The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class—and What We Can Do About It

by Richard Florida

In recent years, the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline. And yet all is not well, Richard Florida argues in The New Urban Crisis . Florida, one of the first scholars to anticipate this back-to-the-city movement in his groundbreaking The Rise of the Creative Class , demonstrates how the same forces that power the growth of the world's superstar cities also generate their vexing gentrification, unaffordability, segregation, and inequality. Meanwhile, many more cities still stagnate, and middle-class neighborhoods everywhere are disappearing. Our winner-take-all cities are just one manifestation of a profound crisis in today's urbanized knowledge economy.

A bracingly original work of research and analysis, The New Urban Crisis offers a compelling diagnosis of our economic ills and a bold prescription for more inclusive cities capable of ensuring growth and prosperity for all.

Genres: Nonfiction, Urban Planning, Urbanism, Politics, Economics, Cities, Sociology

336 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2017

About the author

Richard Florida (born 1957 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American urban studies theorist.
Richard Florida's focus is on social and economic theory. He is currently a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management, at the University of Toronto. He also heads a private consulting firm, the Creative Class Group.
Prof. Florida received a PhD from Columbia University in 1986. Prior to joining George Mason University's School of Public Policy, where he spent two years, he taught at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College in Pittsburgh from 1987 to 2005. He was named a Senior Editor at The Atlantic in March 2011 after serving as a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com for a year.

Reviews

[Matt Lennert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to be careful here: this book is a classic, a necessary reference for this point in time, but it is also a slog, a college text-type statistical brick and was not that fun to read. I feel like it was good for me, but it doesn't mean I really enjoyed it. Kind of like working out. But, I'm glad I did read it and you should, too.

Florida revisits his thesis of 17 years ago regarding the creative class and alters his position somewhat after deeply, I mean deeply, researching the radical physical shifts in society that this class is enabling. He says that the creative class cannot be blamed for hollowing out the middle class, making super cities (LA, NY, SF, etc.) out of reach except for those in the knowledge-based economy, or abandoning in droves the conservative, traditional, parts of the country. It is your red state-blue state conundrum seen from a econostatistical perspective. But they are the beneficiaries and stand on one side of a widening chasm in this country, and in fact, across the world. Florida writes, "On this issue the numbers are clear: up to this point, the alleged death of urban creativity is largely a myth. The real nub of the New Urban Crisis is not the conflicts among different factions of the new urban elite, but the increased economic isolation and insecurity of the far less advantaged urbanites."

One fascinating section of the book renders maps of many of the largest cities in the US, as well as Canada, and London, showing the living locations of the creative class, the working class and the service class. There are four models to these "patchwork metropolises" and we see very clearly the economic separation and isolation of the creative class versus everyone else. In nearly every case, the core of the city is being repopulated by the creative class, but then there are still suburban enclaves in some cities reflecting mid-20th-century residue of white flight to the suburbs, or stark divisions of an east-west or north-south geographical divide, as it is in Vancouver. You stay on your side of the tracks, thank you. Proximity to the high paying technology jobs, access to Whole Foods, coffee shops and restaurants, book stores, museums, universities, and the transportation to get to these—walking to them is even better (and more expensive)—is what we want and need more of. I know I do. This is the driver of economic isolation if not also the results.

Instead of just pointing out all of the issues and the state of the nation, which he does ad nauseum—this book will be in the bibliography of all US politicosocial books for the next two decades—he also provides prescription. And the big spoiler here is that he doubles down on his original thesis. We need more urbanism, more creative class-style living for all the classes, because it offers the best opportunities to enjoy living and brings access to higher paying jobs, and we need to alter our land use policies, our transportation systems, redistribution of money and power to the mayoral level, and our low-wage systems to embolden that urbanism and regrow our middle class. And you know what, he's spot on. Segregation of the racial or economic kind is killing the country, and as he points out, is responsible for the rise of populism of the Trumpian kind. However, and he also acknowledges this, the American political system does not have the will, the courage, or support of enough of the American people to see it happen properly as it probably will in Europe. This is the sad reality we live in and can't seem to escape.

I give this book 4 stars instead of five because it was exhausting to read. Maybe that is unfair, but nobody likes to work out until after they have worked out. But, you should probably work out and read this book.

[Graeme · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found The New Urban Crisis interesting in parts, although it lacked coherence and credibility. I must admit that I am prejudiced against most urban planning, which I believe is often nothing more than utopian social engineering. It has been shown to fail again and again, with many disastrous instances in post-war Britain, the United States, the Soviet bloc, and around the world. Cities have many of the characteristics of living things, and they evolve like them. Their residents, businesses, schools, universities, churches, developers, and even local governments respond to the market forces that reflect demand. The arrogance of urban planners is that they can do a better job. Given the enormous complexity of the urban and suburban systems, that is a foolish delusion.

The mish-mash of statistical tables is hard to understand, despite interminable explanations, and the charts and maps are largely unreadable. The subtitle of the book: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class—and What We Can Do About It suggests that cities themselves have agency, which they clearly do not. The implication is that urban planners who aspire to be "in charge" of cities can fix these problems. It's not even clear that the problems that the word "crisis" in the title suggests need fixing. Inequality has always existed, to a very much greater degree in the past than today. As Mr. Florida himself has shown, when the creative classes, as he has named them, come together in urban areas they are much more productive, effective, and better served for health care and education. It works, so it happens. Cities like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Boston, which he ranks among the most creative, have affordable accommodation for people of the working class and the service class as he defines them. Perhaps not in Manhattan or Park Slope, in the case of New York, but certainly in the boroughs. His evidence for increasing segregation is slim, and depends on a host of different measures, including his incredible New Urban Crisis Index. And it is not clear that cities are failing the middle class. The loss of middle class jobs to automation and the Internet is not confined to cities, and the results in rural and outer suburban areas are more dire.

Gentrification, the subject of Chapter 4, is hardly deserving of acknowledgment in a context that claims the tools of the social sciences. It reflects the resentment of people who live in less affluent or more racially homogenous neighborhoods (like Harlem), when more affluent people move in, especially if they are white. Property prices go up, pleasing the owners, and even Mr. Florida seems unconvinced that there is any substantial damage. There is no antonym for gentrification, although the reverse situation is extremely familiar. Perhaps "pauperization" only happened in earlier eras?

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I've read many of his articles on CityLab, this is the first full book I've read by Richard Florida. I was slightly surprised at how surface-level this book felt. The analysis and presentation of data was definitely useful in providing some concrete proof of certain economic and geographic trends, this book ultimately felt more like belated observation than anything else.

I personally am not a fan of the fact the way Florida is very keen to come up with a catchy title for so many phenomena. By the time I got to New Urban Luddites, it was feeling a bit tired, and like Florida was a bit too enamoured with his own ideas. In ways, a lot of this book actually feels like Florida wrestling with his disappointment. His frustration with the state of the world is palpable throughout the book. It's not always a bad thing - I liked the parts of the book that took a slightly more narrative tone, including details about Florida's own family and childhood. But it does bring to light the limits to Florida's perspective, which I think he acknowledges in relation to his past work.

