Richard Florida's academic clients like to call Creative Class a "think tank." But his company, Creative Class, actually calls itself a "global advisory services firm," which is correct. Apart from the corporate clients—Goldman Sachs, Citi Group, IBM—for whom they advise on how to reach the "creative class," there's work geared to developers and real estate folks, corporate services and "talent management." And then there's his other clients: cities and city-states, and their business-development corporations.

Now Florida is the "anchor" for the Atlantic's handsome new Atlantic Cities site, (as well as a senior editor for the Atlantic). So the publication—which looks good! Love that Atlantic!—doesn't have to bother [...]

A note on math: running the numbers on the prevalence of same-sex households in cities is not the same as doing the math on the "gayest cities." You're actually discovering the cities that have the most… same-sex households, resting as this premise does on the assumption that "it's probably a good bet that metro areas with relatively high proportions of same-sex couples will also have relatively high proportions of visible LGBT people, single and coupled." It might not be, you know! Cities with bigger populations of gays (particularly gay men, hmm?) might actually find fewer same-sex abodes. [N.B. Data preliminary: we have yet to see the full influence of [...]

Just about everyone has written a Richard Florida takedown, to which I say, the more the merrier. This latest entrant, by Alec MacGillis, takes a long look at Catalytix, which is "A Richard Florida Creativity Group Company," one that extols the virtues of and implements the Creative Class® philosophy that he espouses. This is a great racket.