LA by Dan Hogman on 500px
The word on the street right now is that Ace Hotel will be opening up a location in Toronto’s Fashion District at 51 Camden Street.
Unlike its other outposts around the world, which entailed the renovation of a historic building, this one will be a new build. And according to HotelChatter, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects have been retained for the project.
Already a demolition permit has been issued for the existing 3 storey office building:


Richard Florida has a new book coming out in the spring called, The New Urban Crisis.
Noteworthy about the book is that he has changed his tune with respect to the potential of the “creative class” to form the new middle class. Here’s a quote from the Houston Chronicle:
“I got wrong that the creative class could magically restore our cities, become a new middle class like my father’s, and we were going to live happily forever after,” he said. “I could not have anticipated among all this urban growth and revival that there was a dark side to the urban creative revolution, a very deep dark side.” -Richard Florida
Regardless of what you think of the work of Richard Florida, I’m sure this book will be bedside for most urbanists. The focus is on creating a new kind of inclusive urbanism, which is top of mind for so many of us today.
If you’d like to pre-order it, you can do that here.
I’m back and it feels great. I missed blogging the past 2 days. Though, there was something nice about not touching a computer all weekend.
This morning I got up extra early and listened to a brief conversation between Aaron M. Renn of The Urbanophile and urbanist Richard Florida. The topic is New York’s “Great Reset”, and the impetus was a recent report (of the same name) that was put out by New York University.
The conversation starts by talking about the resilience of New York City and its ability to accept and then reinvent itself in the wake of “creative destruction.” Destruction such as the financial crisis of 2008/2009.
But they then go on to talk about the challenges that New York, as well as many other cities, are now facing. Challenges brought about, not by failure, but by their tremendous success. Challenges such as income inequality and the dwindling middle class.
The overarching premise is that we are still in the early stages of a new urban and creative economy. And that there’s lots of work to be done in order to figure out how to make it an inclusive one.
There’s even mention of former Toronto mayor, Rob Ford.
You can listen to the talk below. If you can’t see the embedded play button, click here.
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/221338706" params="color=ff5500" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]

Ace Hotel, LA by Dan Hogman on 500px
The word on the street right now is that Ace Hotel will be opening up a location in Toronto’s Fashion District at 51 Camden Street.
Unlike its other outposts around the world, which entailed the renovation of a historic building, this one will be a new build. And according to HotelChatter, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects have been retained for the project.
Already a demolition permit has been issued for the existing 3 storey office building:

For those of you who may not be familiar with the Ace Hotel brand, the first hotel opened in Portland in 1999 when 3 friends transformed a halfway house into an affordable hotel for creative types.
Since then, the hotel has expanded to New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Palm Springs, as well as many other cities, and has become a kind of cultural institution for the creative class.
I’m excited that they have (allegedly) picked Toronto for their next property and I’m excited that Shim-Sutcliffe will be (supposedly) designing it.
For those of you who may not be familiar with the Ace Hotel brand, the first hotel opened in Portland in 1999 when 3 friends transformed a halfway house into an affordable hotel for creative types.
Since then, the hotel has expanded to New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Palm Springs, as well as many other cities, and has become a kind of cultural institution for the creative class.
I’m excited that they have (allegedly) picked Toronto for their next property and I’m excited that Shim-Sutcliffe will be (supposedly) designing it.
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