Oh! John. I've wondered where you've been. Japan? No shit? Sounds like fun to me, coz you could be in the godforsaken hot and humid outpost in LimpDick.
I've been having at it at the blog, just going by his talks, interviews, and some of the essays. He claims he somewhere between a new economy guru and the doug henwoods of the world -- tho he doesn't name him. He just refers to the recent rash of naysayers re: the new economy thesis.
Basically, his thesis boils down to a claim about the special uniqueness of the creative class -- because he can't actually demonstrate or even say with any certainty, that any city has that scored high on his indices the predict successful economies will actually become a metropolitan center. e.g., Allentown, he says, now scores high on these indices, including the Gay Index and the Behoemian Index. But he doesn't try to claim that Allentown will be the next Austin.
He also never establishes for me anything that shows the economy is really new. All he's observing is what Marx described in the Manifesto, in that bit about the constant revolutionizing of the instruments of production. Woo!
So, nothing new to see here. So, we are ultimately left with the claim that what is special is this creative class. And boy o boy o, you've got to listen to his speech in Phoenix for a real laugh-riot about the bohemian character of computer geeks is just so damn wow! They're all walking around with long hair and flip flops!
And not only that, this special class works all day in cubes and they want to do special creative fun things after work. They work at home and play at work. So, they go to cities to have this special life. They drive the economy. Yadda yadda.
He literally says that such ways of being in the world are intrinsic to the people he's talking about: the best and brightest he teaches at his university.
The asschomp oughtta lurv him.