Over the last three weeks, Troy Body has published three “Cool Cities” blog posts challenging “GroupThink” concerning “The Rise of the Creative Class,” a book by Dr. Richard Florida, which is considered quasi-Biblical by those in the community development and arts fields.

Mr. Body explains Florida’s fundamental premise this way:

Move towards the light and stop spending money on foolish things like – to quote the former mayor of Winnipeg – “pipes, pavement and policies” … and start investing heavily in the arts and technology, then all will be right with the world.

Mr. Body suggests that the solution lies in people, not in government:

Cool communities are cool not because of amenities, but because the people who live in them have made them into their image – their ideal.  Then the silent locutions of contentment become audible for the whole world to hear.  If you go to a town – any town – where the people are amazingly in love with their space, it becomes infectious.  On the flip side of that, if you go to a town where the media and residents are trashing said city, you no doubt will begin to trash it too.

So what are people to do?

If you want to make your city cool, take stock of the good things your town possesses: people product and place.  then, set about an action plan with government way in the background…. The plan should be very simple: How do we hold on to what is good in our society and then expand it?

And my favorite observation …

There are no committees in New Orleans seeking outsiders to come save us from ourselves.  Our self-esteem is not that low….  I am not going to move to a town that is sending me this message: We are desperate…. Please come and save us.

Troy Body may be a half-bubble off plumb, but he’s one cool dude, too – and offers an effective antidote to GroupThink.