The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City

by Alan Ehrenhalt

In The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City we travel the nation with Alan Ehrenhalt, one of our leading urbanists, as he explains how America’s cities are changing, what makes them succeed or fail, and what this means for our future.
Just a couple of decades ago, we took it for granted that inner cities were the preserve of immigrants and the poor, and that suburbs were the chosen destination of those who could afford them. Today, a demographic inversion is taking place: Central cities increasingly are where the affluent want to live, while suburbs are becoming home to poorer people and those who come to America from other parts of the world. Highly educated members of the emerging millennial generation are showing a decided preference for urban life and are being joined in many places by a new class of affluent retirees.
Ehrenhalt shows us how the commercial canyons of lower Manhattan are becoming residential neighborhoods, and how mass transit has revitalized inner-city communities in Chicago and Brooklyn. He explains why car-dominated cities like Phoenix and Charlotte have sought to build twenty-first-century downtowns from scratch, while sprawling postwar suburbs are seeking to attract young people with their own form of urbanized experience.
The Great Inversion is an eye-opening and thoroughly engaging look at our urban society and its future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Urban Planning, Cities, History, Urban, Urbanism, Architecture

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

ALAN EHRENHALT was the executive editor of Governing magazine from 1990 to 2009. He is the author of The United States of Ambition, The Lost City, and Democracy in the Mirror. In 2000, he was the recipient of the American Political Science Association's Carey McWilliams Award for distinguished contributions to the field of political science by a journalist. He is currently Information Director at the Pew Center on the States in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

[Robertha · Rating 1 out of 5]

Laced with racist dogwhistling and factual errors, the book was not worth my time, especially when there are very rich and rooted histories of cities to choose from. FTS.

[Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

I seem to enjoy books on Urban Planning - it is like chaos theory - you instantly can see if urban planning was effective, but no idea which variables matter for success. There are so many spectacular failures in urban planning and so few successes that it should be easy to figure out. But the professionals, real estate developers, have always known it is "all local" and what works in one area is a miserable failure in the next.

Ehrenhalt's book is based on simple observation - central cities are thriving - more and more white, urban professionals are moving back to the city. The city centers are growing and prospering while the suburbs are taking in the poor and the immigrants. There is a great debate in USA socialogy and urban planning - will Americans continue to mover further out in exburbs or will Americans with money move back to central cities?

Ehrenhalt takes us on a tour of several cities and what is happening. He starts will a history of urban development in Paris, Vienna, and London. The reference is that all these cities have a downtown that was developed in the 1800s with a human scale - wide streets and buildings no more than five stories.

His tour of US cities starts with an area I am very familiar - Sheffield in Chicago. It had one of my favorite bars in College (called Sheffield's - a beer drinker's mecca). I was there in the 90s when it had already gentrified. I had no idea it was a slum at one time. Nor had I explored its single family housing off the main drag.

Ehrenhalt then travels to New York, Atlanta, Houston, Denver, and Phoenix. All of slightly different issues. He explores Gwinnett country - 30 miles northeast of Atlanta. It was a rural country until the Olympics construction boom and became home to many hispanic workers. But now is home to large Asian populations. Still no public transportation, but a thriving area struggling with growth and change in color and demographics.

He then takes some time to look at inner suburbs. Cleveland heights was a middle class surburn of Cleveland. Shaker heights to the south (very posh) and East Cleveland to the North (very blighted). He argues that inner suburbs lose in the grants and funding of central cities and new growth outer suburbs. East Cleveland is hit or miss which means that there is no momentum to further gentrify or invest. He comparies this with Clarendon, an inner surburn of Washington, DC which is doing much better. However, there is not a conclusion whether the difference is that Washinton Metro is still growing in population and jobs or that Clarendon had a public transit metro stop?

The author then explores gentrification. First, in Philadelphia, where there is a vibrant inner city, but very small and completed surrounded by some of the worst poverty in the country. He argues that tax policy focused on income versus property maybe part of the problem. The comparison is Houston's third ward which has a very strong power broker who is land banking much of the housing stock - keeping it undeveloped and preventing gentrification. Ultimately, I believe the author is arguing that gentrification is inevitable and that politicians need to be united in planning for it rather than obstructionist or too focused on parochial neighborhoods - focus on the areas that have public transportation, good structural stock for development.

