What makes a good city? According to Carnegie Mellon professor Richard Florida, the the key factors in fostering community and economic development are no longer "underwriting big-box retailers, subsidizing downtown malls, recruiting call centers, and squandering precious taxpayer dollars on extravagant stadium complexes." Instead, cities must attract what he calls the "creative classes": artists. scientists and engineers, entertainers, technical people, musicians and cultural producers. This is the reason that cities like Austin, Boston, Washington, and San Francisco have quickly outstripped traditional economic powerhouses like Pittsburgh and Detroit in terms of cultural and economic development. Florida says that interviews with members of the "Creative Class" yielded revealed definite preferences about where they want to live and work:

Diversity, we want a place that's diverse, where there's different kinds of people on the street. Of course a job is important, but it isn't just "a" job: We need lots of jobs because we know now that "a" job isn't going to last long. We want a city to be creative, we want it to be exciting, we want it to have all kinds of amenities, we want it to have outdoor sports, extreme sports, rollerblading, cycling, art scene, music scene. Then we asked, "Do you do all that stuff?" and the answer was "No, we just want to know it's there."

Read more in Christopher Dreher's Salon article Be creative -- or die.

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs has more on this subject.