Richard Florida, urban studies expert and best-selling author. Photo: Courtesy of Jere Keys.
I’ve maintained for some time that American devolution will not be taken seriously until prominent public intellectuals on the left endorse it. One of my decentrist liberal friends in New England, (@ethnobot), pointed me to a series of tweets by Dr. Richard Florida (@Richard_Florida), an urban studies expert and best-selling author who has written extensively on the nature and promise of the urban creative class.
Florida recently tweeted what could be accurately described as 9 precepts of devolution and localism.
Note that Florida, too, perceives the divisions between red and blue America as being essentially intractable, though he still holds out hope that some form of peaceful coexistence can be maintained. However, he believes that this can be achieved by what he calls “massive devolution,” reflected by a “re-tuned federalism,” though with a heavy bipartisan emphasis on devolving as much power as possible to localities.
Frankly, I couldn’t agree more.
Incidentally, I also wholeheartedly agree with his characterization of the U.S presidency, which I think is long overdue for a complete re-tooling, perhaps along the lines of Ireland’s, Germany’s and Israel’s monarchical presidential models or, at the very least, France’s bifurcated model.
Following are Richard’s 9 devolution precepts:
1. The problem runs way, way way deeper than Trump.
2. The problem is nation-state & imperial presidency that has far, far too much power & is out of sync with clustered knowledge capitalism.
3. The problem is a nation that is terribly divided & cannot be put back together …
4. The problem is a nation that has now been taken over not just by Trump but by the taker class of finance & resources …
5. The only way out I can see lies in massive devolution of power & local empowerment across multiple scales – neighborhood, city, metro…
6. American federalism is a powerful & dynamic instrument that can be re-tuned for our new age of geographic concentration & division.
7. The two America’s can find a way to live together – a mutual coexistence.
8. The only true alternative & opposition to Trumpism I can see is a broad partisan coalition for local empowerment …
9. Compare Jerry Brown’s speech to anything said by national level politicians … Mayors can be even more effective …