After gentrification, we move on to the many cities of the west and south that developed in the last fifty years. These had no true downtowns to redevelop. Phoenix has spent over $1B in various projects to create a downtown. The author highlights the failures. Even the light rail while taughted as a success is really a failure - it is used for recreation - going to a game - but not commuting. He does highlight one developer who is placing small scale townhouses and condos in small lots. This is successful.

We move back to the inner suburbs of denver and their failures of redevelopment. Taking old indoor malls and converting them to new town centers. Mixed success and relatively recent developments. His favorite is Belmar - a conversion from a gigantic mall to a 26 street erzatz urban area.

Finally, we move to the current work (2011) in Tyson Corner, Virginia. I have been the malls there 10 years ago and was amazed at the size and traffic. This is a massive redevelopment - big money and big risk. Most of it now on-hold (and reduced scope) with the recession. Ehrenhalt then takes a sidebar through the history of new Urbanism. This summary is not as good as the history in Witold Rybcyznski's Last Harvest: How a cornfield became New Daleville.

It was an interesting book for those who like urban history and urban planning. But it seemed a bit disjointed and did not tie all the themes together - like city planning - there are too many variables to know what will work for a given city.

[Gjacobsen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I agree with this book's premise. While urban planning books can be dry, if not tedious, reads, The Great Inversion is much more enjoyable. The author literally takes things to the street level to illustrate his primary argument. So why the two stars? It may be simple and petty, but there was a glaring error early in the book that completely frustrated me page after page. That error is literally the size of a lake. A Great Lake, in fact: Lake Huron.

The author goes into a comparison between Chicago and Detroit by way of a discussion on how each city chose to utilize its lake front amenity. Now, the comparison he tries setting up is poorly done and absent a lot of relevant facts and history, but the biggest problem of all is that the 23,000 square mile lake he claims Detroit uses poorly is, well, not there. Lake Huron doesn't touch Detroit. In fact, there's a whole other large lake and strait (Lake St, Clair and the St. Clair River) separating the two. The City of Detroit almost fully sits on a narrow strait called the Detroit River, a waterway that moves water from Lake St.Clair south to Lake Erie. Its primary historical use: a channel for shipping around the Great Lakes region. It's geo-political function: a border to Windsor, Ontario. Recreation? Public uses? Just given these two distinctions, Chicagoans and Detroiters have historically thought of and used these bodies of water in vastly different ways.

On these fronts alone, the author's comparison between the Windy and Motor Cities, two apples, so to speak, in the his mind, is spurious at best. More to my issue, it's based on a complete misreading of a map and ignorant of one city's history. That's not one but two cardinal sins for an urban planning writer.

As I said, the error (and I think I'm being too kind in calling it that) appears early. For me, given the level of detail the author goes into about certain streets, neighborhoods, cities, and regions, I'd need to trust that the author had their facts right. While in my own profession, I am familiar with the social, economic, and demographic data and trends he presents and uses to support his place-based examples. I just couldn't shake my doubts every time he talked of a new place. Page after page, I obsessed over how much of his rich detail of place and changing conditions was inaccurate or flat-out wrong.

A very frustrating read.

[zidayin · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for sociology 315.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a nutshell, the demographics of American cities are reversing: Young, affluent white people are moving to the inner city, and minorities & immigrants are being pushed to the outer neighborhoods and suburbs. As someone who lives in a moderately gentrified, sometimes dicey neighborhood in a large city, this is interesting, and it raises some moral questions.

For instance, gentrification is often seen as a good thing. It's hard to argue against lower crime rates, new restaurants, and people walking freely after dark. I often fall into the trap of gentrified thinking; "Man, I miss walking to a bakery that's open until 11 each night. If only one would open down the street from me!" I genuinely enjoy going to restaurants with tasteful, sans-serif fonts advertising the latest combination of organic chicken, micro greens, weird cheese, and artisan mustard.

