The New Urban Crisis Press

getAbstract review of The New Urban Crisis.

The title of urbanism theorist Richard Florida’s latest book–The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It–outlines the defining tensions in our cities today. In earlier writing, Florida defined many of the progressive notions about how the creative class could drive social and economic progress, but these notions have fallen short. In this book, he reckons with the failings and promise of his theories, and suggests course corrections to help cities become more equitable.

In the spirit of the winter reading season, The Hill Times trotted down to the Hill to ask Parliamentarians what books they were plowing through, some of which may appear in our upcoming books special Dec. 18.

Economic inequality is a well-known issue in the United States and around the developed world. Not only has a gulf grown between the haves and the have-nots, but so has the gap between the haves and the have-mores.

Interview with Noah Smith of Bloomberg View on his new book, The New Urban Crisis.

Nearly 20 years ago, urban theorist Richard Florida identified a group of highly-skilled workers whose outsized contributions were driving economic change and development in cities around the globe. His book, “the Rise of the Creative Class” detailed the characteristics of this type of worker and more importantly how to nurture and attract them. Its core findings were adopted by mayors worldwide. The trends identified in Florida’s research contributed to the seismic shifts, growth and revitalization in downtowns large and small. Those changes have not been painless for all involved and have lead to what Florida, in his new book, calls the “New Urban Crisis.” So when Richard Florida asks What the Future, he wonders if developers are recognizing the new realities.

Fortunately, when it comes to cities, there is Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, which explained how a new generation of people was reviving ailing industrial centres. Now, he is explaining how that trend is, among other factors, helping to intensify the issues confronting many urban centres. The New Urban Crisis is subtitled “Gentrification, Housing Bubbles, Growing Inequality and What We Can Do About It”, and, while Florida’s analysis of how we got here is unsurprisingly insightful, it is that last bit that is crucial.

Urban studies theorist Richard Florida joins Aimee Keane to discuss his latest book, “The New Urban Crisis”.

This week, I’m talking to one of the stars of the cities world. Richard Florida is a professor of urban studies at the University of Toronto, as well as the co-founder and editor-at-large of CityMetric’s esteemed American rival, CityLab.

Speaker(s): Professor Richard Florida | In recent years, the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline.

Interview with Richard Florida on his new book, The New Urban Crisis along with a discussion on Edmonton.

Richard Florida is one of the most influential thinkers about cities in the postwar world. For almost two decades he championed the creative classes – artists, tech and knowledge workers and entrepreneurs – who he said would revolutionise our cities and stimulate economic growth.

Today he has changed his mind.

Florida has become quite concerned that the winners of the urban revival over the last 15-20 years — cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston and Washington — have become victims of their own success as they’ve become high-priced meccas specifically tailored to the needs and wishes of the creative class.

Like the issues Richard Florida identifies In his latest book The New Urban Crisis, his solutions are many, varied and intimidating.

The rising cost of housing in America’s most desirable “creative” cities troubles Richard Florida, urbanist thinker and author. In those cities, the cost of housing is affordable only to the creative class themselves. The rest of the working population — those in service industry or manufacturing — struggle to keep up with rising housing prices.

Richard Florida is an academic, author, and leading voice on all things urban studies. His Rise of the Creative Class, first published in 2002, predicted a resurgence in city centers due to a new class of creative “knowledge workers.” His insights helped to catalyze scores of major city redevelopment efforts. Hailed as a far-reaching seer for predicting the tech and arts-driven boom in American cities, Florida’s work has recently been called into question for the unexpected consequences of urban renewal, in particular gentrification and its attendant income inequality, which has pushed lower income and diverse populations from cities throughout the United States.

The revival of great urban centres including New York, Los Angeles and London has caused unprecedented inequality and has led to the populism of Donald Trump, according to Richard Florida.

“I think this is the central crisis of capitalism,” Florida said in a video interview last week.

