Richard Florida is the Hirst Professor in George Mason University's School of Public Policy and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He lives in Washington DC.

"Always provocative, always insightful, Florida answers many of the questions raised by The Rise of the Creative Class, and provides new insights into the roles creativity, tolerance and amenity play in transforming places. Every city and region now has to reinvent itself to compete successfully in the global economy, and Florida provides an essential guide to this process. Cities and the Creative Class describes how successful regions can and must make the shift from low-cost to high-quality strategies..."." -- Bob Yaro, President of the Regional Plan Association"Florida and others are changing the American urban agenda. This is a guidebook to the new knowledge-based economy...He mines the best available research to lay out powerful new policy options. No wonder he is in such demand."-- Terry Nichols Clark, Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project, University of Chicago

• Acknowledgements Chapter 1: The Creative Capital Theory Part I: The People Econom y Chapter 2: Competing in the Age of Talent Chapter 3: The Economic Geography of Talent Part II: Creativity and Diversity Chapter 4: Bohemia and Economic Geography Chapter 5: Technology and Tolerance Part III: Place and the New City Chapter 6: Cities and the Creative Class Chapter 7: Rebuilding Lower Manhattan for the Creative Age