Creative Cities for Creative Nomads

One of the advan­tages of being a nomad or a loca­tion inde­pen­dent pro­fes­sional is that this lifestyle pro­vides you with the oppor­tu­nity to choose where you live. As a nomad, you are no longer tied to big cities or loca­tions where your poten­tial clients are likely to live, or where poten­tial jobs are likely to be found.

So how do you choose where to call home when you are on the road?

Pub­lic Art Out­side of Toronto’s Hockey Hall of Fame

A lot of the time, the deci­sion on where to go is based on the phys­i­cal attrib­utes of the city — how acces­si­ble and reli­able con­nect­ing to the Inter­net is; what are the hous­ing options; is there easy access to effi­cient and cheap pub­lic trans­port; does the city pro­vide you with the leisure activ­i­ties you are look­ing for (muse­ums, art gal­leries, shop­ping) etc.

Recently, how­ever, aca­d­e­mic Richard Florida intro­duced a new per­spec­tive on decid­ing where to live. In his recently pub­lished book Who’s Your City?, Richard Florida talks about the per­son­al­ity of cities — how each city has a unique ‘per­son­al­ity’ that can either ener­gize cre­ative indi­vid­u­als, or can suck the cre­ativ­ity right out of you. Cities can affect your hap­pi­ness level, your moti­va­tion, your abil­ity to work, and a whole bunch of other psy­cho­log­i­cal, soci­o­log­i­cal and eco­nomic factors.

When you are liv­ing a nomadic, loca­tion inde­pen­dent lifestyle and are try­ing to main­tain a thriv­ing busi­ness while trav­el­ing, its nice to set­tle into a city that ener­gizes you. A city that chal­lenges and expands your cre­ativ­ity and inno­v­a­tive­ness, and puts you in touch with other cre­ative and inno­v­a­tive peo­ple in a cre­ative and inno­v­a­tive envi­ron­ment. Not only does this type of envi­ron­ment recharge your phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal bat­ter­ies, it also puts you in con­tact with peo­ple who could poten­tially be either busi­ness part­ners or clients.

In his book Who’s Your City, Richard Florida iden­ti­fies 5 basic per­son­al­ity types which, accord­ing to psy­chol­o­gists, every indi­vid­ual fits into one of. These 5 per­son­al­ity types are:

1. Indi­vid­u­als who are open to expe­ri­ence. These indi­vid­u­als enjoy new expe­ri­ences, espe­cially intel­lec­tual expe­ri­ences, the arts, fan­tasies, and any­thing that exposes them to new ideas. This type of per­son is curi­ous, artis­tic, and creative.
2. Indi­vid­u­als who are con­sci­en­tious. These indi­vid­u­als work hard, are self-disciplined, respon­si­ble, detail-oriented, and strive for achievement.
3. Indi­vid­u­als who are extro­verts. These indi­vid­u­als are out­go­ing, talk­a­tive, gre­gar­i­ous, assertive, enthu­si­as­tic, seek excite­ment, enjoy meet­ing new peo­ple, and tend to be emo­tion­ally stable.
4. Indi­vid­u­als who are agree­able. They are warm, friendly, com­pas­sion­ate, con­cerned for the wel­fare of oth­ers, trust other peo­ple and expect other peo­ple to trust them.
5. Indi­vid­u­als who are neu­rotic. These indi­vid­u­als are emo­tion­ally unsta­ble and are more likely to expe­ri­ence anx­i­ety, hos­til­ity, depres­sion, self-consciousness, and impulsiveness.

So, do you see your­self in that lot?

Richard Florida’s point is that cities also have these five basic per­son­al­ity types. When you find a city that is com­pat­i­ble with your per­son­al­ity type, you expe­ri­ence increased lev­els of energy, hap­pi­ness, cre­ativ­ity, moti­va­tion, etc.

Richard Florida’s Per­son­al­ity Maps of US Cities

When you find your­self liv­ing in a city that is not com­pat­i­ble with your per­son­al­ity type, you begin to expe­ri­ence neg­a­tive feel­ings, neg­a­tive energy lev­els, are prone to depres­sion, etc. Part of Richard Florida’s stud­ies have included map­ping these per­son­al­i­ties onto cities across North Amer­ica, show­ing clus­ters of cities that share spe­cific personalities.

You prob­a­bly won’t know before­hand what type of per­son­al­ity the city you are head­ing to has, this isn’t easy to iden­tify until you are actu­ally liv­ing there. From per­sonal expe­ri­ence, I have had a cou­ple of sit­u­a­tions where cities I thought I would enjoy liv­ing in turned out to be not so psychologically-friendly, despite how beau­ti­ful they were and how friendly the local inhab­i­tants were. There was always this feel­ing of being slightly out of step with every­one else, of some­how not get­ting the cor­rect mean­ing of what they were say­ing or doing, that kind of thing. My energy became so focused on try­ing to cope with this mis-match of per­son­al­i­ties that there was lit­tle left over for the things I needed to do, like work. Based on the case stud­ies Richard Florida includes in his book, this seems to be a fairly typ­i­cal reac­tion to a person/city per­son­al­ity clash.

So, if you try set­tling into a new city (or town, or rural area) and you begin to feel agi­tated or depressed, have low lev­els of energy and moti­va­tion (I know this is begin­ning to sound like an ad for some kind of ‘energy-boost drink’), find your­self eas­ily angered, then per­haps you are hav­ing a per­son­al­ity clash with the city you are liv­ing in.

TTFN

~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~

If you enjoyed read­ing this post, maybe you’d like to sub­scribe to our RSS feed, or sub­scribe via email (enter your email address in the box at the top of the page, on the right) so you don’t miss any future posts. Thank you for visiting!