Product Description

From the best-selling author of "The Rise of the Creative Class" comes a brilliant new book on the surprising importance of place, with advice on how to find the right place for you. It's a mantra of the age of globalization that where we live doesn't matter. We can innovate just as easily from a ski chalet in the Alps or a cottage in Provence as in the office of a Silicon Valley start-up.According to Richard Florida, this is wrong. Globalization is not flattening the world; in fact, place is increasingly relevant to the global economy and our individual lives. Where we live determines the jobs and careers we have access to, the people we meet and the 'mating markets' in which we participate. And everything we think we know about cities and their economic roles is up for grabs."Who's Your City?" is the first book to report on the growing body of research on what qualities of cities and towns actually make people happy in their lives. Choosing a place to live is as important as choosing a spouse or career, but until now, no one has rigorously explored this powerful component of subjective well-being to uncover what people want, need, and get out of the places they live. London to Paris to Cape Town to Sydney, this book will be the essential guide to how people choose where to live, and what those choices mean to their lives and their communities.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #196403 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 374 pages

Review
"(this) engagingly written book... will change the way you see the world and help you find the perfect niche for yourself. Recommended."

--BBC Focus Magazine, May 2009

About the Author
Richard Florida is Professor of Business and Creativity at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, and the founder of the Creative Class Group, a for-profit think tank that charts trends for business, communities and lifestyles. He lives in Toronto.

Customer Reviews

Not really what it says on the cover
Who's your city suggests to be a book about how to choose where you want to live. Except for one chapter, it isn't. The author writes a study WHY location matters, and rounds this study off with 10 questions by which you can make better choices about where to live. For people interested in WHY where you live matters, this may be a good book. But if you want help in finding out where you would want to live, then you already accept that location matters, and this book is not for you.

Here is a quick review of the 10 questions that I did found useful - but hardly worth buying the book:

What do you like most and least about where you live now?
Where would you most like to live?
Is it important to find a job in a specific field?
What stage of life are you in?
What's most important to you right now - family, work, finding a mate?
How important are outdoor activities to you? - climate and weather? - Do you crave people around you or prefer being alone?
Hustle and bustle of the big city vs. the peace of nature.

Important message but a bit too detailed and US focused
Florida continues his creative class discussion in Who's your city. He makes a good point about how the place where we live has dramatic effect in what we can achieve both in personal and in work life. The book is well written and convincing.

For the first half he writes in pretty universal manner focusing in the relationship between creativity and regions. His main message is that the world is not becoming flat but instead spikier. Regions are specializing and benefiting from physical proximity of talented individuals. This he covers in part at an international level.

The latter half of the book is devoted to his studies and at this point he goes too much into detail. He explains in detail which cities rank as the best places to live for young single professionals, young couples, parents with kids and empty nesters. From an European perspective this is too much details, too little synthesis. Also at this point he focuses only on US regions.

Important topic and a well written book but it could have been focused differently.