Quality of Place

“Quality of place” is Richard Florida’s term for the vibrant amenities — “great restaurants and cafes, a music scene, and lots of other things to do” — that attract the creative class. In The New Urban Crisis, Florida names it as one of the three forces (alongside high-paying jobs and short commutes) pulling the affluent and educated back to the urban core. Kyle’s marginal note pushes on this: Remote Work dissolves the commute and proximity constraints, “leaving amenities as the only question” — and in a COVID world the desired amenities (backyards, space, the outdoors) point away from the dense core (see COVID pushes us towards something like Prosperable and Prosperable).

The idea recurs as a City Building / Economic Development framework. In Shortest Way Home, Pete Buttigieg frames the modern shift in economic development: it “is no longer just a game of luring factories” with tax incentives (“smokestack chasing”), but increasingly recruiting people by enhancing a community’s “quality of place.” Kyle draws the same throughline on the Economic Development page — recruit people, not just employers, by making the place itself appealing.

Context: “Quality of place” is a concept popularized by urbanist Richard Florida (notably in The Rise of the Creative Class) describing the lifestyle amenities, culture, and built environment that make a city attractive to talented workers — a counterpoint to recruiting firms via tax incentives.

Where this appears

• The New Urban Crisis — Florida names quality of place (amenities) as one of three forces drawing the affluent back to the urban core; Kyle’s note reframes it through remote work and COVID.
• Shortest Way Home — Buttigieg’s “recruit people, not factories” reframing of economic development around quality of place over “smokestack chasing.”
• Economic Development — the discipline’s modern shift toward enhancing a community’s quality of place to attract talent.