I was also surprised that Florida took so long to actually take a critical look at capitalism, and only in the last chapter of the book does he suggest some basic things such as raising minimum wage so those in the service class can afford to support themselves. He is actually very safe in any of his suggestions for how we can make things better in the future. In the face of what feels like such a dramatic ongoing shift, a book that ends with a lack of strong suggestions or ideas feels like a bit of a let down. It would have been great to have seen the book end with a list of community organizations or ways to get involved in improving our own cities.

Overall, this was a surprisingly short but decent read about the history and current state of history and economics in the USA. I think the excerpts posted as articles on either Citylab or The Atlantic actually read better than this book. It's good information, but it also makes me want to go read a more in depth analysis, especially since I'm sure that there are writers living much closer to these issues who have already been writing and advocating from within their own communities. Florida talks about large scale trends - and again, it's essential information - but what this book left me wanting was more details about how new projects have been created, planned, executed, and the impact they had.

One last thought: on page 194, Florida advocates for land value tax, but as far as I know, that's something that is causing problems in Toronto right now with the 401 Richmond building. It's an important culture/arts hub, in an area that has recently become hip. In the past seven or so years, it's become surrounded by condos. As a result, proposed taxes on the building are increasing because it's not meeting its potential "value" by also becoming a condo or something. But without the arts hub, the neighbourhood would lose a LOT of overall value and activity. It's a balancing act - and how "value" is defined needs to be considered carefully if this kind of tax is put in place. I wonder if Florida has provided any commentary on that debacle...

[Mehrsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The books is pretty dry, but very important. The thesis is pretty jarring--we are headed toward cities of elites and suburbs of poverty and isolation. This is no surprise really and we've all seen it coming. His solutions at the end are worth paying attention to--pay attention to transit, more rental housing, better jobs. However, he seems to give up on the rest of the country. Is it possible to revive some places between suburbs and cities? like college towns or other cool places where you can have a good community with middle class jobs? Seems like some places like that already exist and Florida doesn't much talk about those.

[Anthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a Bay Area resident facing rising rental costs, diminishing access to home ownership, crappy public transit systems dismantled by out-of-control car culture, and the expulsion by cities of their historically poor and non-white residents, I had hoped The New Urban Crisis would shed some valuable insights into how to move forward. It didn't. Instead there were lots of descriptions of the situation, but limited support for which policy experiments we should be trying, which cities/neighborhoods have successfully addressed gentrification and affordability problems, or how to ensure that pubic transit can keep pace with growing urban populations.

Five contradictions structure the book, largely revolving around growing inequality within and across cities, geographic clustering of poverty, and newfound limitations in upward mobility. Great - these are all key themes of contemporary urban policy, and Florida being an urbanist should be a fountain of promising solutions.

Instead, the book is a sloppy rendition of index scores stacking up how cities fare along a range of metrics he and his team have constructed, but divorced of interpretation or significance. In at least one chapter, page after page is full of maps and tables and index values, along the lines of "SF tops this index, followed by Boston, Austin, and Chicago. At the bottom of the list is Baton Rouge, Louisville, etc." But when one index has max values of 0.946 while another has 0.346, what can we take away? Help the reader, please, otherwise we'll all grow dizzy.

There's also fun passages about comparative housing costs, like "For the price of one SoHo apartment (with a median value of about $3 million) you could buy 18 homes in Las Vegas, 20 in Nashville, 23 in Atlanta, 29 in Detroit, 30 in Cleveland, 34 in St. Louis, and 38 in Memphis." Ok. But Las Vegas doesn't have the galleries of Chelsea and there's not a relaxing High Line-type attraction in Detroit, so that's why people want to live in SoHo and prices have been bid up, restricting all but the mega-rich.

As to distilling the NIMBY-YIMBY divide at the heart of metro housing policy, Florida breaks no new ground aside from casting NIMBYs as believers of "New Urban Luddism," which frankly I'm not sure what this accomplishes. Why not provide suggestions for how to dismember NIMBY arguments, or convince them that housing for all is good? A land value tax proposal he offers is somewhat interesting, but ignores the reality that homes have not necessarily been market assessed recently, and so changes to tax code structure would dramatically up the property tax obligations of urban incumbents. They're obviously not going to vote for that, so what are some actually practicable measures? Why not share some research findings on how to mitigate the gentrifying effects of upzoning, and how to protect tenants who have been insulated from market forces through rent protections? I would've liked Florida to have congealed that, rather than tossing out statistics on VC receipts by city?

The New Urban Crisis is boringly repetitive in small ways, and would've benefited from firmer editorial oversight. Florida is compelled to tell us innumerable times that he lives in Toronto, grew up in Pittsburgh, and was born in NJ, as if we were going to parachute straight into chapter 5 with no knowledge of his back-story. We got it the first 6 times.

Also, the phrase "knowledge hub" or "tech hub" to describe cities like SF, Boston, San Diego, etc. was easily used 100x. Even when the message resonates, the messenger shouldn't be cloying.

Lastly, there were some points which I found entirely unconvincing. Consider this: "The average urban family lives in 1,678 square feet, compared to 1,800 for suburbanites. And the average individual urbanite uses 767 square feet per person, just slightly less than the 800 square feet used by suburbanites. What we are seeing is the replacement of the gritty and crowded with the renovated and spacious." This is just plain false! We shouldn't care about the square footage of the apartment, we should be concerned with the square footage of the land footprint. If you can stack 30 apartments tall, each with 1,800 sq.ft., what cause is there to worry? The issue is those 1,800 suburban square feet are bundled with a giant SFR land print, whereas "expansive" urban apartments easily coexist with others.

[Katheryn Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this book is in equal parts self-explanatory and off-putting. But don't be put off, because The New Urban Crisis is, at its core, a fascinating book about cities.

Florida argues that we are currently experiencing an urban crisis, and in this book he details why this is, what this crisis entails, and how we can deal with it. This isn't a topic I knew much about, but this book was easy to follow and captured my interest throughout - partly because of Florida's clear and concise style of writing, and partly because the ideas which he explores are actually extremely relatable ones (and often ones that I realised I had previously encountered and considered). I might not have been familiar with the phrase 'the new urban crisis', but I was certainly familiar with cities, and, as such, found this book entirely understandable and engaging throughout.

The New Urban Crisis is fascinating and highly relevant, and will provide you with plenty of material (from broader ideas to more specific facts and figures) for future thought and discussion, even if the reality Florida reveals isn't always a cheerful one.

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow. All of us - as researchers - make mistakes. We over-stretch. We over-generalize. We offer interpretations that miss the mark. But the scale of Richard Florida's errors in misunderstanding urbanity have triggered profound problems for cities and city planners around the world.

In this book, he acknowledges his errors. He recognizes the consequences of fetishizing urbanity on the poor. However his solution is stunningly horrible. Instead of recognizing that regulation is required to manage the disastrous imbalances between rich and poor in cities, he recommends anti-regulation - anti-statism. If market forces are allowed to let rip, then - for Florida - that will solve the great housing crises in our cities.

