Their city was gone … creative. Yours, too?

Tourisme Montreal / Stephan Poulin 

Creativity has the power to change the whole world. But first, apparently, it’s going to change the way city leaders brand their burgs.

In Montreal – where they clearly can sense the power of  “Creative Class” economic-development guru Richard Florida  even a whole Canadian province away from his new base at the University of Toronto – someone has assayed a claim on the designation “city of creativity.”

(This is a bold gambit and seems rather creative in and of itself, if for no other reason than that none of the several cities Florida has adopted and quitted in rapid succession had the smarts to position itself as the “city of creativity” before he moved on. Perhaps Montreal hopes to woo him next, to keep him in Canada so thousands of Great White Northerners who stay in Florida every year can finally enjoy having a Florida stay with them.)

Montreal might deserve such a title. A city of  historic interest and visual appeal, it can claim a wide array of cultural activities, including major fim and music festivals, the widely known Just for Laughs comedy festival, the home base of Cirque de Soleil, four universities, a lot of research and development, an indelible French heritage and the food to go with it. It’s also gay-friendly, one of Florida’s key standards of creativity measurement.

But many cities could say the same - just not in French or even with a good fake accent. 

What’s interesting about all this is not which metropolitan area can feel the most justified in calling itself creative, but that so many suddenly want to. Florida can certainly take credit for having turned local governments on to the economic benefits of attracting creative people with amenities and activities that keep them stimulated, happy and working hard in desirable and inventive new industries.

More important, though, awareness of creativity and its benefits has at last started to permeate the flinty shell of North Americans’ traditional value system, the segregated one that thought the only valuable kind of inventiveness was scientific, technological, artisanal, commercial, male and straight and that any other kind of imaginative pursuit – especially the arts – was frouffy claptrap or treacherous sensory seduction and thus the work of the devil and/or women.

We are recovering Puritans. And as we get better, so will our economy and society.  Maybe soon, Montreal will have to duke it out with every other municipality on the continent for the name City of Creativity.