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

Overview

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 challenges: 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541644120
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	05/08/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,102,508
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Richard Florida is university professor in the University of Toronto's School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, a distinguished visiting fellow at NYU's Schack Institute of Real Estate, and the cofounder and editor at large of the Atlantic's CityLab.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

1 The Urban Contradiction 1

2 Winner-Take-All Urbanism 13

3 City of Elites 35

4 Gentrification and Its Discontents 57

5 The Inequality of Cities 79

6 The Bigger Sort 97

7 Patchwork Metropolis 121

8 Suburban Crisis 151

9 The Crisis of Global Urbanization 167

10 Urbanism for All 185

Epilogue to the Paperback Edition 217

Appendix 235

Acknowledgments 259

Notes 263

Index 315

Editorial Reviews

"Richard Florida offers a brilliant assessment of the varied and evolving challenges facing our cities today. At a time when cities are more important than ever to our economic and political future, The New Urban Crisis is essential reading for urban leaders and all city-dwellers."—Richard M. Daley, former mayor of Chicago

"The New Urban Crisis bracingly confronts [the] tension between big-city elites and the urban underclass."—Wall Street Journal

"[Richard Florida] vividly expose[s] how gentrification, followed by rising housing costs, concentrated affluence, and glaring inequality has pushed the displaced into deteriorating suburbs far from mass transit, employment, services, and decent schools.... [The New Urban Crisis is] nuanced and proposes solutions."—Washington Post

"Florida draws subtle, thoughtful inferences from his research, and he writes in slick, approachable prose.... Throughout, the author remains an idealistic, perceptive observer of cities' transformations. A sobering account of inequality and spatial conflict rising against a cultural backdrop of urban change."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Urban planners should consider the case being made for the need to address a new urban crisis. A thought-provoking work for those interested in all stages of urban planning and placemaking."
—Library Journal

"The New Urban Crisis deserves to stand alongside Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century as an essential diagnosis of our contemporary ills, and a clear-eyed prescription of how to cure them."—Steven Johnson

"Richard Florida demonstrates again that he is one of the most discerning (and provocative) observers of the great metropolitan migrations of the past 60 years."
—Governor John Hickenlooper, Colorado

"Cites are engines for prosperity and progress, but it's essential that the benefits extend far and wide. Florida proposes promising ideas for building stronger cities that offer greater opportunities for all."—Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City

"Richard Florida is the great pioneer thinker who first explained how the influx of creative people was reviving cities. Now he takes the next step: looking for ways to make this urbanism more inclusive."—Walter Isaacson

"This is the book we have been waiting for. Richard Florida is the greatest American urbanist of our time....This is an indispensable read for policy makers, students, educators, and all urban dwellers alike."
—Mayor Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles

"A sweeping narrative of the most significant human movement of our times: global urbanization. Richard Florida lays out with unassailable facts and clear vision the convergence of an urgent human development—the drive for more livable cities and the quest for a more sustainable planet. Clear, compelling, and full of vision."
—Governor Martin O'Malley, Maryland

"Like the superstar cities it describes, this book is dense, complex and stimulating. Florida's well-researched and fluent exposé of inequality is a wake-up call to all the major actors engaged in planning, designing and managing cities in the 21st century."
—Ricky Burdett, Professor of Urban Studies, London School of Economics

"The New Urban Crisis is well worth reading for the original research, clear-headed critique, and the skilled analysis of solid data."—New York Journal of Books

"The New Urban Crisis is underpinned by reams of data breezily and readably presented."—Miami Herald

From the Publisher

03/27/2017
Urban studies expert Florida (The Great Reset), who first gained acclaim studying the ascendancy of the “creative class,” now explores the broader effects of its rise in this timely, data-rich, and accessible work. Florida notes that while people fare better economically in large, dense cities, those cities are also experiencing rising inequality, housing costs, and economic and racial segregation. Moreover, these problems are spreading to the suburbs, the onetime model for improved living standards. These divisions are particularly strong in “superstar cities” such as New York, San Francisco, and London, where concentrated wealth makes the urban core inaccessible to all but the most privileged people. A series of maps show how service workers’ neighborhoods have been steadily pushed to the periphery. This worrisome dynamic isn’t confined to North America and Western Europe, as Florida’s research shows. He recommends changing tax schemes to reflect the value of urban land, rather than the property developed on top of it; intensifying support for mass transit; increasing affordable rental housing in urban core areas; and focusing on schools and better wage conditions in the poorest neighborhoods. These prescriptions are all sound but—in the current political climate—particularly difficult to achieve. Agent: Jim Levine, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

03/15/2017
There is a new urban crisis impacting cities and suburbs, maintains Florida (director, Martin Prosperity Inst., Univ. of Toronto; The Rise of the Creative Class). The author considers such issues as increasing inequality, rising housing prices, economic and racial segregation, spatial inequality, and entrenched poverty. He concludes that a "winner-take-all urbanism" is creating a growing gulf between "superstar cities" that have high concentrations of talented people and economic resources, and areas that do not. This "clustering force" is seen as creating "areas of concentrated affluence and concentrated poverty," and leading to the shrinking of middle-class neighborhoods. Florida offers several solutions, along with supporting documentation, that will ensure growth and prosperity for a larger segment of the population. Some of these ideas include building more affordable rental housing in central locations, switching from a property tax to a land value tax, and having the minimum wage reflect the local cost of living. Social theorists may find fault with the conclusions and proposed remedies, but urban planners should consider the case being made for the need to address a new urban crisis. VERDICT A thought-provoking work for those interested in all stages of urban planning and placemaking.—Karen Venturella Malnati, Union Cty. Coll. Libs, Cranford, NJ

Library Journal

2017-02-06
A prominent urban theorist examines the hidden impacts of gentrification and innovation on (mostly) American cities.Prolific sociologist Florida (Director, Martin Prosperity Institute/Univ. of Toronto; The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, 2010, etc.) builds on his earlier work about the "creative" economy to argue that his optimism about cities' recoveries from the era of white flight and neglect must now be tempered with recognition of "a dark side to the urban resurgence and back-to-the-city movement." He wryly acknowledges backlash against his own ideas and the gentrifying takeovers of blue-collar areas: "What troubled me most of all was the decline and disappearance of the great middle-class neighborhoods." Florida organizes his discussion in thematic chapters, trying to nonjudgmentally demonstrate how well-intentioned elites have managed to repair once-blighted cityscapes while still harming their cultural vernacular, adding further stressors to the lives of the working poor and minority groups in now-coveted neighborhoods. In "The Inequality of Cities," he explores how an economic recovery fueled by tech and media "creatives" inevitably worsens inequality, noting, "our most liberal cities also number among the most unequal." In "The Bigger Sort" and "The Patchwork Metropolis," the author presents data to suggest that racial and class segregation are actually hardening, particularly in glamorous tech cities (San Francisco) and so-called global cities (New York), due to housing prices. Florida also explores the disturbing irony that classic urban pathologies of violence, drugs, and malaise have migrated to cities' suburban belts: "Large swaths of them are places of economic decline and distress." Florida draws subtle, thoughtful inferences from his research, and he writes in slick, approachable prose overly studded with phrases that aspire to be intellectual buzzwords (the title is repeated frequently). Throughout, the author remains an idealistic, perceptive observer of cities' transformations. A sobering account of inequality and spatial conflict rising against a cultural backdrop of urban change.

Kirkus Reviews