Florida argues that, in the post-industrial global landscape, cities that attract and retain creative individuals enjoy significant economic and social benefits (see Tochterman 2012). If urban policy and funding were directed towards projects that made neighbourhoods attractive to an ever more mobile and cosmopolitan “creative class” of knowledge workers, economic prosperity and corporate investment would follow them, at the same time improving the social and economic climate of the city, promoting citizen engagement and social cohesion. Florida (2012) has noted that efforts to improve creativity must dovetail with liberalist efforts to reduce inequality and regulate corporate powers. Yet Florida’s ideas have generally been taken up in a neoliberal register, helping to reconfigure capitalist labour discipline in ways meant to capture and exploit (indeed, to shape and mould) the creative energies and passions of workers in a digitized age (see Banks 2013; Brouillette 2009).

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 460