Twenty-some years ago, an urban theorist made a compelling case for people like us.
He had data. He had maps. He had a name for what he saw … a class of people whose work turned on making new things, imagining new forms, solving problems that didn’t have precedents. Scientists and architects. Composers and coders. Designers and writers and filmmakers.
He argued that cities ignoring this group were making a catastrophic civic mistake.
He was right about that.
He argued that where makers clustered, economies thrived. That creativity was not a cultural amenity but an economic engine. That the presence of artists and innovators in a city was a leading indicator (not a lagging one) of vitality and growth.
He was right about that, too.
And then he handed us to the mayors. And we became a fad.
Built for Them, Not for Us
The framework he built around what he saw was not a framework for us. It was a framework for the people trying to attract us. Talent recruitment strategies. Quality of place indices. Bike lanes and engineered street culture … all in service of making a jurisdiction more competitive for the kind of worker who could generate growth.
We were the trophy. We were not the participants.
That distinction matters more than it might sound.
Creatives were invited into the room but excluded from the strategy. We showed up to community meetings and stuck dots on flip charts alongside everyone else … the appearance of inclusion, the reality of decoration. Buy-in theatre.
When your value is expressed entirely in what you produce, in the growth you generate, the neighborhoods you animate, the tax base you strengthen, you are not being recognized. You are being used. Generously, perhaps. Accurately, even. But used.
The creative class was real. The vessel built to hold it was not.
The Idea Was Loud. The Error Was Quiet.
I don’t say this to diminish the urban theorist’s work. The argument moved policy. It moved money. It moved mayors. For a generation of civic leaders, it reframed what a city needed to be.
But it also contained a quiet error that compounded over time.
There is a difference between being useful to a place and belonging to it.
What Makers Are
I’ve been thinking about that difference for a long time.
And I’ve been thinking about what it would mean to build something that begins not with what creative practitioners produce … but with who we are. What we know. How we think. What cognitive posture we bring to a world that is changing faster than reactive minds can process it.
People who are not imagination engines are responding to what they think is next.
Artists of all disciplines are built to make what’s next.
That is not an economic argument. It is a constitutional one.
What You Can Do Now
If you are a creative practitioner of any discipline … a writer, composer, architect, filmmaker, designer, choreographer, or maker of any kind … and this resonates with you, I’d like to know you’re out there. Learn about Res Creativa and join us.
Please share this post with anyone else who might also be intrigued.
Let’s explore what we might build together.
Editor’s Note (2026): This essay was written during the earliest days of Res Creativa, when the project was first being imagined. It remains here as part of the organization’s founding story.
A version of this post was originally published on Substack, Apr 12, 2026
Banner image: Ground level view of main elevation looking southwest, I.M. Pei-designed Dallas City Hall and Henry Moore sculpture, City Hall Plaza, Dallas, Dallas County, Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, Public Domain
