These days most major municipal bulletins, including the recently published Squamish Community Profile (SCP), highlight the importance of the so-called "knowledge industry."
In fact, an ever-expanding collection of consultants, planners and prognosticators have created the knowledge industry speculation unit, a full-fledged industry unto itself. According to the SCP, the main drivers of this sector are geotech/envirotech, animation/film/television, interactive new media, and recreational/sporting technologies.
For the most part, what's been missing from this discussion is the next step: the establishment of a comprehensive game plan to nurture creativity locally and convince creative people and companies to move here.
In the Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida reveals that globally, the sector is comprised of a wide range of industries, including information technology, entertainment, journalism, finance, high-end manufacturing and the arts. The sector fosters a dynamic professional environment which, in turn, attracts more creative people, as well as businesses and capital.
This group is very selective about where they work. They value communities where individuality and tolerance are fostered. While access to high-quality outdoor recreation is an important component of their lifestyle, they also gravitate to the café and bistro scene and a broad range of artistic and cultural activities.
Although Florida's theories have been challenged, if we buy in, even in a limited way, we should understand that creative people and knowledge-centered companies will not beat a path to our doorstep if they don't know we exist.
To fully harness this lucrative economic engine, the District of Squamish needs to undertake a major promotional operation, well beyond the boundaries of this community and deep into cyberspace via a cutting-edge website and social networking tools.
We also need to establish a fixed local venue where innovators can meet, foster mutual encouragement, and share ideas on a regular basis. We need to offer free expertise, readily available start-up capital, reasonably priced, and possibly, subsidized office space, as well as other incentives.
We already have a very respectable representation of the creative class here, and between 2001 and 2006 the population between the ages of 25 and 64 in Squamish with university training grew by 57.4 per cent, outpacing the provincial average by 65 per cent.
Besides a myriad of recreational and cultural amenities, including a growing artistic, music, and theatre scene, we have a leading-edge telecommunications infrastructure, an emerging pattern of investment that highlights the community's desire to build its knowledge-based sector, and an assortment of attractive and available employment land options.
Of course, this initiative will require public funding. But as the saying goes, to make money you have to spend money. The cash outlay will pay major dividends in job generation and municipal taxes down the road.
Let's recall that 10 years ago, Dr. David Strangway tumbled through town with a vision of establishing a university campus high up in the Garibaldi Highlands. Some experts figured he was delusional from too many days spent in the rarefied air of the ivory tower. What sounded farfetched then is now a reality.
Who knows? Maybe the next big breakthrough on the information highway may very well be hatched right here in Squamish.
