I have been looking around to see what I can find out about the efforts communities are making toward becoming one of Richard Florida’s Creative Communities. Of course, I came across the Memphis Manifesto. The links section provides a wide range of links to interviews and organizations across the nation which are trying to organize to revitalize their communities. The community website I liked best was Tampa’s–CreativeTampaBay.com
While all the other websites have information on long range planning and goals for their cities, Tampa’s front page has a number of ways people from the community can get involved in the efforts. They have salons people can attend to discuss the initiatives they are lobbying for and learn more about the creative community concept.
They also provide people with the forum to suggest their own initiatives to attract creative workers. The forum serves like meetup.com in that it is a central source of information about efforts that are being made in areas like improving transportation, technology, character building and civics, health, greenways and trails as well as arts endeavors.
It is difficult to assess how active each of these initiative groups is. It is good to see that Creative Tampa Bay is trying to harness the efforts of as many constituencies as possible and get them invested in the goal of attracting creative workers. There seems to be an effort to find strategies appropriate to the Tampa Bay area rather than appropriating what was successful for other cities as has been a concern of mine.