NEW YORK — In his 2002 book “The Rise of the Creative Class,” Richard Florida argued that in order to save themselves from post-industrial ruin, cities needed to attract the best young talent in computer programming, finance, media and the arts. Some cities followed his prescription and made themselves more vibrant by creating more walkable, pedestrian-friendly streets, caf and restaurant areas that acted as lively gathering places, refurbished parks, and art and music scenes. Those cities became magnets for what Florida called the “creative class,” but the consequences as Florida soon discovered were complex and not all of them worth cheering.

Just a few years ago, many urban planners and theorists described the next-generation of cities as hopeful harbingers of a new world filled with less consumption and increased opportunity, a remarkable combination of efficiency, sustainability, and scale. After a decades-long slide sparked by the urban riots in the 1960s, cities were on the comeback trail. Or so we thought.

Richard Florida, City Lab Co-Founder and editor at large, sees the contemporary American city as a battleground for class conflict, and believes that the solution is more urbanism—specifically, what Florida terms “urbanism for all.”

Just a few years ago, many urban planners and theorists described the next-generation of cities as hopeful harbingers of a new world filled with less consumption and increased opportunity, a remarkable combination of efficiency, sustainability, and scale. After a decades-long slide sparked by the urban riots in the 1960s, cities were on the comeback trail. Or so we thought.

Richard Florida, City Lab Co-Founder and editor at large, sees the contemporary American city as a battleground for class conflict, and believes that the solution is more urbanism—specifically, what Florida terms “urbanism for all.” Florida’s recently published book, The New Urban Crisis, reexamines many of the ideas laid out in his bestselling 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class. According to Florida, the old urban crisis was based around the city center.

Richard Florida, City Lab Co-Founder and editor at large, sees the contemporary American city as a battleground for class conflict, and believes that the solution is more urbanism—specifically, what Florida terms “urbanism for all.” Florida’s recently published book, The New Urban Crisis, reexamines many of the ideas laid out in his bestselling 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class. According to Florida, the old urban crisis was based around the city center.

In the first chapter, Richard Florida explains that peaks and valleys are part of the lifecycle of any society as “obsolete and dysfunctional systems and practices” collapse, replaced by “the seeds of innovation and invention, of creativity and entrepreneurship.” The First Great Reset occurred in the 1870s, the Second in the 1930s, and a Third is now developing. “The promise of the current Reset is the opportunity for a life made better not by ownership of real estate, appliances, cars, and all manner of material goods, but of greater flexibility and lower levels of debt, of more time with family and friends, greater promise of personal development, and access to more and better experiences. All organisms and all systems experience the cycles of life, death, and rebirth.”

According to New York Times columnist David Brooks, socioeconomic segregation is ruining America.
“Housing and construction rules that keep the poor and less educated away from places with good schools and good job opportunities…have a devastating effect on economic growth nationwide,” Brooks wrote in a much-derided July 11 column. (Derided not for the sentiment outlined above so much as the evidence, which involved Italian cold cuts as a restrictive cultural signifier for the American upper middle class.)

Fifteen years ago Richard Florida, one of the world’s leading urbanists, urged city leaders to make urban areas more attractive to the creative class; college-educated millennials, entrepreneurs and artists.

In his book, The Rise of the Creative Class, he argued that these people would help revitalize blighted urban areas and help under resourced communities.

orty years after the decline of the steel industry, Pittsburgh has emerged from the ashes of deindustrialization to become the new Emerald City. Its formidable skyline gleams with homegrown names—PPG, UPMC, and PNC. Touted as the “most livable city” by the likes of The Economist and Forbes, its highly literate and educated workforce has contributed to a robust and diverse local economy known as a center for technology, health care, and bio-science. It is a leader in startup businesses. Uber and Ford’s announcement in 2016 that they would base development of their self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, rather than in Silicon Valley, is a telling example of the power of high-tech image and low costs.

NEW HAVEN – Inequality is usually measured by comparing incomes across households within a country. But there is also a different kind of inequality: in the affordability of homes across cities. The impact of this form of inequality is no less worrying.

The first interpretation is that Florida responding to his critics that the secret to urban prosperity is to focus on attracting creative class employees and employers. The book is something of a mea culpa that Florida overestimated the ability of cultural amenities to drive urban success, and underestimated how the growth of urban knowledge economies can serve to drive economic inequality.