Once more, Florida is wrong. This book attempts to acknowledge his errors, but the solutions he proposes to manage those errors are even worse.

This book is the equivalent of a train wreck in slow motion. It is startling in its horror.

[Anne V. · Rating 2 out of 5]

First, I am going to say: Hey authors, readers are not stupid.

I am always mad when I think I am going to be reading an information packed treatise on a subject that interests me, and then I find that it is really just another political propaganda piece masquerading as a neutral informed problem solving theoretical premise. While the underlying support for the theory is reasonable and complex, including research (though some of the information is direct from mainstream media rather than science) the conclusion Florida reaches is struck directly from political rhetoric.

SO disappointing.

While it is certainly heavily progressive, both liberals and conservatives should be offended. Politics is in this book because Richard Florida is into politics.

Publishers should take note of the waning patience in America for this kind of foolishness, as reflected in the low rate of reviewing of this title across so many platforms.

In a nutshell, Florida explains that Trump’s middle America is, in fact, the problem, and we need higher density clustering of talent (cities) and population in order to solve all of the problems we have today. Apparently, the people who have too much square footage in their suburban home, rely on a private car to get around on all those quiet roads in small towns and believe that their tradesman or unskilled lifestyle is just as valid as those who live in cities, work in tech fields, and use mass transit are the reason for the urban collapse. Thus getting rid of them fixes all problems. Not the least benefit of which would be getting rid of those pesky deplorable Republican voters.

What a crock! That is like the argument over which guy has a quarter, the guy with the heads, or the guy with the tails. Guess what…It’s a quarter. This is Richard Florida’s version of truth.

The biggest problem with such a narrow political vision is that reasonable people, while they would rather have their own party win the presidential election, would not rather have only a single party on the ballot like in some other countries that are notoriously NOT free and democratic. The same goes for the broader scope of lifestyle choice that Americans on the whole enjoy. It may not sit well with everyone when Florida writes in Chapter 9, “International development policy must put cities and city building at its core. Cities, not nations, after all, are the basic source of economic and social progress.”

Wrong, Richard. People, however they live, whatever their values, and wherever they are, are the basic source of any and all progress. Urban, suburban, and rural communities have their own sets of values that are equally valid. Different, but that difference is vital to the overall cultural temperature of this nation. It is the narrowest elitism that shuts out anyone’s contribution to the whole, just because they are not the same.

I may appreciate the value of city life for access to cultural pursuits that I find interesting, but another person may not be inclined to find happiness here. I would not find happiness running a gas station in Nebraska or a wedding shop in Idaho, but if they are in business, those people have innovated their industry in some vital way, and they are the people who are happy there, which makes them as important to the nation as me. Forcing people to convert to Progressive values is as bad as being forced to convert to Conservative values. Common sense must prevail.

The final chapter, in which Florida lays out his answer to the problem is called “Urbanism For All.” This is the biggest bone of contention I have with this work. Why would limiting choice, as in the choice of how to live (progressive, in a city), seem reasonable? How would that help? The easy answer: Florida, a man who is an urban planner and theorist, who contributes to democratic policy directly, says that city dwellers or Urbanites are superior. What? That is why politics is misplaced in this subject. A political party or political hack with a personal opinion and a platform to push it is not going to solve the urban crisis. Only a person or set of people focused on the individual parts of the problem (not on gaining political power) working in cooperation with other skilled people is going to be able to work to improve each particular part of this dynamic issue in each local area. It isn’t romantic or dramatic. There is no gleaming utopia on the horizon when the earth is covered by one big city. Haven’t you seen that movie?

Richard Florida needs to put down the textbooks and pick up some good Sci-Fi books! The real questions have already been answered. Where will all that sewage and garbage go? What about groundwater? Where will food grow? What will Florida and his fellow planners have to do with all the people that will not cooperate willingly with the plan? Dang humans!

To wrap it up:
Read this book, because Florida presents an interesting theory and much food for thought. Do not just take it in as truth because it is only one truth. Forget politics. The Urban Crisis is real, but it is different for each individual that it affects. Real people are difficult to quantify, but we can’t ignore that the problem isn’t about policy, it’s about people. So when Florida suggests solutions like a Land Value Tax, where the less land is developed, the higher the tax (His example is a parking lot with an undeveloped surface should be taxed at 100%) I am skeptical.

What if that parking lot is for the use of locals, and has green space and trees that are enjoyed by many in the neighborhood? What if the owner allows local food vendors to park there and sell? Value is so subjective, and I daresay there are plenty of people, even city people, that would not find value in overdevelopment. If the owner of that parking lot is happy with the use, and he is not violating any zoning or codes, why should he be penalized? How policy effects people on different sides of the question should be considered. After all, extremist views of any kind should not guide policy or people. No one has the single right viewpoint, they only have their viewpoint, informed or otherwise.

As for me, I don’t buy the case presented here. Each area is so unique and diverse, including what we could call ‘Disurbia’ (because Richard Florida likes to coin labels and I can do it too!) that removal of a broad swathe of culture living a non-urban existence is a drastic and unreasonable exclusion of real people that move the needle of progress in their own way.

A copy was received from the publisher in exchange for this honest review. This review and more at annevolmering.com.

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 3 out of 5]

Florida explains what he means by an urban crisis, what fundamental forces are causing it, and how to solve it.

The Crisis:
- Leading cities (NYC, LA, SF/SJ, Chicago, Seattle, etc) are consolidating all of the key growth sectors in a winner-take-all moment that is leaving the rest of the country behind
- These superstar cities are exploding housing prices and increasing segregation
- Every city is experiencing inequality, segregation, and sorting, and the middle class is disappearing from cities.
- The suburbs have gotten much poorer. In fact, there's more poor people in suburbs (17 million) than in cities (13.5 million). The population of people living below the poverty line in the suburbs grew by 66% between 2000 and 2013 (urban grew by 29%). Much of this is people getting pushed out of cities that get too expensive
- The developing world has not seem the same growth from urbanization as it did decades ago. This is probably a return to the historic normal (after considering urbanization over the past 500 years). The number of people who live in destitue conditions in the world's slums is = the population of the US and the EU combined.

His solutions
- Reforming zoning and building codes and tax policies. Extreme examples of this don't work however. Houston is a good example which has very little regulation but is enormously segregated. One good idea is to switch from property tax to land value tax. Property taxes tax both the land and the value of the building on it. Land value taxes only tax the land, and the less developed the land is, the higher it gets taxed. This creates incentives for developers to make the best use of the land. Another idea is tax increment local transfers, which would allow residents to share in tax revenues from new development, which would help quiet NIMBY voters.
- Invest in the right kinds of infrastructure. Specifically rail over road, congestion charges, etc.
- Build more affordable rental housing in city centers. Average rents increased by >22% between 2006 and 2014, while average incomes declined. The nubmer of renters paying >=30% of their income to rent went from 14.8M in 2001 to 21.3M in 2014.
- The most important solution is to raise Americans' income. Florida looks at minimum wage, housing vouchers, or a negative income tax (univeral basic income).

