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

Narrated by: Traber Burns

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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2017 Richard Florida (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Important Issue

This is a well researched and thought out book that discusses a very important issue of our time. However, it felt a lot like a textbook and was difficult to stick with at times.

Lacking in equity analysis

The author elucidates powerful concepts like the gap between "super star cities" and other cities and "winner take all urbanism." He acknowledges the issue of concentrated poverty and suburban poverty, but his treatment of these issues isn't as thorough as his treatment of broader concepts related to the power of cities and the need to increase density or city living. One leaves with a great observation but no blueprint for addressing it besides the usual kinds of policy prescriptions. It's valuable for understanding urban development but the analysis for addressing race, class and equity is lacking.

Moderately interesting - but nothing new

The book presents well researched and factually accurate information. I bought it after reading a review in London Review of Books, which to be fair did state that the impact of the work was minimal, nothing compared to the first book. I would have to agree. I listened, and absorbed - and there are a few nuggets, but overall, I was not enthralled, and the information provided did not revolutionize my world view of urban development.

Good story but

I always find it distracting to have numbers read aloud to me, the important statistics seemed to get lost in the audible version. Don't know if that's just a personal thing or if others have the same problem

Information

The book was informative, it gave me some information that I didn't have previously.

I agree with his assessment 70%, the 30% I see differently. But overall the book is good.

Nodes are better than core

I agree with Florida on many counts, but I do also disagree with some major ones. I agree that there is a new urban crisis we can see this through our GIS census data, what we do not see though is that more density equals more equitable ability, to disseminate costs real estate needs to be able to spread, his inverse tax to increase density would seem like a good step forward it might be, but it could also create very small units and over density. though I have no data to back this up I believe there is a critical mass of human beings which is why nodes and edge cities well connected through transit and through digital infrastructure large scale intranets to assist with security issues that we face in the modern era would be a far better solution. multiple nodes of walkability and light rail are far better than a hyper dense New York City.

My final advocacy is that urban agriculture and token economics are the way to build a social a social ladder out of poverty. It is akin to how we seed rain by releasing silver into the air for water to condense around, so too urban agriculture and the kitchens to prepare and consume, seed community, which is truly what we need more than unstructured density which seemingly is what Florida would have, but maybe not. $0.02 from an Austin Texas land planner.

Change in urban development ideology.

Follow Florida's transitory and visionary logic. It is scientific, rational and plausible. He and his researchers have laid out practical arguments and methodologies to attain sustainable communities.

Missing important aspects of book

Thank you, I just concluded listening to my sixth non fiction book from Audible.

Unfortunately, all the Audible products thus far omit key supporting information provided by the author in digital and print versions. Without access to the book’s published figures and illustrations, footnotes and the related references found in the book’s index, readers are denied access to important information.

Please know I am grateful for the ability to be able to listen and learn while I’m on the run or in darkness with ear buds as my partner sleeps. With Audible I have added valuable time for my research projects. I hope you find a way to include all the contents of the books you offer.

I hope you agree that as long as this omission exists the Audible book products are unsatisfactory for non fiction books.

I would be glad to test out beta versions that might provide supporting access to pdf to be contacted for value added solutions to solve the problem.

Joseph Cincotta
[e-mail]

Well done, comprehensive, and informative

Very well written, extremly comprehensive a great explanation of the importants of cities and urbanism to the economy. A equitable, just explanation of racial and poor inequalities in cities with balanced recommendations of what to do about the struggle to improve condtions for all.

Poor understanding of economics, unisightful

I was hopeful for this book, but the author seems to have little understanding of or respect for economic theory and it seriously hamstrings his findings. Instead of any sort of intelligible theory for how cities he seems to just assume causation from correlation wherever it supports progressive ideology. Most of the rest of his points are obvious to the point of meaninglessness like 'rich people cluster along attractive amenities like waterfronts.' His long descriptions of cities are dull and based on a strange and outdated distinction between classes of jobs that he fails to argue any justification for. He occasionally argues for good ideas like the land value tax, but mostly just dogmatically argues for tired neoliberal ideas advocated by the Democratic party. Since he fails to lay out any sort of compelling theory for why cities are the way they are, these arguments seem disjointed and only tied to city planning by the most tenuous strands of logic.

This book does not give a compelling account of the political dynamics that forced the poor into poor areas and helped the wealthy wall-off rich areas. It does not effectively describe the economic dynamics that make clustered firms more competitive, It fails to give a detailed description of any path for local and national policy to break the deadlock held by NIMBY residents. This book failed to be both descriptive and prescriptive in an interesting and meaningful way.