However, the process of hipsterfying a city means that people get squeezed from those neighborhoods. Yeah, Heritage Hill is a lot safer than it was 30 years ago. But what happened to the people who lived there before? They didn't evaporate because white people moved in. It just means that poverty is displaced and relocated.

I have an escapist fantasy of opening a restaurant/bakery/used book store. In my head, I'm a stable presence in an inexpensive neighborhood, a mentor to children, and some white knight of civil responsibility. Then I think of the tensions that arise; gentrification is not always welcome by the locals. In Grand Rapids, public opinion strongly supported the "revitalization" of Wealthy Street and its cadre of restaurants with clearly marked celiac-friendly dishes. But more than once, people from the neighborhood reacted strongly and often vandalized these new businesses, telling the Cheetahs Electric "Get out of my neighborhood!"

I thought "Those jerks! These restaurants are great! Wealthy Street is one of the best parts of town! Haters!" I don't disagree, but I now realize it's more complex than "new business = widespread happiness". For one, almost no black people work at these places. I think it's more complicated than race alone, but a truly "local" place would, in theory, represent the tenor of the neighborhood. For instance, a friend of mine applied to work at one of these hipster restaurants; in the interview, she was asked to name five kinds of mushrooms. That's a difficult question for a food lover (portobello, crimini, shiitake... and I'm out) much less someone who flat-out doesn't have the money to access such, has not seen food as anything more than "more calories for cheap, please" or isn't part of a culture who would recognize mushrooms as more than "it's a mushroom". So, rather than reaching out to someone outside the foodie culture and teaching them the joy of cooking, these establishments hire another person with Buddy Holly glasses and tattoos that mean so much who can tell you about their bearded friend's latest batch of craft beer.

These businesses do not reach out to the people who are to be displaced; rather, others who share that culture are imported, and the bucolic "vibrant neighborhood" becomes another place with a few sandwich shops, Etsy outlets, and microbreweries. These things are all fine and dandy, but I'm beginning to notice the same-ness of it all. For instance, there's a Belgian place called Park Bruges a mile from my apartment in Pittsburgh. "Wow, neat!" I thought. "This is so new and interesting!" Two weeks ago I was in Indianapolis and... I had dinner at a Belgian place called Brugge Brasserie. Is Belgian food popular enough to become a chain? Someone with brains and money will figure out how to make hipster food go national, and it'll work (see Trader Joe's for instance).

This book documents the struggle for cities to create, import, or shun such a culture. Chicago is given as an example of a rough neighborhood (Sheffield) becoming an artist's haven, a yuppie's paradise, and finally an enclave for the rich. Other cities, like Houston, are actively attempting to prevent this from happening: Large tracts of land are purchased by locals in order to keep out condo development (which keeps the neighborhood intact but with all the residual blight and crime). More common are cities like Phoenix, who attempt to create an interesting downtown from the ground up, but usually end up failing to include office space or some intangible feature like "character".

I'm reminded of the Mark Twain quote "In America, there is New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco. Everywhere else is Cleveland." Uniqueness and desirability is organically created through decades, which is then sold to the highest bidder and attempted to be imported. This book serves as a case study of several cities and counties who are dealing with shifting demographics and trying to build a safe, desirable, sustainable environment, with delightfully complex results.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book to make the Mike Davises of the world wretch, which I happened to enjoy very much. As much as I appreciate the strain of urban scholar who ruminates on doom; ecological, cultural, etc., it's nice to read something written from a semi-excited amoral perspective where urban change is concerned. Having grown up in the Los Angeles area, which Davis covers with great aplomb, post apocalyptic reality is fairly workaday, especially when the forest fires are burning. So, Ehrenhalt's book with all its excitement about data, its lack of class consciousness, feels refreshing in my hands. The question is will I survive the "inversion" he speaks of and end up on the right side of the ring road or will I be doomed to the suburbs where I will carry out my 21st century existence as part of the unwashed underclass? It's all so much like Dickens. With all this out there, this book covers a lot of ground looking at several different metropolises and the redevelopment of their urban cores for the benefit of the rich. The sections about Philadelphia's wealth island and Houston's developer spurred transit projects are top notch. If nothing else it explains to me why condos dispersed skid row in downtown L.A. and why that was not an anomally, but part of a continuum. Nonetheless, I still don't understand why anyone wants to live in Koreatown.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book starts out as a typical treatise on urbanism, seeking to explain the causes and consequences of millions of Americans moving back to formerly deserted inner city neighborhoods. However, after the first chapter, the author moves in to some new territory. He looks at the present position and future prospects of suburbs, as well as ways to redesign suburbs to make them more urban. He also discusses the role of immigration in revitalizing both cities and suburban districts.

