I’d call the inaugural Augusta Free Press/Stone Soup Books discussion series a success, if only because it seems to have spawned a movement.
More on that in a minute. First, the book that we discussed, for those who weren’t able to take part, was The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida, a researcher and development theorist. Florida’s focus in The Rise of the Creative Class is to sell local-government leaders on a new paradigm in economic development.
The Florida paradigm in The Rise of the Creative Class is that there are three T’s to local economic development – technology, talent and tolerance – to which he has recently added a fourth, territorial assets, and that communities that focus on attracting technology and talent by building on tolerance and their local territorial assets will be the winners in the 21st century economy.