Some cool factoids
- The total value of all land across the US was $23 trillion in 2009. Only 6% of that land is developed, and accounts for 50% of the value
- In 2015, the value of all NYC metro area real estate was $2.9 trillion, which is roughly the same size of the GDP of the UK. And LA was $2.8 trillion, which was ~ GDP of France
- Between 1950 and 1993, real estate in NYC appreciated at <0.5%/year. Between 1993 and 2014, the return would have been 28x
- The share of capital income derived from housing tripled between 1950 and 2017, which is much larger than any other capital type
- The average urban family lives in 1678 square feet, compared to 1800 for suburbanites. So urban living spaces aren't much smaller than suburban, on average
- The average american worker commutes for 52 minutes a day (to and from work)
- Only 6% of American workers actually make things in factories today

[Jim Robles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars! Professor Florida captures how "clustering" is at once the source of innovation and economic growth, as well as the greatest source of our lamentable income inequality and wealth inequality. How ironic that inequality correlates with Democratic control (as well as population density), while Republican control correlates negatively.

I was struck that Professor Florida did not mention "Smart Growth" (AKA the best approach to stop the habitat destruction that is the leading cause of the mass extinction we are currently experiencing). This recommendations align perfectly with Smart Growth ((as presented in David Owen's 2004 New Yorker essay "Green Manhattan: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...) ).

"Lycos was moving because the talent it needed was already in Boston" (xiv).

"My research found that the metros with the highest levels of wage inequality were also those with the most dynamic and successful creative economies -- . . . ." (xvi).

". . . . Brexit. Vehemently opposed by the by the affluent, cosmopolitan London, it was backed by the struggling residents of working-class cities, suburbs, and rural areas who were being left behind by the twin forces of globalization and re-urbanization" (xix).

"As I have come to understand it, this New Urban Crisis encompasses five key dimensions" (5).

"The fifty largest metros across the globe house just 7 percent of the world's population but generate 40 percent of global economic activity" (8).

"Ultimately, the urbanism for all that is required to move us forward must take shape around seven key pillars" (11).

". . . . knowledge workers, techies, and creatives . . . ." (11-12).

"Anywhere from a third to half of the high-tech startups that have been launched in the San Francisco Bay Area in the past decade or so include at least one immigrant among their founders" (21).

"The clustering force is at once the main engine of economic growth and the biggest driver of economic inequality" (33).

". . . . the real problem is persistent poverty and declining social mobility, and that our focus on inequality fixates us more on a symptom than on the underlying disease" (49).

". . . . the creative strengths of superstar cities have actually increased" (50).

"Just 5 percent of all US metros--19 out of 364--stand out as having high-performing, fully functional creative economies across these domains" (54).

"When all is said and done, acute gentrification is more a symptom of urban success than it is a general characteristic of cities and metro areas across the board" (68).

"Where transit connections are poor and other investment Is low, gentrification tends not to occur" (72).

". . . . the great bulk of poor black neighborhoods remain virtually immune to gentrification, with their residents remaining largely trapped in chronic and persistent poverty" (77).

"Wage inequality stems mainly from factors bolstering the pay of top earners" (86).

"Income inequality is more reflective of long-standing poverty and economic distress at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid" (87).

"All of the twenty-five congressional districts with the highest levels of income inequality were represented by Democrats, . . . ." (90).

". . . . policies that redistribute wealth and income, . . . . can actually generate growth" (94).

"Economic segregation is even more closely associated with key features of knowledge-based metros: high-tech industry, the creative class, and college graduates" (111).

"The ability of adult children to secure the locations that are key to their own life prospects increasingly turns on the wealth of their parents" (114).

Question p. 116. Racism keeps blacks out.

"In the previous chapter I used aggregated to show how metro areas are becoming more segregated by income, education, and occupational class. In this one, I use more granular data to identify and visualize how these divides etch themselves within metro areas" (122). 5th paragraph in this chapter. This is what Dr. Wicker is trying to get me to do.

". . . . the Patchwork metropolis conforms to four broad types" (123).

". . . . have much less mass transit than the superstar cities and knowledge hubs discussed above. . . . . smaller shares of the creative class as well" (137).

"Across the entire United States, the three classes occupy separate and distinct geographic spaces" (149).

"More than half of immigrants now bypass cities altogether and settle directly in suburbs of larger metros"(154).

"As well as being energy-inefficient and wasteful, suburban sprawl also limits the mobility of Americans and undermines productivity" (158).

"But what really separates Democratic from Republican places isn't state boundaries, its population density" (164).

". . . . in the midst of the greatest urban migration in human history, urbanization has ceased to be a reliable engine of progress" (174).

". . . . what the poor in rudimentary settlements lack is not skills or creativity but the time and resources to put them to better account" (180).

"Our cities and metro areas are our premier platforms for technological innovation and wealth creation, as well as for social progress and the fostering of open-mindedness, progressive values, and political freedom" (186).


"For infrastructure to really put the economy back on its feet, it must be part of a broader strategy for clustered, urbanized growth" (189).

". . . ., or what I prefer to call the New Urban Luddism, that hold back the urban density and clustering that innovation and economic progress require" (191).

"Make Clustering Work for Us and Not Against Us" (191).

"Invest in the Infrastructure for Density and Growth" (195).

"Build More Affordable Rental Housing" (199).

"The most effective way to help those who are truly in need is to raise their incomes, . . . ." (202).

"Turn Low-Wage Service Jobs into Middle Class Work" (202).

"Just 6 percent of workers actually make things in factories" (203).

"Tackle Poverty by Investing in People and Places" (207).

"Above all, overcoming persistent poverty means tackling the problems of urban schools" (208).

". . . . negative income tax, . . . ." (208).

"Lead a Global Effort to Build Prosperous Cities" (210).

"Empower Cities and Communities" (211).

"I can't tell you how depressing it's been for me to contemplate a future in which the affordable housing and transit that we so badly need do not get built, where the causes of concentrated poverty remain unaddressed, and where our socioeconomic classes harden into castes" (214).

[Josef Lindell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boken beskriver en av vår tids största och mest bortglömda samhällsproblem. Urbaniseringseffekter.

Vad händer på en strukturell nivå när allt mer människor flyttar in i världens storstäder. Hur påverkar det ekonomin, integration, skola, segregation osv. Och vad kan vi göra för att bromsa urbaniseringens negativa effekter.

Jag tror att denna naturliga process ligger bakom en betydande del av vår tids största samhällsproblem och är tillsammans med sociala medier motorn som driver på polarisering vi ser i hela västvärlden.

En viktig bok men också tungläst med hundratals grafer och tabeller. Den hade tålts stt gå igenom av en kompetent lektör som skurit bort 20% av boken. Det avslutande kapitlet med förslag på lösningar vsr allt för kortfattat och i mina ögon för ideologiskt driver. Hade velat ha mer nyansering och utveckling av den delen.

[Ailith Twinning · Rating 1 out of 5]

As others have said - he rode to, at least appear to be, near the vanguard of gentrification, the 'creative class', and (as Reich would have it) 'Symbolic Workers' (which. . . the irony in that term is striking). This, was a clusterfuck of bad ideas, worse execution, and just. . . it only gets worse the more you describe it.

