Amanda has a post up about the concentration of the “creative class” in hip urban cities, and how the not-quite-hip cities are struggling to attract younger people. Quite an argument has started up in the comments about how we define the “creative class” — Amanda asserts that the creative class is the degreed class, whereas many commenters argue that a degree isn’t necessary to be an artist, dancer, writer, etc.
But as someone who moved from one young, hip city (Seattle) to what’s possibly the quintessential hip city (New York), I have thoughts. When Amanda says “the creative class,” I don’t take her to simply mean “creative people” or even “people who make art.” I take her to mean the culture-drivers, the people who decide what’s worth paying attention to and who set the standards of “cool” for the rest of the country. These people are not necessarily the artists and the actual creators — but they’re the ones who determine how successful said artists and creators are, and who shape what youth culture looks like. Of course, the artists and the creators will be drawn to the areas where there will be a large, receptive community to their art — namely, larger cities with a decidedly “hip” contingent.
But it’s that first group — the culture-drivers — who really matter. Artists can create away, but if no one is paying attention then, obviously, their creations don’t register. And having gone to NYU and living in the East Village, I’ve met more than a few of the people who make artists matter. Here’s what they generally have in common: (1) A college education; (2) lots of disposable income; (3) time and energy. This certainly isn’t anything new. Edie Sedgwick wasn’t exactly poor; the Misshapes kids and the audience they cater to aren’t struggling. Of course, this isn’t true of every hipster in the country, but there is certainly a large degree of social and economic privilege involved. How many people can afford to graduate from college and then accept an unpaid internship in a “creative” field while they live in New York and go to shows and parties every night? How many people in their 20s have the security of knowing that whatever they do today, it’ll work out? It’s these kids — the ones who say they like bands you’ve never heard of (but go to the shows largely to socialize) and who complain about gentrification (but who just moved in two years ago) and who apologize for their parents’ SUVs (but are forced to drive them anyway when they go home) — who dictate what “cool” even means.
Following them are white-collar workers who are eager to consume what has been deemed cool. These are the young lawyers, investment bankers, advertising execs, and other well-paid professional-class work-hard-play-hard types — the Carrie Bradshaws, if we’re going to go with the ultimate stereotype. These are the people who have the money to consume “cool,” but don’t necessarily have the time to define it. They’re decidedly different scenes, at least in New York, but you can bet that the i-bankers will pick up where the hipsters left off. Last month they were at a Modest Mouse show; this week they’re trying to get into the Misshapes party, because it was written up in Style section of the Times.
Perhaps this is a New York-centric thing, but I’m not so sure. I’m willing to bet that the people who define “hip” today — throughout this country, and maybe world-wide — are the same kind of people who have always shaped it: Wealthy, privileged, educated and bored, but too creative and intelligent to go the way of Paris Hilton. And the people who propel “hip” to mass consumption levels are the ones who are wealthy, privilged and educated, but occupying more traditional career spaces and being decidedly more mainstream than the really cool kids (or being wealthy, educated, privileged and bored, but uncreative and vapid — think Paris Hilton).
These are not the kinds of people who are going to live in the suburbs, or in rural areas.
The career-wealthy (perhaps “yuppies” would be a better term, but it feels a little 80s to me) often live in cities because the kinds of professional careers in which young people are able to thrive financially — in law, business, etc — tend to be in large cities. So economics matter. Well-paying professional careers for younger people matter. And those well-paid young professionals are almost without exception going to be extremely well-educated. Of course, there are certainly plenty of these people in places like Dallas, but Dallas is still missing that something — and that’s where the cultural shapers come in when creating “hip” cities. To make a city hip, you need more than a few museums and some music venues. You need the people who define what’s worth seeing, listening to, and participating in.
It’s not as simple as wealth — although wealth matters. It’s not just about economics, although those matter too. Wealth and opportunity alone do not a hip city make. And it doesn’t work to bring up the rare individual multi-billionaires who made it without graduating from college. When we’re talking about building entire cities of “coolness,” one or two rich people don’t cut it. It takes entire classes of people creating, picking and choosing what’s worthy, consuming, and then consuming in mass.
It’s also not as simple as arguing that “no one wants to be where they’re bored and unappreciated.” Shaping and creating culture has traditionally been a very youthful endeavor, for the reaons listed above — extra income, extra energy and lots of extra time. By the time most people hit their mid-30s, there’s at least a shortage of the last two. And even if there isn’t, there’s a dearth of people in your peer group who share your cutting-edge interests. You give it up to the next generation. And so age matters, too.
Amanda focuses on the question of how to distribute the “creative class” across the country, in an effort to turn more red states blue. While that would be nice, I’m not sure there’s any practical way to do it. After all, culture-shaping requires some degree of amalgamation and concentration. The reason why so many creative types come to New York and San Francisco and LA is because they know that there’s an established class of people in those cities who collectively decide what’s cool, and once that class gives its stamp of approval, more mainstream audiences will follow. You can’t just up and move that by building a few concert halls and opening an Asian fusion restaurant — which seems to be the same conclusion that Amanda reaches.
So yes, the “creative class” — loosely defined as those who create, those who subsidize that creation, those who promote it and those who consume it — are disproportionately educated, wealthy, urban and liberal. But I’m not sure that the answer is to try and disperse this class of people around the country in order to gain more progressive votes. Instead, I’d like to see progressive movements focusing more on the needs and desires of people in “red” states, and shaping our message to them. Because the fact is, while progressive politics certainly don’t hurt rich urban liberals, they’re far more beneficial to people who are lower-income, who are struggling to feed their kids, who don’t have a choice to be a stay-at-home parent, who see many of the kids in their neighborhoods going off to Iraq, who don’t have the privilige of regularly going to openings and shows and performances. That’s who we should focus on — because the fact is, those people make up a far greater portion of our country than the people who get most of the attention. It’s not because they’re dumb or uncreative or tasteless, and I’m not suggesting that we condescend to the poor red-staters; I’m suggesting that most people don’t have the opportunity to be part of a creative class, and that we should emphasize the fact that progressive politics are far more in their interests than conservative ones are. And we should really evalute their interests, and listen to them. Which, of course, is the pat liberal answer that we hear recycled all the time. But either we just aren’t doing it, or we aren’t doing it right. I think it’s a combination of both. And I think that it can be fixed. That, I hope, will be far and away more effective than trying to shift deeply-ingrained cultural patterns that have existed for decades and don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.
*Dislcaimer: I know this post is chock-full of generalizations, and you can poke pretty easy holes in it by arguing that this one uber-hipster you know is totally broke. That’s all good and fine, and there are obvious exceptions to every single sentence I’ve typed here — but in order to make somewhat decisive statements about “the culture” and “my generation,” I have to generalize. However, feel free to challenge if you think my generalizations are totally off base.