The Great Reset

How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity

De: Richard Florida

Narrado por: Eric Conger

From Richard Florida, author of the bestselling books The Rise of the Creative Class and Who’s Your City?, comes a book that frames the economic meltdown of 2008–09 not as a crisis but as an opportunity to “reset.” In doing so, he paints a fascinating picture of what our economy, society, and geography will look like—of how we will work and live—in the future.

Interesting look at the outcomes of market shifts

What happens to our cities and lives before and after periods of large economic growth and stagnation? That’s exactly what this book tries to answer. That answer, as you’ll come to find out in this one, is that the ways by which we live, work, and travel often change drastically around such “resetting” periods.

This book mostly looks into the past; it dissects previous bull and bear economies to suggest how past economic resets have radically changed our ways of life. It’s a bit of a connect-the-dots type work in the sense that it shows how we moved from a farming-centric economy to a manufacturing one, and, later, to a services-based one. The connecting of those dots is interesting, and they’re the core concept of the book.

At the end of the work, the author looks forward and asks, “How will future economic resets change our country once more?” Moreover, he looks into various technologies we can take advantage of to ensure that we’re well-prepared for the next great reset. Overall, it’s fairly interesting. If you’re into economics or market forces, I would recommend it.

-Brian Sachetta
Author of “Get Out of Your Head”

Florida Fan

In Florida's new book, The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, places like Phoenix represent much of what has gone wrong with the American economy and social arrangements over the past 40 years. Florida argues that we need to move away from the model of low-density, car based, and spread out suburbs that Phoenix embodies. This model, according to Florida, is both unsustainable (for environmental and economic reasons), and undesirable to the emerging "creative class" of workers.

The great recession has refocused people's priorities away from owning the ever-larger home and the ever-bigger SUV towards a desire for economic agility and embeddedness in thick social/economic networks. This agility and embeddedness is best achieved in walkable cities and close-in (first ring) suburbs, ones served by mass transit and characterized by high proportions of educated knowledge workers. People want to rent rather than own, take high-speed rail and zip cars as opposed to garaging the big SUV, and be free to spend their energy on resources on human capital enhancing actives such as education, creative work, and the arts.

If you wont be engulfed by the future.

if you want to understand how to create a brilluant and prosperous future. you must read it.

A General Look at the Financial Crisis

Florida provides us a simple introduction to aspects of the current finaicial crisis in "The Great Reset." Nonetheless, this book is thought provoking and provides a framework from which one can view this situation in context. Essentially, Florida posits that the economy has been through "resets" before and this is another natural, structural occurance which we will survive.

The good news is that Florida provides insights into what we must do to benefit most from the current "reset." The bad news is that the reader is introduced only to generalities related to the remedial action which will benefit individuals and communities. This comment should not keep one from taking time for this book. Thoughtful individuals (experts and non) can fill in the blanks with their own thinking and further reading.

The reading is great, the thoughtful presentation of research is informative, and Eric Conger does a great job with the naration. Enjoy

An Optimistic Take on the Subprime Bubble

I’ve read about half of Florida’s books and think this one is the best.

The core argument is that the financial troubles that culminated in the bursting of the subprime bubble is not about normal economic cycles nor about a great shock to the system, rather it represent a multi-generational shift in the structure of work and free time. His explanation for the cause of these multi-generational resets is very similar to Clayton Christenson’s explanation for the “disruptive transitions in technology”. Specifically, that each era is fueled by a core innovation that drives growth in productivity and that in time the productivity growth outstrips responsible growth in consumption. The resulting “bubble” then is not really a bubble; it’s not a collapse back to the previous norms. Rather a reset ushers in the next wave of growth, in which productivity is refocused in some new direction.

If we call the current financial event “The Great Recession” (see Reich), then according to Florida the long depression (1873 to 1896) reset from a nation of farmers to a nation of mill works and machinist, the great depression (1929 to 1939) reset from a nation of factory towns to a nation suburban company men, and the great recession (2008 to 2014) will reset from a nation of suburban company men to … well something new …

This is point where the book is a little less than clear. I think, he thinks we are resetting to a nation of creative designers, who will work in small firms and live in hip city centers (and perhaps exotic wilderness communities), but he stops short of being so bold as to say so.

Clearly if he’s right there is a fortune to be made in understanding the reset before the understanding is mainstream idea. I kept waiting for the stock tip, but it never comes. I suspect he’s “dead sure” that this is a reset (not a normal bubble) that ushers in a new period of hyper-prosperity, but he’s only vaguely sure what the new era will look like.