Author, thought-leader and researcher: Richard Florida is one of the world’s leading urbanists. He is a researcher and professor, serving as University Professor and Director of Cities at the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto

Professor Richard Florida has studied the geography of the tech industry for decades and sees a crisis in “winner-take-all” urbanism happening in tech-friendly cities. The tech industry can fix this problem, though, with several key strategies.

Last week, the San Jose City Council voted to start negotiations with Google to sell the company 23 acres of city owned land near the Diridon Caltrain Station. The purchase is part of Google’s plan to build a massive transit oriented village that would include six to eight million square feet of office and retail space and bring up to 20,000 Google employees to the city. Community activists are concerned about pressures the development may exert on wages and housing prices and the overall impact it may have on San Jose’s culture. In this hour, we’ll learn about Google’s possible San Jose campus and we want to hear from you — if your town is home to a large company — what are the benefits and drawbacks?

What policy priorities are needed for global cities to drive more sustainable and inclusive prosperity? How does today’s technology revolution affect how cities build a strong, enduring, middle class? How are cities providing access to the skills and training needed for city youth to fill the jobs of tomorrow? Can global cities grow a thriving creative class without a new urban crisis perpetuating small areas of affluence aside much larger areas of disadvantage?

Richard Florida became famous among people who think about cities 15 years ago with “The Rise of the Creative Class.” He predicted that postindustrial cities would succeed by focusing on the three Ts: technology, talent and tolerance. People in the “creative class” benefit from density, he said, and would move to places where laws are kind to tech entrepreneurs, where museums provide an evening out and where gay people are comfortable. Indeed, New York recovered its private-sector jobs nearly four years faster than the nation after the Great Recession.

The unaffordable urban paradise. Richard Florida says that startups are now tearing cities apart.

On Monday, November 7, 2016, I made what I thought were the final edits to the manuscript of my latest book, The New Urban Crisis, and sent it off to my publisher. The next day, my wife and I invited our American friends to come to our house in Toronto to celebrate what we were all but certain would be Hillary Clinton’s election. We pulled out all the stops. We hung up red, white and blue bunting, and dressed our baby and our puppy to match. My wife’s sisters supplied us with life-sized cutouts of Clinton and Donald Trump, which they had literally “muled” over the border from the Detroit suburbs. At 6 p.m., when the polls began to close, we turned on the TV to watch the early returns. By 8:30, the party had come to a crashing stop. I spent the rest of the night glued to Twitter; I hardly even noticed when the last of our guests departed.

Richard Florida, urban studies professor at the University of Toronto and author of “The New Urban Crisis” joins MSNBC’s Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle to discuss how cities are increasing inequality and how pockets of concentrated wealth and poverty are squeezing out the middle class.

Observations by Andrew M Manshel about what makes great Downtowns and Public Spaces.The website of PLACE MASTER PROJECTS providing practical advisory services for the implementation of downtown revitalization and the operation of public spaces.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV Canada’s Amanda Lang, author and professor Richard Florida speaks about the evolution of the urban revival and the super crisis of success that’s coming to Canada with Donald Trump as President of the U.S. (Source: Bloomberg)

University of Toronto Professor Richard Florida spoke with USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee’s David Plazas and Lipscomb University’s Kristine LaLonde about his latest book “The New Urban Crisis.” We explored whether Nashville is in an urban crisis and what to do about it.

This is an addendum to a previously published broadcast recorded on May 19, 2017. I explored with University of Toronto Professor and Richard Florida some of his proposed solutions he outlines in his latest book “The New Urban Crisis.” These include how to transform low wage service work into middle-class family-supporting work and how to update the tax code to make it less regressive and more fair. Dr. Florida also shared his blunt observations on how to empower local communities and address the divide in America between urban, rural and suburban communities.

Every time I have visited London over the past several years, I invariably hear the same story from my taxi driver. As we drive past Hyde Park on the way to or from the airport, he will say, “You see that building?” nodding towards a modern glass tower next to the Mandarin Oriental hotel. “Some of the apartments cost £50 million or more. And no one lives there—it’s always dark.”