The author compares the experiences of a number of different cities, including Cleveland, Chicago, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Philadelphia, Denver, and Phoenix, to try and explain why some cities succeed while others fail. I liked this comparative analysis, but I thought his account contained a number of errors. For example, he talked about Cleveland as a city that was not producing enough jobs for its population. While certainly true in the past, my relatives in that city claim that it now has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. Similarly, the author discusses Chicago as a glamorous and desirable place to live, despite the fact that it now has the highest rates of violent crime in the nation.

[Carly Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting book about contemporary city planning and urbanism. Ehrenhalt's thesis is that wealthy whites are moving back to city centers and are slowly transforming cities and suburbs. He explores cities as diverse as New York City where condos are being built in the Financial District and Phoenix, which is trying to create a downtown from scratch. This book made me want to read more city ethnographies.

[William Cline · Rating 1 out of 5]

TL;DR: People who can live where they choose, especially the young/educated/affluent, are more frequently choosing to live in cities. (Why? Erm…) Some cities have successfully harnessed this trend (New York, Chicago), but others have not (Cleveland, Philadelphia). Why? Erm…

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned so much reading this book and there is a fascinating chapter on Philly.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book and concept. Early examples we're good, but the latter chapters we're stretches to fit the concept.

[CTEP]

This month, I came across "The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City," by Alan Ehrenhalt, while perusing through the library. The book examines a shifting demographic pattern in major cities. In the past, a city's downtown has generally been a place of poverty, ghettos, and the like. The American Dream lay in the suburbs, far away from the less affluent residents of the city. This is completely unique to American cities. Nearly everywhere else in the world, a city is wealthier, safer, and more attractive in the center, and becomes less so the further out you go. The slums are usually located on the outermost ring of the city, cast the farthest away from the center. However, Ehrenhalt notes that American cities are demographically becoming increasingly similar to those in the rest of the world. Downtown is becoming increasingly more affluent, while poorer residents flock to the suburbs.

Because this is a recent movement and the book was published this year, Ehrenhalt cannot give a definite reason for this shift. However, a few of his theories are quite interesting. For example, he hypothesizes that one of the reasons for this shift is the relocation of jobs. Poorer residents generally lived in the inner city because of the proximity to their work, many of which were factory jobs. The middle class, who did not work these jobs, flocked to the suburbs. But now, factories have moved out of the cities, and those buildings have been converted into either office space or residency for the middle class. Therefore, the middle class have a reason to move to the city, now that they can be closer to their work and live in a now safe area. Because the price of living in the city goes up, the poor are forced to flock to the suburbs, where they can more feasibly afford housing and be closer to their work.

Another theory is that people want to live closer to activity. This is also a generational thing. In the past, many people were married and had families early in their adult lives. This is not as common anymore. Today, the average marriage age is older. Therefore, someone in their 20s today would be more attracted to the city because of the proximity to everything. In the past, suburban houses were populated with families. But an unmarried 25-year-old, for example, has no need for an entire house. In the city, they can find other people of their age and lifestyle, along with the convenience of being closer to work and closer to the cultural activities in the city (museums, restaurants, theaters, etc.).

Of course, Ehrenhalt gives many other possible explanations for this demographic inversion, looking at the cases of specific US cities. However, he also acknowledges that nothing can yet be said for sure, as much of what will happen is dependent on the next generation.

