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On Design Thinking | Issue 35 | n+1 | Maggie Gram

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GAINESVILLE IS A MEDIUM-SIZE CITY in the middle of northern Florida. It is subtropical and often beautiful: its streets are lined with water oak and sweet gum and Chickasaw plum trees, buildings crawling with Spanish moss. It is also poor. Nearly 34 percent of the city’s 134,000 residents live below the federal poverty line—more than double the national average—and 57 percent struggle to meet basic needs. Gainesville’s academically excellent University of Florida enrolls more than fifty thousand students annually, but graduates tend to skip town after finishing their degrees. They go elsewhere in Florida, or to other states, where opportunity seems greater. In 2013, Gainesville elected a mayor named Ed Braddy, who promised to change the economic outlook. What Gainesville needed, Braddy said, was to become “a more competitive place for new businesses and talent.” Greater “competitiveness,” he believed, would spur economic activity, keep graduates in town, and build what Richard Florida

GAINESVILLE IS A MEDIUM-SIZE CITY in the middle of northern Florida. It is subtropical and often beautiful: its streets are lined with water oak and sweet gum and Chickasaw plum trees, buildings crawling with Spanish moss. It is also poor. Nearly 34 percent of the city’s 134,000 residents live below the federal poverty line—more than double the national average—and 57 percent struggle to meet basic needs. Gainesville’s academically excellent University of Florida enrolls more than fifty thousand students annually, but graduates tend to skip town after finishing their degrees. They go elsewhere

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