A working class crisis

I think this could there could be a secondary correlation here. Most of these the cities that Florida cites as being magnets for the "creative class" also have growing populations and expanding economies. My guess is that in the long run, the few cities on this list that are shrinking and have an older population -- such as Boston -- will end up with below average levels of residential housing appreciation.

It's also possible that the housing markets in these places may just look better for the time being. I would hypothesize that this is because the people who live in these creative-class cities are "wealthy" enough have the luxury of denying the reality of the market longer than those in working class areas who face foreclosure. This could take years to play out, though.

I can't believe I wasted 10 minutes of my life reading that.

I cannot underscore enough what you said at the top-"Ignoring most scientific rules".

I'd really be interested in seeing how the full RealtyTrac list maps to his list in the form of a scatter-graph (or hearing the conclusions thereof); making a broad conclusion from looking at only small subsets of data (top 10, or 25) can be rather misguiding. Did you compare the entire list and print your conclusion based on the entire list, but only publish a small subset of that mapping? Also, when mapping one list to the other I would recommend changing the indices (only index from the set of cities in the smaller RealtyTrac list) to match so as to avoid distortion. Finally (and most importantly), 100 cities seems like a very small set from which to draw your conclusion.

The "Creative Class" service-based economy in MA (and nationwide) is going to go up in smoke.

As much as you may not want to accept it, MA is not immune from the current recession. (We are knee-deep now) To the contrary, MA has a long history of entrenched and dire recessionary contractions.

The early 90s recession, which was mild by historic standards, brought us over 9% unemployment rate.... the one we are experiencing now will be far worse as it erases all the faux (albeit meager) gains made since the 2001 dot-com bust returning us squarely to our rightful path down to economic regression.

As an independent "tech" consultant I have opportunity to peer into many Boston metro area small, medium and large businesses operating in sectors ranging from pharma to consumer electronics to mobile and enterprise software development and I can tell you... Corporate Boston is filled with dead-wood water cooler types. (You know who you are)

Youngin’s! You have been sold a bill of goods on the certainty of prosperity … it’s natural… we have had quite a run.

We are all (especially those of you in your 20s and 30s) about to learn a healthy lesson on value and necessity.

Do yourself a favor and discount articles that seek to posit reasons that our area’s performance will run countercyclic to prevailing economic trends and instead consider what you will do to prepare.

Daiji,

I appreciate the comments. 100 large cities is what we've got (and arguably fewer than that). I haven't mapped all 100 RealtyTrac cities against the Florida data, but I'd be interested to see the results.

I respectfully diagree. Las Vegas is ranked #3 in foreclosures, and I can vouch that some of the ladies who work there are very creative indeed.

I do not dispute the data, but I disagree with the conclusions.

A "knowlege economy" implies more flexible workers with a greater array of employment options. Economic diversification, not knowlege per se, is the key.

1. I would like to suggest that "creative class" workers are simply a marker for a diversified economy, and that those cities (such as Detroit) that have all their economic eggs in one basket are at risk for reasons other than class structure.

2. Those cities with the highest percentage of newly constructed homes are also at the top of the list. Naturally, these will also be areas with large percentages of "working class" individuals --- the people who built the glut of homes on the market. The recent economies of these cities were literally built on the back of the home construction industry who simply overbuilt.

Economic diversification and smaller percentage of new home construction, not knowlege per se, are the more important factors.

GB,

That's an interesting thought, but Washington, Raleigh and Austin -- three of the top four cities -- all are fast-growing areas with considerable amounts of new construction.

I'm not familiar with a good measurement of economic diversification, but I'd be interested to see how these cities actually stacked up. Is Hartford more diversified than Miami?

Thank you for this article, I´m working for a West Toronto Realtor, so I´m observing the situation on a U.S. and Canadian housing markets and I think it´s not a nonsense, especially, if you think about the fact, that usually "creative workers" are highly paid, than manual workers. But, of course there are many other factors and lot of manual workers are also well paid.