I think this book is very relevant to this service year because we are serving in less affluent areas of the cities. However, these areas might change in the future due to demographic inversion. We have certain connotations of what characterizes the "inner cities." But this characterization is changing. What does that mean, then, for organizations that work with people in a specific location? They may also need to move and/or readdress the ways in which they reach out to their clients. What can they define as their "community"? For example, I know that the mission of my site is to help the Latino community. Because of our physical location, much of our outreach is targeted to the Latino community around the Lake Street area. But in the future, this population may change. The area may become more affluent, forcing the target community out. Would the site decide to or be able to physically move where the community goes? If the poor are moving to the suburbs, what does that mean about the types of services that will be available to them?

[Charles Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Great Inversion challenges a conception many have that city centers are nearly always dead space where no one wants to live. That perception was false in 2011 when the book was released and it’s even less true now that young people have become even more eager for urbanism. The author goes over several examples of cities transforming from their postwar desolation into something more aligned with “new urbanism” today. He also describes the challenges and limitations of new urbanism, being the lack of political support for zoning reform, public transit, etc. I appreciate that the author dispels popular myths about “gentrification” pointing out how relatively few people are actually displaced by economic growth compared with the number of those who benefit. In addition, the author describes why new urbanist developments like Celebration, Florida, usually fail to reach the level of social cohesion the cities they are trying to imitate enjoy. After reading this book I found myself resolute that the answer to rebuilding our cities is to start in the center and work our way out, but this is kind of obvious.
Great book but nothing groundbreaking, and its conclusion seems a bit optimistic in hindsight. Most young people I know have not yet abandoned the suburbs, but perhaps it’s only a matter of time.

[Derek Deitsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Ehrenhalt does great work of bringing in a number of case studies to demonstrate the trend of demographic inversion, an alternate, or maybe supplemental, perspective to gentrification. He successfully compares a number of American cities (and their suburbs) to the European cities of a century ago that we so romanticize. I appreciate how he sets the context for each new area we visit to explain different facets of demographic inversion.

My only real criticism is that this was published almost a decade ago, so while still a relevant, a good portion of the content is now outdated. I would love to see an update to this work!

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

A shallow mind which has a hard time comprehending the present prophesizing about the future.

Chapter one opens with

> IN THE LAST QUARTER of the twentieth century, as poverty, violence, and abandonment settled over most of the big cities in America […]

Right. Compared with the late 19th century when people in the American cities had two cars, heaters and air conditioning, back in the 18th century when obesity and diabetes were common among teens, 99% of which survived into their teens. Right.

[Aidan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for learning about the greater demographic trends going on in America's cities. Was easy to understand for someone who does not study urban planning. My only gripe with the book is the age; it was written just after the Great Recession. There are many times when the author speculates about how the Great Recession will/would have affected something without knowing the answer. If only it was written now! But it was still a great read and very relevant. I love how the author tackles this large-scale topic by looking at several case-studies.

[Josh Dugan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all time favorites. Easy to read but not a simple book. Great introduction to urban development theories. Very matter-of-fact story telling. Not weighted down by fluff. Incredibly interesting.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful

Very readable and quite thorough as far as covering the variety of urban/ suburban situations. I was able to add some coherence to a number of things I already knew and/or believed in sociological terms beyond the scope of this book.

[Azad Hassan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for urbanists who want to explore how US cities have been changed. One prominent takeaway from this book is that the future of cities is the future of our world. This book is a must read to anyone who pursues urban studies.

[Andrew Abad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written and researched book - wish I had read it earlier!

[Sean Mcdonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I probably read this a few years too late, but some of the predictions seem to be coming through.

[Emil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging read that is pretty interesting, taking a fair look at the suburbanisation of cities and what has happened to inner cities.

[Thomas Devlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read for anyone interested in the forces behind gentrification

[Lidza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great text if anyone wants to learn more about how cities are changing in the U.S.