Richard Florida became synonymous with urbanism a decade-and-a-half ago when he wrote a largely upbeat book, “Rise of the Creative Class,” about the renaissance taking place in major cities across the globe.

In his latest literary work, Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto and a global research professor at New York University, has taken a more sobering look at some of the challenges facing urbanism.

The US City of developer Richard Florida woke fifteen years ago cities around the world to detect the “creative class” in terms of the opportunities provided by economic success. In his latest work pessimistic Florida to declare the message of the new urban crisis that concerns the inner urban segregation. An interesting question is which indicators this crisis can be accessed and find solutions.

On a recent Saturday morning 30 Nashville residents spent two hours participating in a book discussion on how to solve the city’s growth challenges.

There is no pleasing some people. During the 1960s and 1970s, the wealthy fled the west’s big cities to escape crime and urban blight. In the US it was known as “white flight”. Cities such as New York and London were in headlong fiscal decline.

Dr. Richard Florida, author 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”, and University Professor and Director of Cities at the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto joined the program to discuss the correlation between gentrification and health inequities.

Fri, Jun 2: Toronto continues to grow as a city, but our middle class is shrinking. How do we fix big city problems? Farah Nasser caught up with Richard Florida, one of the world’s foremost experts in urban livability.

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.

Governments around the world are trying to create business clusters to grow their economies.

We all know about Silicon Valley, Hollywood and even the Barossa Valley, but there are lesser known hubs as well, such as Schwenningen on the edge of the Black Forest that produces a huge percentage of the world’s surgical instruments.

Alison speaks to urban theorist and author Richard Florida about importance of cities globally and the importance of dealing with deepening inequalities within them.

Rodrigo Tavares, author of “Paradiplomacy – Cities and States as Global Players”, speaks about the role cities and other sub-national governments can play in the area of foreign affairs.

In 2002, Florida’s best-selling book, “The Rise of the Creative Class,” focused on a demographic shift happening around the world — an urban revival sparked by young, creative, tech-savvy professionals. Now, 15 years later, Florida has written a far more sobering book, “The New Urban Crisis.” It explores a darker side of the urban renaissance, something he calls “winner-take-all urbanism.” Florida sees deepening inequality in our cities, growing segregation and poverty, and the disappearance of the middle class. Florida will discuss his new book, the dimensions of the challenge facing not only cities but suburbs, and what can be done about it.

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody”—this is a quote that appears before the introduction section of Richard Florida’s new book. Florida is concerned that cities are failing from been inclusive. The benefits of cities are not reaching everyone.

Richard Florida may be the most widely read author on the subject of cities these days, and probably has been since the turn of the millennium. He first became known for cheerleading the idea that if cities attracted what he called “the creative class” — professionals in the arts, in the media, in tech — they would prosper. And so they did — with a vengeance.

Danish newspaper Politiken on ‘The New Urban Crisi’

The New Urban Crisis Richard Florida talked about his book The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class-and What We Can Do About It, in which he examines the challenges cities are facing today.

In 2016, the city of Atlanta launched the Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative, a program providing 15 women business owners free office space and resources to grow their businesses.

The young, the educated and the affluent are moving back to big cities across Canada, and reversing decades of urban decline.

While this might not seem like a big deal, Richard Florida author of The New Urban Crisis, explains why this trend is actually causing problems.

Richard Florida admits that his career trajectory as an urban theorist owes as much to luck as it does to smarts. The author of the best-selling and widely influential The Rise of the Creative Class says, “I’d actually published three books beforehand, but nobody talks about those. My publisher thought that this ‘creative class’ idea might catch on in some way, and as it turns out, newspaper and magazine editors thought so, too.”

For more than a decade, the transformation of blighted urban areas into glistening global beacons for trendy coffee shops and well-heeled whites has commanded national headlines. Rarely do the articles reveal the behind-the-scenes machinations that result in the systematic displacement of tens of thousands of often black and brown poor, working- and middle-class people who vanish, seemingly overnight, followed by their churches, cultural institutions, beauty salons and other haunts.

