Richard Florida to Head Centre in Toronto: Reverse brain drain brings urban expert to U of T

[11 July 2007 - Toronto Star] Writing about America's "looming creativity crisis," renowned urban thinker Richard Florida nearly three years ago warned that religious intolerance and tightening security might chase away its best and brightest. "Terrorism is less a threat to the United States than the possibility that creative and talented people will stop wanting to live within its borders," Florida wrote in the Harvard Business Review in October 2004. "The nation must act in concrete ways to reassure both people – both Americans and global citizens – that it values openness, diversity and tolerance." Now, the best-selling author is proving his own prediction. Florida, 49, a public policy professor at George Mason University in Virginia, is coming to the University of Toronto as a professor of business economics in the Rotman School of Management. Florida will head the school's new $120 million Centre for Jurisdictional Advantage and Prosperity. It will study how cities, regions and provinces can attract individuals to study, live and work, and companies to start up, locate and grow. More