[Celena Gaffey]

for class

[Paul Frandano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Ehrenhalt has written a fascinating account what he calls a recent "demographic inversion" - not, thank you, "gentrification" - in which immigrants now tend to enter American society via the suburbs rather than the core city, the poor abandon or are driven from the core city into the suburbs via loss of livelihood, taxes, and buyouts, and those who can afford it take up residence in the urban core for entertainment, social amenities, and quicker commutes. Ehrenhalt provides a variety of different takes on the ways in which this process is unfolding, to varying degrees of success, in exemplary urban neighborhoods - Chicago's Sheffield, Brooklyn's Bushwick, Cleveland Heights, Gwinnett County northeast of Atlanta, and many more, all related in clear, felicitous prose.

Among my favorite chapters were those in which Ehrenhalt chronicled and assessed the fall and rise of the Clarendon section of Arlington, brought about by the by arrival of Vietnamese shop and restaurant owners to properties emptied out by the disorder and loss of business due to Metro construction, and the continuing death spiral of the urban shipwreck that is Philadelphia, or, as some locals call it, "Bostroit," for its unique 18th-century core in close proximity to areas of utter blight, drug dens, and boarded up row houses, all a result of the rapid post-industrial loss of manufacturing and port services. And yes, sports fans, Ehrenhalt lingers for a while on an aspect of Philly most of you will recognize, as "the only large American city in which no one is surprised when parade watchers boo Santa Claus, where fans boo their sports teams for failing to win a second consecutive championship, or where grandmothers at the stadium insult spectators who happen to be wearing the wrong jersey." In Ehrenhalt's account, the cities that are gaining ground in the postindustrial world are cosmopolitan and diverse, and for the most part tolerant; Philadelphia, on the other hand, strikes the author and his Philly sources as provincial, parochial, and hyperlocally intolerant - for good and explicable historical reasons.

Although the numbers don't quite line up exactly as Ehrenhalt might wish - between the last two censuses, more people still migrated to the suburbs than to the cities, and in many urban areas that are repopulating, the downtown contingents are still relatively small - the trends he describes nevertheless seem well underway. And some of of what he discusses is wondrous strange and surprising, including the populating of the NY financial district, where, following 9/11 and then in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown, developers repurposed as condos hundreds of office buildings, their occupants having fled to New Jersey and elsewhere in NY and Connecticut. Now, in the area south of Chambers Street, where the 1970 census recorded only 833 residents and which every NY urbanist viewed as the neighborhood least likely to EVER be viewed as residential - Jane Jacobs devoted several pages of "Death and Life" to mocking the very notion - more than 60,000 people, drawn in part by post-9/11 and post-meltdown incentives, are now living. And on Sunday there are couples with strollers!

Our contemporary Zeitgeist is urban - just look at the numbers of city books now cluttering the book reviews and (remaining) bookstore shelves - and, lured by entertainment, nightlife, and the hum of the city, an entire generation is going to the towns we boomers evacuated for the suburbs. The question, of course, is, "will the Millennials raise their children there?" I think so. I would. (How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm, etc.?) And what about the suburbs? When I look around the suburban neighborhoods of northern Virginia, from which evidence Ehrenhalt supports his case, I see confirmation: the urban spaces are repopulating with people having more disposable income, the DC metro inner suburbs are hyperethnic, the suburban spaces are building urban amenities ("town-centers"). Meanwhile, the tract-home New Jersey neighborhood I grew up in, which contained NO - count them, NO - persons of color, is now fully international and delightfully diverse (and, in support of Ehrehalt's major argument, crumbling as well). My home borough has growing South Asian, East Asian, and Hispanic populations, all of whom are reflected in the multi-lingual signage of local main streets.

The book's brief final chapter is, sadly, weak on informed prognostication, apart from the crowning observation that we should expect more of the same. For me, however, that doesn't undermine the brilliance of the foregoing text or the empirical validity of the case studies.

In short, the main lines of The Great Inversion ring true to me, and I found Ehrenhalt's monograph essential reading as I seek to get my arms around city dynamics, trendlines, issues, politics, and constituencies.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book of writing advice. I love Writer’s style. Highly recommend for other.