Sky-high housing prices. Rising inequality. Segregation. Gentrification. The back-to-the-city movement that has revitalized urban areas and driven growth also has a dark side, according to Richard Florida. He joins The Agenda to discuss his book, “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 is the author 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.” Here, the urbanist explains how to choose the best place to live for your career. Whether you’re fresh out of college or you’ve just had your first child, Florida has an idea of where you should be looking to live. Following is a transcript of the video.

Keeping cities affordable for all
Author Richard Florida talks about ‘The New Urban Crisis’

(Audio Link : http://www.creativeclass.com/richard_florida/multimedia_showcase#wharton_ Americans seem to be curbing their love affair with the suburbs as millennials move to major metropolitan areas for the excitement and amenities of city living. But this shift is creating challenges of its own — increasingly unaffordable housing, rising inequality and strains on aging infrastructure, among other consequences. Author Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto, calls it The New Urban Crisis, which is also the title of his book. He discussed his findings on the Knowledge@Wharton show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111.

Americans seem to be curbing their love affair with the suburbs as millennials move to major metropolitan areas for the excitement and amenities of city living. But this shift is creating challenges of its own — increasingly unaffordable housing, rising inequality and strains on aging infrastructure, among other consequences. Author Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto, calls it The New Urban Crisis, which is also the title of his book. He discussed his findings on the Knowledge@Wharton show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111.

A little more than 14 years ago, government planners and enthusiastic citizens listened eagerly to a presentation by Carnegie Mellon University professor Richard Florida, whose ideas on the “creative class” they were sure would help transform this city.

When Richard Florida, the 21st century urban studies guru, speaks, lots of people listen. Ears really perked up when Florida admitted, “I got it wrong that the creative class could magically restore our cities, become a new middle class like my father’s and were going to live happily forever after. I could not have anticipated among all this urban growth and revival there was a dark side to the urban creative revolution, a very deep dark side.” (Houston Chronicle, Oct 24, 2016).

Richard Florida is famous for popularizing the theory that creativity helps spur urban development: Artists and other bohemian types make places fun and attractive, and knowledge workers cluster in open-minded, tolerant communities with culture and the amenities that generally come with it. These advantages can compound over time, creating super-cities like New York, London, and Los Angeles, where rents are high but productivity and incomes are even higher.

Interview with Michiel Couzy, senior editor of Het Parool, the main newspaper in Amsterdam on The New Urban Crisis.

No one has done more to promote the return of educated professionals to cities than Richard Florida. In his 2002 classic The Rise of the Creative Class, Florida argued that “creative class” professionals like engineers, artists, architects, and college professors held the key to revitalizing America’s cities. He encouraged cities to cater to the tastes of these creative professionals by developing walkable urban neighborhoods well-served by transit and with ample amenities.

Ten years ago, author Richard Florida coined the term “creative class” to refer to the young, talented and affluent people who he believed would revive North American cities and lead them to grow and prosper.

In today’s San Francisco there is hardly any room for the middle class. Soon-to-be tech millionaires leave the city each morning on the Google Bus, headed to company headquarters in Silicon Valley, while the homeless and the permanently poor watch them pass. The Bay Area is home to more than 71 billionaires (second in the world only to the New York metro area) while about 14,000

“Today’s urban rentiers have more to gain from increasing the scarcity of usable land than from maximizing its productive and economically beneficial uses,” writes Florida, also noting that over a 50-year period, over half of New York City’s economic output was consumed by artificially high housing costs, to the benefit of what Adam Smith might have called “indolent” landlords (themselves often corporations, REITs and other wealth funds).

There has been a buzz in the past few weeks regarding a new book by the urban-studies theorist Richard Florida, the “New Urban Crisis.” Remember, Mr. Florida? He’s the one who extolled places such as Boston and Austin as the hope for America’s economy. In his previous seminal work, “The Rise of the Creative Class,” Florida had this to say about Boulder: “Boulder has reached this beautiful sweet spot, where it has many advantages of a university town — tech and talent and openness — but without many of the costs and traffic and congestion that may disadvantage incumbent centers of innovation.”

