Success leaves clues.
Case in point: Cities with high populations of creative people tend to generate higher per capita earnings.
It makes sense, doesn’t it?
Because even a single creative venture can keep on producing economic output for generations.
Think: the Eiffel Tower. Or Amazon.com. Their stories just keep on going.
So, the next question is: How can a city attract more creative people?
The short answer: By offering things they tend to enjoy.
One thing creative folks tend to enjoy is being productive during non-traditional business hours.
(Practically, that often means late at night or in the early morning.)
While it’s not for everyone, working during non-traditional business hours has many advantages.
For starters, there’s usually less noise and less interruptions (e.g. no deliveries, no phones ringing, etc.). In the internet economy, even small companies have clients and vendors around the globe. Heck, they say that even WiFi tends to run faster during non-traditional business hours.
And yet, the reality is that most cities are not optimized to accommodate those who may prefer to be productive during non-traditional hours.
It’s not just the infrastructure. Even the attitudes of otherwise open-minded citizens, employers, public servants, etc. can be less than accepting of those who, while not bothering anyone, may prefer to be productive during non-traditional business hours.
Take the home city of our HQ, Saskatoon.
It’s a swell place during traditional business hours. (Just Google it.)
Even the new mayor, from what lil’ we know, and it’s lil’, seems like a nice guy.
But during non-traditional business hours?
We can’t think of any meaningful public space that’s open before 6 am or past 10 pm.
(Pretty, pretty sure that not even a single Starbucks is open during those hours.)
While most establishments will happily welcome you during traditional business hours, between 10 pm and 8 am, except for the odd gym or McDonalds, virtually everything meaningful is off limits to you in Saskatoon.
Listen, we’re not picking on Saskatoon. The above is an area of improvement for most cities in the world.
And that brings us to our original question: Moving forward, will your city need an after-hours mayor?
By ‘mayor,’ we mean someone whose job it is to be an ambassador of the idea that your city should try to be more accommodating to the folks who like to work during non-traditional business hours.
Because if you’re interested in living in a city that’s thriving, not just surviving, you may want to start thinking about attracting more creative people to it.
And you may also want to start looking for ways to minimize ‘signals’ that a ‘proper’ working day ends at 6 pm.
Over to you: Does your city need an after-hours mayor?
Lean in, because if you don’t, who will? And if not now, when?
p.s.
You may come across ideas similar to the one discussed above on the interwebs.
The one major difference between our approach and those others is that most of them seem to be focused on fine-tuning the ‘night life’ scene.
We feel that a focus on the ‘night life’ scene is limiting in scope and unappealing to a lot of folks.
But since ‘frames’ matter, we do actually have an idea for how to ‘frame’ this discussion in a way that would make it forward-thinking, relevant, and appealing to most folks. Wanna hear it? Send us an email to hi@krisp.ca.