Jamie Peck

In Richard Florida’s “creative city” theory, the creative class dissolves the classical division between the productive bourgeoisie and the bohemian, ­thereby giving rise to a new creative subject. Jamie Peck discusses the implementation of these ideas in contemporary cities and shows how capital investments intended to attract the creative class to the city prioritize an urban middle class. “Creativity strategies have been crafted to co-exist with urban social problems, not to solve them,” writes Peck. “It should come as no surprise, then, that the creative capitals exhibit higher rates of socioeconomic inequality than other cities.”