Here - he's just assimilated (American) Libertarian pro-monopolist conservatism and ridiculous utopianism. He's said "All right, I had problems? What if we basically just turned all the dials so far the nobs pop off?"

Just, the hell are you thinking man? Are you okay? Have you read a single book of history that wasn't about science, art or war, literally ever?

It's just rubbish -- it's bad enough in the early bits where he's flirting with the fringes of Neo Liberalism -- but then, he crosses into outright pantomime.

And that's without his BS non-apology, his "I prefigured Picketty and Occupy all on my own! Iwas just a bit optimistic!" or "What we really need is to address the real filth, poor people, inequality is just having too many poor people!" (I may have exaggerated his evil and underplayed his stupidity with these paraphrases).

Right, so, if I'm so smart, what one-word answer do I give to "The Urban Crisis" then? Well, either "Monopoly" or "Empire", they're basically the same thing. Likewise, one could say "Capitalism" and be done with it. I admit, it's not a real answer, but one word can't be - unless you think it means exactly what the speaker does, and that doesn't (well, shouldn't anyway) happen much. It's also the worst thing about slurs - distilling the immensity of the human into a singular thought, a stock series of images and traits that everyone using the word knows reflexively, and everything else goes unspoken -- that's how deeply ingrained it is. The problem with slurs isn't how much they hurt to hear - it's the sheer horror of the kind of mob mentality/group think shown in one being recognized. For my money, anyway.

What I was on about . . . Florida - just, please mate, shut the hell up.

Also: If you want to read a review that hits a few points more patience than I have, try https://beltmag.com/richard-florida-c... for a start, or basically anything written by Thomas Frank, including his original piece on Rise of the Creative Class https://harpers.org/archive/2013/06/g... -- there are actually loads of rebuttals of Florida in academia, journalism, and just annoyed people with blogs. Not so much in the Democratic Party or Silicon Valley tho; I mean, he does such a good job s$!@#% them off.

[John Behle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Richard Florida jumped out to an interesting start, the first two chapters had me playing along. By the third chapter, I got stuck in his thick grass of repetitive, numbing statistics and textbook style comparisons. My grip began to slip.

I like cities and enjoyed Urban Planning classes in college.

But I had to pull the plug on this work at the halfway point. I tried to follow, but the points he was making just got mired in seemingly paid-by-the-word verbosity.

[Becca Dzombak · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't actually finish reading this; I thought the writing was repetitive, clunky, and dull. I also found his attitude and perspective way too ego-centric and narrow-minded. A feeling of self-importance bleeds through his analyses, and I couldn't deal with that, especially given some of the nuanced topics he brings up. I won't be reading anything by him in the future.

[Moritz Mueller-Freitag · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Florida emerged as one of the most influential urban theorists two decades ago with his bestselling book, The Rise of the Creative Class. In it, he correctly argued that urban fortunes would turn on the capacity to attract and retain members of the so-called “creative class” – a group that includes high-skilled entrepreneurs, professionals, creatives, and the like. He predicted that clustering them together would become the key driver of urban growth and that capital would follow talent, not the other way around. Florida’s observations shaped urban policy in many places, including New York, while also attracting strong academic criticism. His latest book, The New Urban Crisis, published fifteen years after the first, is a sobering account of what the clustering of creative talent has done to cities.

Florida’s core thesis is that “superstar cities” like New York have become victims of their own success: “Although clustering drives growth, it also increases the competition for limited urban space; the more things cluster in space, the more expensive land gets; the more expensive land gets, the higher housing prices become, and the more certain things get pushed out.” In other words, attracting the creative class has come at the expense of less advantaged urbanites who are being elbowed out by rising costs. This is the great paradox of the “clustering force” of talent and innovation: it is at once the main engine of economic growth and the biggest driver of urban inequality. The rise of remote work due to Covid-19 is unlikely to reverse this dynamic anytime soon. In fact, economic inequality and spatial segregation are likely to harden over time:

“As the advantaged groups colonize the best neighborhoods, they gain access to the most economic opportunities, the best schools and libraries, and the best services and amenities—all of which compound their advantages and reinforce their children’s prospects for upward mobility. The less advantaged are shunted into neighborhoods with more crime, worse schools, and the dimmest prospects for upward mobility. Simply put, the rich live where they choose, and the poor live where they can.”

The result of this escalating competition for urban space is that urbanites are increasingly segregated by income, education, and class. But dividing city dwellers into villains and victims is not as straightforward as the quote suggests. The strength of Florida’s book lies in the use of economic data to separate myth from reality. For example, he acknowledges that gentrification is a wrenching feature of cities, but stresses that the media’s obsession with the topic deflects attention from the far more serious problem of urban poverty. He further contends that the ultra-rich can hardly be as damaging to cities as some pundits assert: “There are simply not enough super-rich people to deaden an entire city or even significant parts of it… 116 billionaires and 3,000 or so ultra-high net worth multimillionaires wouldn’t fill half the seats in Radio City Music Hall.” Never mind that the top 1% of New Yorkers pay close to 43% of the total income tax the city collects. The same extends to techies and startup companies. Florida concedes that they are putting pressure on urban real estate, but clarifies that they are not the primary drivers of inequality (though they surely contribute to it). Urban poverty doesn’t stem from poor neighborhoods getting richer through gentrification, but from poor neighborhoods staying poor, generation after generation, without access to good schools, jobs, parks, transport, and networks.

The book ends with a series of policy prescriptions that aim to make the creative economy more inclusive. As one would expect, most of the policies address the shortage of affordable housing. Florida cautions against the deregulation of land use and urges policymakers to redirect federal housing subsidies from affluent homeowners to urban renters. He also advocates for a land value tax to create incentives for property owners to put urban space to its most intensive use. But solving the housing crisis is not as straightforward as one would hope. According to a recent paper by two reputable economists, building more urban housing would not automatically translate into lower prices. In fact, it could very well increase housing prices by attracting more members of the creative class. In that context, the paper advises addressing the root cause of the affordability problem, namely the collapse of the “urban wage premium” for less-educated workers, rather than trying to cure the symptoms with imperfect policies. Unfortunately, Florida’s book provides us with few pointers on how to solve this puzzle.

[Art · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book dry, dull and unengaging. But balance my ambiguity with other commenters and reviewers. A few observations that stuck with me:

— A suburban crisis unfolds. In half of the biggest urban centers, the area with three miles of a city’s central business district added jobs at a faster rate than their suburbs. These cities include Milwaukee, Austin, Indianapolis and New York. Florida also found that jobs in urban centers pay more than ones in the suburbs.

— Florida, while writing this book, thought that a Democratic administration along with big-city mayors would undertake the investment that urbanism needs. But with Republicans in charge, he doubts that will happen.

— Mayors appeared on Democratic high-profile tickets during last year’s campaign. Bernie Sanders served as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. Tim Kaine, of Richmond, Virginia, joined Hillary’s ticket. Florida, nonetheless, complains that these two generated no thoughtful talk about cities.

