Congratulations to all of you who live in Austin, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Raleigh-Durham, Portland, Minneapolis, Washington D.C., Sacramento and Denver. These are apparently the top creative class cities in the country.

Richard Florida, the guy who brought us "The Rise of the Creative Class," has just come out with a new book that says where you choose to live will be the most important decision of your life.  It's called "Who's Your City?" According to his research, the key to happiness, fulfillment and a great love life in the future are totally wrapped up in your choice of location. There's only a few cities that really count here, foks. And guess what the main driver is for his hypothesis?  It's creativity. 

The following four points are the basis for his book:

1. The world is moving to a creativity based economy. The places that succeed will be the ones that stay ahead of the curve and are able to adapt quickly.

2. This creative economy is based on creative people—not just artists and musicians, but engineers, scientists, architects, and educators. These are whom he calls the creative class, people who work with their minds to create new things with value.

3. Creative people can live wherever they want. This means the creative economy is different from the older industrial or agricultural economies, where resources like iron or coal, or location on trade routes, were what determined business location. The new resource is people, and they’re mobile.

4. Creative people cluster. They move to places where there are other creative people for them to interact with. For the past decade Florida's work has been documenting this fact and analyzing where and why they move, and what factors lead to this clustering.

Okay, so this explains why I was dying to move out of Schenectady, NY when I was twenty years old and head to Boston. My instincts were good.