by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

At a Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the downtown Hyatt last week, Richard Florida is spouting happy thoughts from the podium. Like a pinstriped rock star, the current reigning guru of city economics tells a brogue-clad biz crowd how Montreal - a city long numbed by decades of gloomy economic news - is now a cutting-edge city that others would love to emulate.

The author of the bestselling 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, which links the vibrancy of a city's creative workforce to its economic health, argues that Montreal's decades-long slide has inadvertently cultivated an environment that will lead the city to future wealth. Our low cost of housing and laissez-faire attitude has made us a hub of bohemians, gays, artists, high-tech workers and other non-conformists, and now puts us in a position to attract the creative minds that naturally flock to liberal environments, leading the creative economy to knock at our doors.

Florida whips out his recently-completed study - for which his group was paid $200,000 (U.S.) by Culture Montreal, a public, non-profit city booster organization - that puts Montreal behind only Toronto in rankings of what he calls "super-creative" cities.

"I love this city," says Florida, a professor at George Mason University in Washington, D.C. "It's a very special place you have here. For reasons nobody planned, you've inherited one of the best eco-systems in the entire world for attracting talent."

The business audience leans forward, all but waving Bic lighters over their heads.

Bring us your young and foreign

Florida explains that our opportunity is even greater now that the USA, in the age of terrorism, has reversed its beneficial habit of welcoming talent from around the world.

He also focuses on otherwise overlooked economic factors, such as our "preservation of history," "tremendous innovation," "vibrant underground" and "young musicians." He cites, for example, the Cirque du Soleil. "Something like that could only happen here. It could never have taken place in Phoenix."

Florida's speech only hints at the sometimes eye-opening insights revealed in depth in his 400-page groundbreaking book. But he alludes to his fixation with "low barriers of entry" - the search for a new type of community without all the intrusions and conformity required by bowling leagues and church groups - and finds it here in what he calls our "connective tissue."

In a part of the speech that has a few heads turning, Florida says that the dean of McGill University had told him that Montreal is a place where CEOs and janitors could sit at the dinner table and talk as equals. It's one of the themes he promises to elaborate on in his upcoming The Flight of the Creative Class. He likens Montreal's egalitarian tendencies to Toyota's - an example of a culture that taps into the creativity of its entire workforce.

Afterwards, in a press scrum upstairs attended by about 30 journalists, a reporter from La Presse asks about the political instability that has long plagued the city. Florida pauses like a man about to walk through a minefield. His prescription recommends that barriers to attracting talent be removed, but he diplomatically gives lip service to the notion of "the importance of protecting local culture."

A girl with dreadlocks named Sonja asks a worried question about our future prosperity that includes the words "gentrification," "marginalization" and "victimization." Florida says the problems of distributing and managing new wealth is beyond his realm. He suggests that more people purchase their homes in order to guard against the rise of housing costs.

The importance of being gay

Florida's work has inspired near panic in rustbelt American cities, some of which have since begun promoting bohemian culture and launching gay-friendly policies.

The backlash against his work has been equally dramatic, but he dismisses much of it as little more than thinly veiled homophobia. "About 90 per cent of the criticism against my work is directed at four pages of my book [that show the relationship between a city's tolerance level and the size of the local gay population]," he says, adding later that "gay marriage has already started benefiting Canadian cities."

Many after the press conference express cynicism at Florida's conclusions, including a nerdlinger on the elevator out who sneers derisively at Florida's presentation - "c'est du pipi" - although he, like many others I ask, confesses to not having read the work. But some more familiar with the book still don't buy it.

Later, in a telephone interview, Mario Polese, senior researcher of urbanization, culture and society at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, raises a professorial eyebrow.

"Richard Florida is an extremely successful academic entrepreneur and some would say an academic rock star. He's become very à la mode, very faddish and he's made quite a bit of money, but he's basically a motivational speaker," says Polese, who sniffs specifically at Florida's interpretation of data that launches three Canuck cities - Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver - to the top of his list of "super-creative cities."

"It wouldn't be correct to say that what he's done is a rigorous scientific analysis," he says. "The people who paid for the study [Culture Montreal] wanted to be told wonderful things and he told them wonderful things."

1976 and all that

Polese also knocks Florida for ignoring Quebec's political problems. "It's true that Montreal has been doing fairly well over the past five years, but Montreal hasn't done that well over the last 30 years, and part of the reason is the flight of much of the old anglo elite and money not coming in partly due to political insecurity and language issues.

"His analysis totally abstracts from Montreal's past that all that is over - Montreal's evolution over the past 30 years, none of that ever happened."

McGill urban studies prof Raphaël Fischler is slightly more conciliatory. "If you look at the track record of Montreal in terms of economic growth, it's not so great compared to Toronto or Calgary. [Calgary is] not exactly the hippest place and yet it creates more jobs than Montreal," he says.

"We know the economy isn't all about video games and design. It's also about resource extraction, which is high-tech now. Some sectors create a lot of jobs even if they're not very creative. You just have to look at the number of people who moved to Alberta."

But Fischler has a soft spot for Florida's praise. "Can Montreal become New York? No. But it can do things at its own level very well, and I think Florida is right to point to the things that Montreal has as assets, and that we shouldn't spoil, that we should bank on and develop."