— Hillary won the dense, affluent knowledge-based cities and their close-in suburbs, while the other guy took everywhere else.

— The United States invests little in mass transit. High-speed rail can link separate metros into larger and more formidable mega-metros, including the Chicago hub, which connects Detroit, St Louis and Cleveland as well as Milwaukee, by far the largest traffic generator in the hub.

— Home ownership declined since its peak in the mid-seventies. More Americans have become renters. The share of renters approaches forty percent. Renters are more likely to live close to work or use transit for getting to work. Metro area with higher levels of renters enjoy high levels of innovation, higher shares of college graduates and the creative class as well as higher wages and productivity.

A twenty-two page appendix of statistical analysis, forty-seven pages of notes and a seventeen-page index support this slog of a book.

Richard Florida serves as the director of cities at the University of Toronto. At the Atlantic, he founded the City Lab.

[Sashko Valyus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Мабуть не найцікавіша моя книга з урбанізму. Пре-ковідна, під час президентства Трампа. Дуже американська і багато американських контекстів які в українські реальні взагалі не заходять. Багато статистики і графіків які, якщо ви живете в США, можливо мають значенння. Невідомо наскільки вона актуальна зараз, коли під час ковіду, народ мігрував з місць з дорогим житлом через можливість працювати віддалено. Загальний посил книги: «В добре запланованих містах, люди і щасливіші, і живуть багатше». Багато написано про економічний ефект урбаністичних рішень.

Правда є кілька цікавих моментів які я не зустрічав в інших книгах по урбанізму. Оськ кілька цитат:
- «Сьогоднішні містяни використовуються стільки ж площі, що й мешканці передмість. Середня міська сім’я проживає на 156 м², порівняно з 167 м² у передмісті»
- «Позитивні наслідки переїзду (в кращий район) суттєво знижуються, якщо дитина вже доросла, а також переїзд мало впливає на підлітків»

[Michael Siliski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a pretty good intro to the critical issues facing our cities today. It's grounded in lots of data and has a solid perspective on both the necessity for growth & productivity in our cities and the resulting challenges, especially on the equity front. It's solidly in the Freakonomics/Pinker lane of books written for mass appeal, and I could definitely do with a little less obsession about stamping his own brand on every metric. Also felt like the solutions section at the end was a reasonable list, but barely scratches the surface, and the devil's in the details. On the whole though, I don't know of a better intro to today's urban challenges, nor one that takes a less partisan approach.

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with others' critique that there is too much data and statistics (for this reason, chapters 5-7 can be skimmed), but the book's strength is its overarching argument about very topical and relevant issues. The chapter on gentrification was different than other arguments I've heard, and the chapter on global urbanization was both sobering and promising. I also appreciated the point that America's longstanding conservative rural bias is outdated and overblown, again a point I haven't heard much elsewhere. Even if you only have time to read the last chapter, which features the proposed solutions to the new urban crisis, you'll gain something- that chapter should be required reading for mayors.

[tJacksonrichards · Rating 3 out of 5]

From a recent article plugging ideas from EO Wilson's 'Half-Earth'...

"Cities are part of the system we’ve invented to keep people alive on Earth. People tend to like cities, and have been congregating in them ever since the invention of agriculture, 10,000 or so years ago. That’s why we call it civilisation. This origin story underlines how agriculture made cities possible, by providing enough food to feed a settled crowd on a regular basis. Cities can’t work without farms, nor without watersheds that provide their water. So as central as cities are to modern civilisation, they are only one aspect of a system."

If Florida had offered a similarly holistic perspective to his 'more urbanization!' prescription I think I would've like his book much more. Anyway...

The 'crisis' here will only register to readers who regard certain social phenomena holding whatever historical longevity (ie. monarchy, slavery, public torture, drive-in theaters) as possibly revocable. So if you dismiss gentrification as just 'a natural process, too bad for poor people' this isn't for you. But for progressives concerned with how american cities contribute to racial and wealth inequality, Florida has presented a tremendous resource: the numbers are in and he's outlined their horrific implications in very readable, uncomplicated text with copious charts and graphs. A few notes:

"The nub of the global urban crisis is this: in the midst of the greatest urban migration in human history, urbanization has ceased to be a reliable engine of progress. For the past couple of centuries in the cities of Western Europe and the United States, economic development and social progress went hand in hand with urbanization. The connection between urbanization and growth has now become much more tenuous, producing a troubling new pattern of 'urbanization without growth'"

"...more than two hundred small and medium-sized metros have levels of overall economic segregation that are lower than those of the least-segregated large metros—and the pattern is generally similar for the various individual types of segregation."

"Just 28 percent of black workers hold creative-class jobs, compared to 41 percent of white workers. The share of white workers in creative class jobs exceeds 40 percent in thirty seven of the fifty one metros with more than 1 million people, whereas the share of black workers in creative class jobs exceeds 40 percent in just one large metro. "

"The share of capital income derived from housing tripled between 1950 and today [...] which is substantially more than for any other form of capital."

"Between 2000 and 2012, the numbers of the suburban poor who lived in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, where at least 40 percent of residents were below the poverty line, grew by 139 percent. Thats triple the growth rate for concentrated poverty populations in the cities."

"A detailed 2015 study looked closely at the connection between innovation and inequality [...] While it found a reasonably strong connection between innovation and the increase in the share of income going to the top 1 percent of the population, there was little, if any, connection between innovation and the broader income inequality between the rich and the poor."

"Since the economic crisis of 2008, the top 1 percent has captured a staggering 85 percent of all income growth. And as of 2013, the 1 percent was making roughly twenty-five times the average income of the remaining 99 percent nationwide [...] The gap between the 1 percent and the rest soared even higher in many metro areas, especially in superstar cities and leading tech hubs."

"When researchers at the International Monetary Fund looked at the connection between inequality, growth and redistribution across nations, they reached three very important conclusions. First, countries that redistribute more income have lower rates of inequality. Second, countries with greater levels of redistribution have higher levels of economic growth. And third, government policies that work to reduce inequality actually lead to higher rates of growth."

So as a descriptive work—an accessible aggregate and distillation of data—Florida's book is rather excellent. But his prescription is deeply problematic. His ultimate conviction that 'only more urbanism/clustering/density will save us' betrays the principles of just another toothless, institutional liberal desperately trying to reframe the problem as a solution. And tho he pays critical lip service to the primum movens of the crisis, capitalism and neoliberal economics, in early chapters, plutocratic treasure coffers like nyc, london, paris etc meanwhile remain 'superstar cities' for him throughout the book.

[Sarah W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, which manages to be both readable and academic, looks closely at the problems of cities and inequality. I particularly appreciated the last few chapters, when the author proposes some solutions to the examined problems. I would have liked, however, a deeper analysis of the historical parallels to New Deal programs the author references as potential solutions. An interesting read, especially as the issues explored remain prominent.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a fine enough read, I guess, but Richard Florida keeps trying to coin catchy, pithy, authoritative NAMES for complex social phenomena that are not quite captured by his catchy, pithy, authoritative NAMES.

