Toronto : Fast & Creative

Toronto makes the list as one of Fast Company’s “The 30 Fastest Cities” as a Global Village. (Vancouver also made the list as a Livable and Green Leader)

And via the Globe and Mail comes news that Richard Florida, economist and author of “The Rise of the Creative Class” and “The Flight of the Creative Class” will be coming to Toronto (in September, for at least a year?) to teach at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, and may also at the MaRS Centre, an innovation hub for science, technology and economic development.

(the offical new release from Rotman School of Management )

Update: on July 1st (via the Creative Class web site) Roger Martin (Dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management),and Gord Nixon,(President and CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada), outline a detailed strategy for Canadian competitiveness in our era of “transformational globalization, as pre this Globe and Mail article A prescription for Canada: rethink our tax policy, which references “The World is Spiky” By Richard Florida, The Atlantic Monthly from Oct 2005 (as opposed to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat”).

The Toronto Star is reporting “Reverse brain drain brings urban expert to U of T” :

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.

Update : Joey DeVilla has also picked this up : Richard “Creative Class” Florida Moving to Accordion City. Maybe we can yet become a Alpha City?
Update : and now on Joey’s site : Richard Florida, Torontonian on “The Colbert Report”.