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

Richard Florida

3.51 · Rating details · 960 ratings · 136 reviews

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 force ...more

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Hardcover, First Edition (U.S.), 336 pages

Published April 11th 2017 by Basic Books (first published April 2017)

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

May 09, 2017 Matt Lennert rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017, social-learning

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 physic 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. ...more

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May 02, 2017 Graeme Roberts rated it it was ok

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, sc 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? ...more

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Jan 08, 2018 Mehrsa rated it really liked it

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 ...more

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May 24, 2017 Lauren rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, cities

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 phenome 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... ...more

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Jul 21, 2018 Katheryn Thompson rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: published-2010s, non-fiction, four-stars, own, 2018-reads, first-by-author

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 o ...more

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Nov 26, 2017 Tara Brabazon rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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 ...more

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Mar 23, 2018 Anthony rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: america, urban_policy

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 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. ...more

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Jul 12, 2017 Anne V. rated it it was ok

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) ...more

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Sep 06, 2017 Fraser Kinnear rated it liked it

Shelves: politics-and-policy, race

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.
- 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
...more

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May 17, 2018 Eric rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction

I'll be honest and, right at the top, say that the only reason I liked it was because he said a lot of things that I agree with. But this was far short of an excellent book. First off, the technical issues: a whole chapter of charts and all the text did was reiterate what was in the charts. Now, if that was done for accessibility purposes (making it useable for the sight-impaired), nice, but it was really annoying for those of us that do see. Charts sum up things very nicely. If you're going to ...more

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Dec 20, 2018 Ailith Twinning rated it did not like it · review of another edition

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 tu 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. ...more

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Mar 08, 2019 Jim Robles rated it it was amazing

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 ...more

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Jun 20, 2021 Moritz Mueller-Freitag rated it really liked it

Shelves: pandemic-book-club, new-york

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, 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. ...more

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Sep 10, 2017 Art rated it liked it

Shelves: cities, read-in-2017, sociology, published-2017

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 thi 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. ...more

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May 18, 2018 Michael Siliski rated it really liked it

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 ...more

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Feb 18, 2019 Clare rated it really liked it

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 ...more

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Feb 07, 2018 tJacksonrichards rated it liked it

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 watershed 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. ...more

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Oct 19, 2018 Brian rated it liked it

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. ...more

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Jun 04, 2017 Christina Wiseman rated it really liked it

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.

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Nov 27, 2018 Alex rated it liked it

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.

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Oct 10, 2017 Katrina Sark rated it liked it

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 ...more

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Dec 06, 2018 melhara rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: urban-planning, boring, audiobook, non-fiction, canadian, american

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 bor ...more

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Mar 14, 2017 Jenn rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-won

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. ...more

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Aug 31, 2017 Dean rated it liked it

Shelves: american-history

The initial chapters provide the data behind his research. The final 3 chapters deal with actions plans for the future. Below is a quote from Jane Jacobs on pg 177.
"To seek the 'causes' of poverty is an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes," Jane Jacob wrote. "The great cold of poverty and economic stagnation is merely the absence of economic development."

Poverty occurs in the absence of institutions that unleash the creative energy of people and neighb ...more

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Aug 12, 2018 Michael Shaw rated it it was ok

I loved the idea of this book, and still want to find a good explanation of what ails our best cities, and what we can do to fix them.

Unfortunately, Florida's book wasn't that. It started off fine, but then went off into a series of made up indices that all seemed to have normalization issues (it's hard to believe that of all the smaller cities, none of them are more extreme than the biggest few).

The proposed solutions were even worse--alternating between nationalism and federalism depending on ...more

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Apr 25, 2017 Scott Schneider rated it liked it

I was disappointed in this book. Florida crunch a lot of data but much of the book is list after list of data for different cities. And some of the maps couldn't be interpreted because they were in black and white and two different factors were indistinguishable. That said his analysis is spot on. Cities are in crisis because they are becoming unaffordable and the suburbs are dying. We are becoming more and more segregated economically and racially. We need to put more efforts into preserving af ...more

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Jan 12, 2018 Melissa rated it it was ok

Shelves: dnf

I've read 3 (I think) of Richard Florida's other books and I really enjoyed all of them. But I was bored by this book. The other books mixed made up characters with data, but this was just data. There were some very interesting facts and figures and I totally agree with his assertions but it wasn't an ethnography (so no people to root for/against) and it wasn't as entertaining as I was expecting. ...more

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Jun 29, 2018 John Behle rated it did not like it

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.

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Aug 30, 2018 MJPDX rated it really liked it

I've been a fan of Florida's writing since reading 'The Rise of the Creative Class' back in the day. This book offers an update to the overall theory as it relates to the focus of talent and income and how that relates to the movement of population to cities of the world and where that shift is taking us globally. Packed with data to make his point, the book can be a little dry but overall I thoroughly enjoyed the read. ...more

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Dec 13, 2017 Becca Dzombak rated it did not like it

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. ...more

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About Richard Florida

Richard Florida

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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 Univers ...more

Books by Richard Florida

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The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity

The Rise of the Creative Class--Revisited

The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent

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“The combination of economic inequality and economic segregation is deadly. It reinforces the advantages of those at the top while exacerbating and perpetuating the disadvantages of those at the bottom. Taken together, they shape not just inequality of economic resources, but also a more permanent and dysfunctional inequality of opportunity.” — 0 likes

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