With it's three T's, a town's boho quarter is its cultural center of gravity. So thinks a professor.

If bohemia is a state of mind, then there's usually a quarter or corner of a city where people are living a bohemian lifestyle. Artistic types, basically. It's just a question of degree. How many of them are hanging around? How apparent is their influence?

Some people think this is a pretty important question and Professor Richard Florida is chief among them. Florida is one of those handsome, funky American academics -- head of economic development at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, lecturer at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- with a big theory. And his theory, expounded in recent books and essays with titles like The Rise Of The Creative Class and The Geography Of Bohemia, is that the life and prosperity of a modern city depend on its free-thinkers, big-brains, weirdos, aliens and homosexuals.

Put simply, 'creativity is now the key to economic growth'. Put less simply, 'a high concentration of bohemians creates a milieu that attracts 'high human capital', which in turn attracts innovative, high-tech industry'. Which is to say that general coolness breeds Florida's three all-important Ts: 'talent, technology and tolerance' -- and they mean business, money and happiness for everybody

Should go over well in Marysville and Yuba City.