He writes,

The world has become spikier and spikier, across nations, across regions, and within cities. The clustering of talent and economic assets also makes the city the new economic and social organizing unit, undermining two core institutions of the old order: the large vertical corporation and the nation-state.

…this age of urbanized knowledge capitalism requires a shift in power from the nation-state to cities, which are the key economic and social organizing unit of the knowledge economy. That means also means that cities must take on the outsized power of the nation-state and the imperial presidency. We must devolve power and resources back to the local level — raking back their tax money from the federal government so they can spend it on themselves.

In a way, he is suggesting the the wealthy (and blue) cities should secede from Donald Trump’s America. Whatever merits the concept may have (and I try to encourage ideas of this sort), I doubt that Florida has thought through the details of “raking back their tax money.”

We are headed to a point (already past it?) where at the Federal level cutting 100 percent of discretionary spending that is not related to national security will still leave a deficit. That means that could wind up giving the cities responsibility for housing, education, infrastructure, etc. without any tax revenue to rake back to pay for those functions.

You could let the cities do what the Feds do, and run big deficits, but that seems rather dangerous. Or you could transfer a lot of budget dollars from the Federal government and states to cities by giving them Medicaid, but that does not sound like fun.

Look, the consequences of devolution of power to cities could turn out to be very good. But they might be more radical than what Richard Florida has in mind.