Richard Florida keeps trying to make "fetch" happen.

[Jim]

Coining the term winner take all urbanism.

[leah]

richard florida definitely froths at the mouth when he sees his own reflection…

[Christina Wiseman · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has not extensively studied economics or urban planning, I was sometimes overwhelmed with the data and terms. However, the story still resonates, and the data will be great reference.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first 9 chapters felt very repetitive; the last chapter saved it to a 3. I found the ideas compelling, even as they were hammered in again and again.

[Katrina Sark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Preface

p.xvi – My research found that the metros with the highest level of wage inequality were also those with the most dynamic and successful creative economies – San Francisco, Austin, Boston, Seattle, Washington DC, and New York. But even as I was documenting these new divides, I had no idea how fast they would metastasize, or how deeply polarized these cities would become. In little more than a decade, the revitalization of our cities and our urban areas that I had predicted was giving rise to rampant gentrification and unaffordability, driving deep wedges between affluent newcomers and struggling long-time residents.

p.xvii – What troubled me most of all was the decline of the great middle-class neighbourhoods that had formed the backbones of our cities and broader society for most of my life.
I entered into a period of rethinking and introspection, of personal and intellectual transformation, of which this book is the result. I began to see the back-to-the-city movement as something that conferred a disproportionate share of its benefits on a small group of places and people. I found myself confronting the dark side of the urban revival I had once championed and celebrated.
It became increasingly clear to me that the same clustering of talent and economic assets generates a lopsided, unequal urbanism in which a relative handful of superstar cities, and a few elite neighborhoods within them, benefit while many other places stagnate or fall behind. Ultimately, the very same force that drives the growth of our cities and economy broadly also generates the divides that separate us and the contradictions that hold us back.

p.xviii – My perspective on cities and urbanism was also deeply affected by what I saw happening in my adopted hometown of Toronto. I had moved there in 2007 to head up a new institute on urban prosperity at the University of Toronto. For me, the city was a bastion of the very best of progressive urbanism. Toronto had as diverse a population as can be found anywhere in North America; a thriving economy that was barely dented by the economic crisis of 2008; safe streets, great public schools, and a cohesive social fabric. Yet, somehow, this progressive, diverse city – a place that Peter Ustinov had famously dubbed “New York run by the Swiss” – chose Rob Ford as its mayor. […] the most anti-urban mayor ever to preside over a major city.

1 – The Urban Contradiction

p.9 – In this new age of urbanized knowledge capitalism, place and class combine to reinforce and reproduce socioeconomic advantage. Those at the top locate in communities that afford them privileged access to the best schools, the best services, and the best economic opportunities, while the rest get the leftover neighborhoods, which have inferior versions of all of those things and hence offer less of a chance for moving up in life. The well-off, living in a relatively small number of advantaged cities, and an even smaller number of advantaged neighborhoods within them, capture a disproportionate share of the economic gains for themselves and their offspring. Sadly, these divides will only deepen and harden in the age of Trump.

2 – Winner-Take-All Urbanism

p.15 – Cities have also been caught up in this winner-takes-all phenomenon. Just as superstar talent in our economy garners disproportionate rewards, superstar cities tower above the rest. Superstar cities generate the greatest levels of innovation; control and attract the largest shares of global capital and investment; have far greater concentrations of leading-edge companies in the finance, media, entertainment, and high-tech industries; and are home to a disproportionate share of the world’s talent. They are not just the places where the most ambitious and talented people want to be – they are where such people need to be. The dynamic is cumulative and self-reinforcing. Their expanding economies spur demand for more and better restaurants, theatres, nightclubs, galleries, and other amenities.

3 – City of Elites

p.35 – Moby: “When I lived on 14th Street in the late 80s, I paid $140 a month to share an apartment with a bunch of other odd and dysfunctional musicians and artists,” he wrote in 2014. “AIDS, crack and a high murder rate kept most people away from New York back then. But even though it was a war zone, Manhattan was still the cultural capital of the world. Of course, everything’s changed since New York has, to state the obvious, become the city of money. People say your rent should be 30 percent of your salary; in Manhattan today, at least for many people, it feels like it hovers around 300 percent.”

p.50 – There can be no doubt that the recent influx of the very rich, of tech start-ups and their employees, and of financial and other professionals into cities is generating real challenges and prompting highly charged conflicts. But has it blunted cultural creativity in those cities, as some have charged? In a word, no: the creative strengths of superstar cities have actually increased.

p.52 – Moby said in 2014 that he left New York for Los Angeles “because creativity requires the freedom to fail,” and LA’s cheaper rents made that prospect less daunting. His anecdotal perception is backed up by empirical data. Artistic and cultural creatives are moving from New York to LA in numbers that are not trivial, according to research from the US Census Bureau. But together, the two stand far above other American cities.

10 – Urbanism for All

p.186 – But as this book has also shown, our cities and urban areas face deep challenges that threaten our entire way of life. The very same clustering force that generates economic and social progress also divides us. Winner-take-all urbanism means that a few big winners capture a disproportionate share of the spoils of innovation and economic growth, while many more places stagnate or fall further behind. As more and more middle-class neighborhoods fade, our cities, suburbs, and nation as a whole are splintering into a patchwork of concentrated advantage and concentrated disadvantage.
The New Urban Crisis is much more than an isolated crisis of superstar cities and tech hubs; it is the central crisis of today’s urbanized knowledge capitalism. Its effects are being felt all across the entire United States, from superstar cities and tech hubs to the former industrial powerhouses of the Rustbelt and the sprawling metropolises of the Sunbelt.

p.188 – The middle class has been eviscerated amid the collapse of the suburban growth model that once fueled the American Dream. The poor and disadvantaged truly are falling further and further behind the rest of society. But even the affluent third of society who are thriving economically don’t feel as prosperous as they did in the past, because they live in expensive cities where securing their own, and their children’s futures is growing more costly and increasingly difficult.
Indeed, the New urban Crisis is a big part of the reason why the economy has been unable to recover fully from the economic crisis and remains mired in what some call “secular stagnation.” That concept was originally used to describe the economic malaise of the great Depression, when the economy was unable to generate the innovation, economic growth, and jobs required to raise living standards.

p.189 – Former treasury secretary Larry Summers, along with Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and many others, believes that the best way out of this economic malaise is for government to stimulate the economy by spending more money on infrastructure.
But if spending more money on roads and bridges may help provide short-term economic stimulus today, it will do little to generate sustained economic growth. What we need is not a random menu of shovel-ready projects, but strategic investments in the kinds of infrastructure that can underpin more clustered and concentrated urban development. For infrastructure to really put the economy back on its feet, it must be part of a broader strategy for clustered, urbanized growth.

p.199 – Affordable housing is the third key element that we must address if we are to overcome the New Urban Crisis. In our most expensive cities, housing has become unaffordable for all but the top one-third of society’s most advantaged people. Essential service providers, including police and firefighters, teachers and hospital workers, and restaurant and retail workers, are being pushed farther and farther away from urban centers and other key centers of economic activity.

p.216 – Ultimately, the only way forward for our economy and society is more, not less, urbanism. Our clustering together in communities has driven each step of human progress.
Our last great golden age – the rise of the large middle class during the 1950s – was the culmination of a century’s worth of effort and struggle after the initial rise of industrial capitalism. Ultimately, the path to renewed economic progress and prosperity will turn on our cities and the rise of a better, more inclusive urbanism.