When I was in college and first became politically aware, so to speak, was in the ’80s when Ronald Reagan was president. Many people from that era remember that perhaps the principal economic theory driving his election in 1980 was the theory of supply side economcs, or that lower barriers on

Lesson #2: Superstar cities

Toronto is tied with Stockholm for 10th on the list of superstar cities compiled by the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute, where Florida is Director of Cities (New York, London and Tokyo are the top three). These cities benefit from the clustering effect of individual talent, firms and industries (especially tech).

When Richard Florida coined the term “creative class” in 2002, he painted a very clear picture for urban revitalization. His book The Rise Of The Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community And Everyday Life, almost reads like a textbook for mayors. All cities had to do was lure a few artists into live-work lofts in an old warehouse district, maybe convince a startup—they weren’t even called startups then, were they?—to set up shop in a post-industrial neighborhood. Voila! Florida’s prescription for city success.

Lesson #1: What is the “new urban crisis”?

The University of Toronto’s urban theorist Richard Florida is best known to many for his 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, which predicted future economic growth as the result of creativity and innovation rather than raw materials and industrial models of the past.

In 2002, Richard Florida became America’s best known urbanist with the publication of his book, The Rise of the Creative Class. In it, Florida posited that the “creative class,” a group which included artists, scientists and engineers, as well as educated knowledge sector professionals such as lawyers and finance workers, was the main driver of cultural and economic flourishing in America’s cities. The theory was enticing to many urban planners and municipal politicians, and cities across the country aimed to follow Florida’s advice on becoming “creative cities.”

It’s been 15 consequential years since urban evangelist Richard Florida first helped popularize and propel the U.S. urban renaissance with his gospel of the creative class. It held that the tech-consumed, enterprising hip young people flocking back to cities were the nation’s new economic driver, and that luring more of them to every burgh was the key to broad prosperity.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/in-depth/article147246494.html#storylink=cpy

Urban theorist Richard Florida’s 2002 book, “The Rise of the Creative Class” has been both prescient and prescriptive for many city centers in America.

Florida’s book predicted that a class of young, educated millennials who are employed in mostly creative fields would flood deserted urban cores looking for inexpensive housing, thereby changing the fortunes of these neighborhoods.

IN 2013 PROTESTS broke out in Oakland, California, directed against the private buses that shuttle tech workers from pricey homes in the city’s gentrifying areas to jobs in Silicon Valley. “You live your comfortable lives,” read a flyer that protesters handed out to passengers, “surrounded by poverty, homelessness, and death, seemingly oblivious to everything around you, lost in the big bucks and success.”

The United States is seeing a new crisis in terms of the middle class, and Ann Arbor is more at-risk than some communities, according to a University of Toronto professor and author.

Back in 2002, urban theorist Richard Florida set the agenda for numerous cities with his book “The Rise of the Creative Class.”

The book made the case that educated millennials in fields such as software design, technology, art and education were the future of cities. They would enhance prosperity and bring the middle class back into urban cores in districts such as Detroit’s Midtown and downtown.

From his office in the Miami Beach Urban Studios, urbanist Richard Florida wrote hundreds of drafts of his latest book “The New Urban Crisis.” It’s an idea that was born in a deleted post-script of Florida’s previous book, “Rise of the Creative Class.”

For over 30 years, urbanist and author Richard Florida has observed the life of cities, and has come up with solutions on how to make them work. In his new book, The New Urban Crisis, Florida argues that cities will have to turn to themselves to help themselves and to make them more inclusive for all.

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. The very same forces that power the growth of our great cities have generated a crisis of gentrification, rising inequality and increasingly unaffordable urban housing.

Richard Florida, whose influential ‘Rise of the Creative Class’ pegged cities’ future to their success in cultivating that group, says a new urban crisis is spreading as a few metros win almost all the marbles. But something deeper than city-level policies is at work, too.

In The New Urban Crisis Richard Florida, an American University professor and current director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto, compellingly and convincingly defines the problems facing today’s cities and their suburban counterparts.

