Florida kijkt voorbij de crisis
Florida’a nieuwe boek, ‘The Great Reset’ is deze weekuitgekomen. Het bouwt voort op de analyses die hij in het
Wat is zijn betoog voor de wereldeconomie en de kennissector na dediepe crisis waar we hopleijk nu aan het uitkrabbelen zijn?
Crises are opportunities
As our society recovers from the Crash and reshapes itself toreturn to prosperity, how will everything about our lives bereinvented? We tend to view prolonged economic downturns, likethe Great Depression of the 1930’s and the Long Depression of thelate 19th century, in terms of the crisis and pain theycause, rather than as the opportunities they invariably represent.
But history teaches us that these great crises are opportunities toremake our economy and society and generate whole new epochs ofeconomic growth, prosperity, innovation, and new ways ofliving.
A fresh era of growth
Richard Florida, who wrote the classic The Rise of the CreativeClass, provides an engaging and sweeping examination of theseprevious economic epochs or “resets,” distilling the deep forcesthat shaped their physical and social landscapes, reshapingeconomies, societies and our everyday lives.
Looking towards the future, Florida identifies the patterns thatwill drive the next Great Reset and simultaneously reshapevirtually every aspect of our lives-from how and where we live tohow we work to how we invest in individuals and infrastructure, andhow we shape our cities and regions.
He shows how these core elements, when taken together, will spur afresh era of growth and prosperity, define a new geography ofprogress, and stimulate surprising opportunities for each ofus.
American Dream revised
Among these forces will be:
–a revised American Dream that is centered less on ownership andconsumption of houses and cars and more around experiences, values,and mobility
–new forms of infrastructure that speed the movement of people,goods and ideas
–a radically altered and much denser economic landscape that isless about cities and suburbs and more about megaregions that willdrive the development of new industries, jobs and a whole new wayof life.
We’ve weathered tough times before. They are a necessary partof economic cycles, giving us a chance to see clearly what’sworking and what’s not. Societies can be reborn in suchcrises, emerging fresh, strong and refocused. Now is ourchance to anticipate what that brighter future will look like, andtake the steps that will get us there faster.
Change education to harness talent
Based on the history of how past Resets unfolded, Florida suggeststhat we guide our efforts to restore today’s economy with theseessential principles:
- Harness the full creative talents of all people includingservice and industrial workers
- Upgrade service jobs into better, high-paying jobs that aremore innovative
- Change our educational systems to better mobilize and harnesscreative talent
- Build the infrastructure of the future, not just patch up thatof the past
- Invest in high-speed rail instead of building morehighways
- Shift the country from an “ownership society” to a more mobile”rentership society”
These changes will take time and hard work, but will usher in anew era of promise. Florida presents a, positive andcounterintuitive vision of our future, one that calls into questionlong-held beliefs about the nature of economic progress and thatforces us to reassess our very way of life. He argues thatit’s time to turn our efforts, as individuals, as governments, as asociety, to putting the necessary pieces in place for a vibrant,prosperous future.