[melhara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was already familiar with most of the concepts in this book as I’ve previously read some of Richard Florida’s articles and discussed the same topics in many of my urban planning and economic development courses back in university. I didn’t agree with everything that Florida mentioned, but the topics were still pretty interesting and I like that this book includes a lot of Canadian examples (mostly of the GTHA, although Vancouver was also mentioned). Overall though, this was a very dull and boring book that included too much statistics that weren’t integrated into the text very well (I listened to the audiobook and zoned out whenever the narrator started listing out all the boring stats).

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Florida whose first book looked at the importance of the creative class for the rise of modern urbanism returns to cities to explain how the revitalization of urban centres has also fostered rising inequality.

"The cities and the larger metropolitan areas that were most successful economically, I argued further, were those that excelled at what I called the '3Ts of economic development': technology, talent and tolerance...Cities were the places that brought together these 3Ts; and in doing so, they had become the fundamental organizing units of the economy. This was what the mega corporations like general motors, US steel and IBM had done for the old industrial economy: providing good jobs for broad class of blue-collar workers, like my dad, and white collar managers and engineers, like my uncle. Place itself had become the central organizing unit of the new knowledge based economy-the basic platform for attracting talent, for matching people to jobs, and for spring innovation and economic growth." 14

"I warned that America's leading creative cities were also the upper centres of economic inequality." 15

"as the middle-class and its neighbourhoods fade, our geography is splintering into small areas of influence and concentrated advantage, and much larger areas of poverty and concentrated disadvantage." 16-17

"Toronto had as a diverse population can be found anywhere in North America; a thriving economy that was barely dented by the economic crisis of 2008; safe streets, great public schools, and a cohesive social fabric. Yet, somehow, this progressive, diverse city-a place that Peter Ustinov had famously dubbed "New York run by the Swiss"-chose Rob Ford as it's mayor... Ford had become mayor, it seemed, because he wanted to make the city more like the suburbs." 18

"this book is my attempt to grapple with the new urban crisis and the deep contradictions of our cities and our society writ large." 19

"Gentrification and inequality are the direct outgrows of the recolonization of the city by the affluent and the advantaged."24

"The new urban crisis is different from the older urban crisis of the 1960s and 1970s. That previous crisis was defined by the economic abandonment of cities and their loss of economic function. Shaped by the industrialization and white flight, its Hallmark was a haul out of the city centre, a phenomenon that urban theorist and policy makers labelled the hole-in-the-doughnut. As cities lost their core industries, they became sites of growing and persistent poverty: their housing decayed; crime and violence increased; and social problems, including drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and infant mortality, escalated. As urban economies eroded and tax revenues declined, cities became increasingly dependent on the federal government for financial support. Many of these problems remain with us to this day." 25

"The extent to which economic activity has become concentrated in the world cities and metropolitan areas is staggering. The 50 largest metros across the globe House just 7% of the worlds total population but generate 40% of economic global activity... In this new age of urbanized knowledge capitalism, place and class combined to reinforce and reproduce socioeconomic advantage." 29

"The the rise in CEO pay was fuelled largely by the increased used of stock options other forms of equity compensation-the basic idea that this would provide a powerful incentive for better performance. It didn't turn out that way. There ends up being actual correlation between CEO pay and company performance. The companies run by the highest paid CEOs have the worst overall performance between 2004 in 2014, according to a study of the 800 CEOs at 429 corporations." 36

"As I will show in chapter 10 what our cities need is not just deregulation, but reform land systems that, together with broad changes in the tax system, increased investment and transit, and a ship from single-family homes to rental housing, can help create the kinds of density, clustering, and talent mixing that the urbanized knowledge economy requires... The more a metro was able to expand outward and create new housing supply, the less it's housing prices tend to rise" 50

"The share of capital income to arrive from housing tripled between 1950 and today, according to research by Matthew Rognlie, which is substantially more than for any other form of capital.... The cluster force is at once the main engine of economic growth and the biggest driver of inequality. The concentration of talent and economic activity infer and fewer places not only divides the world cities into winners and losers, but ensures that the winner cities become unaffordable for all but the most advantaged. This unrelenting cycle is great news for wealthy landlords and homeowners, but bad news for almost everyone else." 54

"Not only does economic inequality tend to hold that growth, but policies that redistribute wealth and income, like those of the progressive tax systems and developed welfare states of the Nordic countries, can actually generate growth." 115

"In America today, economic and equality is also spatial inequality: Rich and poor increasingly occupied different spaces and worlds." 118-119

"Karl Marx's disciples, following his lead, have long believe that class is fortune in the workplace-on the factory floor so to speak, yeah class today in America is not just about the kind of work we do but also the place in which we live, which shape everything from our access to jobs and economic opportunity to the schools are kids attend, our health and well-being, and our prospects for upward mobility. The intersection of class and location is attracting the attention of commentators from across the ideological spectrum." 141

"The old saying 'drive till you qualify' reflects the reality that real estate becomes more affordable in the farthest out suburbs, but distance levies additional high costs. The rule of thumb is that people should spend roughly 30% of their income for housing, but up to 45% including transportation. Having multiple cars and keeping them insured, repaired, and fuelled up on gas can be an expensive proposition. Living closer to where one works or being able to take public transit can slash those cost considerably. For this reason, a price your condo or apartment in the urban core or along transit lines can end up being considerably more affordable than a cheaper house in a car dependent suburb.
Instead of pushing people toward the American dream, suburbia today actually hinders upward economic mobility. Economic mobility is significantly lower and more spread out metro today than it is in denser cities." 178

"The suburban dimension of the new urban crisis is indeed reshaping our national politics broadly. We're all familiar with the election of blue and red states. But what really separates Democratic from Republican places isn't state boundaries, it's population density." 184

"The most effective approach to spring denser and more cluster development is to switch from our current local reliance on the property tax to a land value tax. Where is the property tax taxes land and the structures on top of it, land value tax taxes the underlying value of the land itself. In this way, it creates significant incentives for property owners to put that land to its most intensive use. The basic ideas goes back to David Ricardo, who developed influential theories a free trade and comparative advantage in the early 18 century. Ricardo saw the unneeded income that comes from land as pure waste." 215

"It's Time to redirect federal housing subsidies away from affluent homeowners to the less advantage renters who really need them. Doing so will help create demand for rental units, stimulate more construction of apartment buildings, and generate more clustered development. Continuing unfair subsidies to single-family home owners only encourages sprawl, which undermines the density and clustering that drive growth while adding substantial other costs to our economy."222

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won a copy of this book.

I found this an interesting read. While I don't agree with everything written in this book, I would say that some of it makes a lot of sense. Florida makes a compelling argument for what cities need and has some really good ideas that should be looked at.