For over 30 years, urbanist and author Richard Florida has observed the life of cities, and has come up with solutions on how to make them work. In his new book, The New Urban Crisis, Florida argues that cities will have to turn to themselves to help themselves and to make them more inclusive for all.

In 2017, the cacophony of Toronto’s urban discourse—and urban realities—makes understanding the city a daunting prospect. The skyrocketing rents, record waitlists for affordable housing, growing economic disparities, and inadequate transit, are being met with staggering development and densification, growing economic status, and a waxing global cachet that’s rivalled by few cities. Our city leads the world in livability and human development indices, while simultaneously facing an affordability crisis that threatens to make good urban housing the sole purview of the rich.

Columbus remains a beacon in the Rust Belt, known nationally for its fast-growing population and robust economy. But a researcher who studies urban disparity says the city also stands at a dangerous crossroads, one that threatens to choke off the path to a middle-class livelihood.

Anton Diego, born in Moscow but raised in Havana and Spain, runs EveryMundo, a Miami-based marketing-technology company serving the travel and hospitality industry.

Richard Florida is feeling reflective. He became the equivalent of an urban planning rock star with the publication of his book The Rise of the Creative Class 15 years ago. In the intervening years, the book’s thesis—attract young creative professionals and your city will flourish—seems to have proven both portentous and problematic.

I was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1957, back when it was a thriving city, bustling with iconic
department stores, morning and evening newspapers, libraries and museums, a busy downtown,

Richard Florida is a professor and writer and his latest book, The New Urban Crisis, looks at the way cities can expand and grow with technology and innovation. You can pick up his book now.

Steve Inskeep talks to author Richard Florida — who has made a career studying cities, both culturally and economically. Florida’s new book is called The New Urban Crisis.

Critic Richard Florida predicted the urban resurgence—what surprised him was the reaction of the displaced.

In recent years, Indianapolis has enjoyed a remarkable boom in high-tech industry, adding technology jobs at a rate faster than Silicon Valley, amid a broader upswing in innovation-based employment.

With Jane Jacobs gone, there aren’t too many celebrity urban-studies theorists left in the world—but Richard Florida is one. From his perch at the University of Toronto, where he has run the Martin Prosperity Institute since moving to Canada from the U.S. in 2007, he has promulgated his theories about the way so-called “creative class” workers (high-earning types whose jobs require them to be inventive, or to draw on deep reserves of knowledge) drive prosperity in the urban areas they populate.

When we moved to Toronto from Washington, D.C. about a decade ago, my wife and I were shocked by the cost of housing. Since we arrived, Toronto’s housing prices have risen by more than 200 per cent. In the past year alone, prices have increased by 34 per cent.

Richard Florida outlines the steps that must be taken to if Toronto and other superstar cities are to make cities more livable and equitable for the middle and lower classes.

The pressing need for inclusivity to be part of urban revitalization was a key topic at ULI’s recent Mid-Winter meeting in Washington, D.C., attended by the Institute’s global trustees, with former ULI visiting fellow Richard Florida and ULI trustee Edward Glaeser leading a discussion on the future of cities.

The urban revival of the past decade has been nothing short of remarkable. Young, affluent, highly educated people have flowed back to downtown cores in cities like London, New York, San Francisco and Vancouver. Good jobs, better restaurants, higher tax revenues and even high-tech startups have followed.

In an excerpt from his new book, Richard Florida warns of “the central crisis of our times”—the growing cleavage between superstar cities and those left behind.

Steve Inskeep talks to author Richard Florida — who has made a career studying cities, both culturally and economically. Florida’s new book is called The New Urban Crisis.

Richard Florida has extended his series that began with publication of “The Rise of the Creative Class” in 2002. Pittsburgh is far from unfamiliar with the author. Some may be shocked to realize it has been 12 years since the former Carnegie Mellon University professor departed. He is currently based at the University of Toronto. He has repeatedly referenced his home for two decades, and Pittsburgh continues to impact Mr. Florida’s views on all things city.