The Dayton Daily News Beats the Creative Class Drum

Daytonology has done some desultory blogging about Richard Florida's Creative Class concept and the local attempt at doing Creative Class things, the Dayton Create initiative.

But not too much because yer humble host isn't part of this class, or category. Not because of cynicsm since Florida is on to something (albeit something difficult to measure).

What's good to see is the Dayton Daily News continuing to report on the progress and the positive editorials on the intiatives. Recently there was one on UpDayton, the young adult group, who have been quite active: Creative Class Living Is Up to Name

The article mentions the "summit" sponsored by UpDayton, which came in for quite a bit of critique from the local blogosphere (Daytonology Included):

One group organized a summit last spring where two hundred or so people showed up to mull over what to do first. What could have been a boring, discouraging gripe fest was a mass brainstorming session that wrapped up with participants settling on four big things to tackle.

...oddly enough the DDN itself is the source of the regions' largest ongoing "boring, discouraging gripe fest"; the readers comments to their local news articles, especially ones dealing with urban affairs.

I guess this editorial signals that the editors do not share the views of their more vocal readers.

The editorial discussed UpDayton's "Don't Dog Dayton" video contest, which is one of three things they are pushing for in their Grow Downtown intiative. Another is revitalize existing festivals, which are, presumably, not attractive to the 20 and 30 - somethings (one of the local bloggers has noted the festivals decline, so a definite issue here).

It will be easy for UpDayton and the other DaytonCreate initiatives to get lost in the generalized malaise and negativity, the black hole of bad local karma, so a big pat on the back for the DDN for keeping this (admittedly small) counter-trend in public view via their editorials.