[Kevin J · Rating 4 out of 5]

well written look at changing cities & suburbs with examples from Houston, Charlotte, Chicago & others

[Alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read The Death and Life of American Cities years ago, this was really interesting. I find the premise intriguing and possibly quite true.
One fault I find with the book is that he spends so much time explaining his example cities and not enough explaining his actual thesis. In jumping from example to example I don't know whether he's saying the specifics of a given case are in line with his theory or that they're an exception that proves the rule or what. It's a bit like listening to a piece of music and then being told afterwards what you were supposed to be listening for.
The second part of what I found weird is how much he hammers on whether the examples fit "downtown-ification." Some places have an inner suburb that just needs better transportation, some people seem like they just want the mixed-use neighborhood that you get in a small town's main street, others just want higher-density residences for shorter commutes, others want culture. These all seem like good and interesting things to me, definitely a demographic and cultural shift worth writing about, but if a given town doesn't want strangers coming in to support a nightlife or they're doing well but just don't have retail, Ehrenhalt treats their experiment like a failure, because . . . that's not the archetype of a downtown in a major metropolis? And because of fault one, I don't feel like I even understand what his list of standards is to call something a downtown until near the end of the book.

Overall I liked the book though.

Oh also! I understand Ehrenhalt is a writer of demographics and city planning and might not have as much practice talking sensitively about social matters, but damn, the way some stuff in this book is written is racist as hell! It'll be like, 'The black population of this area dropped like a stone when the projects were closed down.' And it's like, you know he just means the residents of these projects were primarily black and that not enough middle and upper class black people have moved into the area to make up those numbers, but without any other explanation given it's like the book is just saying, yep, obviously everyone in subsidized housing is black and obviously black people only live in subsidized housing. And then there's the paragraph about how all the asian and south asian immigrants moving into the suburbs means the football team stopped getting into the finals while at the same time the school's standardized test scores went up. And it's like I believe that he did his research and the correlation of numbers matches up to support what he's suggesting but if you're going to talk about race, explicitly talk about race and how the immigration populations coming in seem to place a higher priority on education rather than _assuming_ everybody will get the _stereotype_ about how asians are smart but not athletic, har har.

[Rayroy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pro-gentrification. Let market forces work things out. Whenever Alan Ehrenhalt describes demographics, he uses racists dog whistling language ( true CNN and The New York Times uses the same language all time, but somehow I expect more from books)

So when he's writing about Center City ( in Philiadlehia ) Ehermhalt goes on and on about how great the affluent white class is how they make city life great. When every he writes about African American neighborhoods or Hispanic neighborhoods , he uses words like 'seedy" and not once but twice in the same sentence, he warns the reader of dangers of one specific neighborhood. He's all Haute Cuisine is great when talking about affluent white neighborhoods, it's like he has a hard-on. Never-mind though Ehernhalt can't be blamed , he is someone who believes it is impossible to stop inequality ,racial or otherwise, so why even bother? To this reader it seems like he's solution is white affluent people make cities better then another demographic. To be fair, he does go on to say that a cities need a strong immigrant population that is accepted and better public transit to flourish. Ultimately he is too okay with the affluent class being free to live wherever they please, even if it means kicking people out in the progress, and has no compassion for those kicked out or left behind, because it's all part of what he calls a great inversion, and there will always be places for the poor, just further outside the city, because there has to be poor people , you see, so the affluent can have backs to stand on as they eat haute cuisine, shop at Tiffany's, and take in the sights of the city from outdoor patios of chic side walk cafes.
Well fuck this book, the world is only like that because the rich have too much power, Alan Ehrenhalt you are on the wrong team.

Side note, this was more off a rant than it was a review, but seriously so much about the victimizes of the change happening in cities isn't here, second they are ignored completely. If you are looking for something purely based in the movements of people in and out of cities than this isn't a bad read. Though I mean it reads like a luxury apartments ad in a city and how cool it is. Forget renter's rights or moralistic questions of gentrification, here gentrification is good and rich white residents and developers are painted as heroes. Again fuck this book.