Review by Choice Review
In 2002, Florida wrote The Rise of the Creative Class, in which he argued that the answer to urban ills was not giving tax breaks to big corporations but attracting creative people back to the cities. Fifteen years later, Florida concedes that creative people have returned to so-called superstar cities and that a rising tide has not raised all boats. Instead, the return of the creative class has created even greater inequality, as the "super-rich" are attracted to and invest in superstar cities (he identifies about 20, with New York and London being the leaders) and technology hubs, such as San Francisco, driving out the poor and middle class, who can no longer afford to live in the urban core. He even expresses concern that the creative class is beginning to be driven from these cities as they are no longer affordable. This "new urban crisis," he believes, can be alleviated only by building affordable housing, improving mass transit, and raising wages. Though Florida offers a good analysis of the crisis, the solutions suggested are not likely (as he seems to acknowledge) to be part of the new administration's agenda. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students through faculty. --Jeffrey Fred Kraus, Wagner College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
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. In "The New Urban Crisis," Florida focuses on what the creative class's emergence, and the decline of the middle class, have done to cities. Florida uses the category "creative class" to distinguish the one-third of the American work force who employ their brains rather than their bodies. The second group he puts into two further categories, the working class - that is, people who do physical labor - and the service class, describing waiters, retail workers and the like. "Creative class" is not an accurate term, but it is sexy. What Florida means is the top third of American earners, which would include a financial adviser who encourages his clients to invest in a varied portfolio and stay there - vital, but not creative. It would not include a firefighter who has to think fast about what to say to a drunken, suicidal man to keep him from jumping off a building. The term includes pop superstars who remember the old East Village, and the guitar player who can't afford to live near there. It is obviously judgmental, encompassing life as well as work, so it tells a supermarket clerk that he must be a dolt. The news for cities since this uppermiddle class emerged is not good, Florida says. Some cities, like New York and San Francisco, are doing so well that everyone wants to be there. He writes that "by moving back to the urban core, affluent whites are able to simultaneously reduce their commutes, locate near high-paying economic opportunities and gain privileged access to the better amenities that come from urban living" like parks and restaurants. Gentrification of poorer and middleclass neighborhoods on the part of middleclass black people is a similar phenomenon. But some cities, including Detroit, suffer because too few people want to live there, even as a small creative class revitalizes their downtowns. Poor neighborhoods have remained poor. Segregation by income is growing worse, with fewer middle-class neighborhoods and more rich and poor neighborhoods. The child of a factory worker no longer goes to school with the company manager's child. Florida is not arguing that these problems are specifically urban. "The suburban dimension of the New Urban Crisis may well turn out to be bigger than the urban one," he writes. As "the new urban elite" moves to some cities, displaced residents are moving to suburbs. Other struggling people are seeing towns where they have long lived decline. Between 2000 and 2013, poverty grew by 29 percent in cities, but by 66 percent in suburbs. More poor people now live in suburbs than in the inner cities, and poverty is bringing social ills. Murders rose by 17 percent in the suburbs between 2001 and 2010, while falling by the same amount in cities. Poorer suburbanites, isolated from jobs, have fewer options than poorer people in cities. Ferguson, Mo., can't offer the social services and competent policing that New York provides. Yet Florida doesn't square some inconsistencies. He writes that inequality tends to slow growth, while acknowledging that New York and San Francisco are growing quite well. He says that inequality and economic segregation are "deadly" because they reinforce advantages and disadvantages, but says of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston that "even though they are highly segregated and unequal," they offer "greater avenues for upward mobility" for the poor. The contradiction makes the reader wonder why he puts Los Angeles and New York toward the top of his urban-crisis list. "The New Urban Crisis" would have benefited from a chapter examining one city, to demonstrate that numbers aren't everything. Florida presents some figures, for example, that show foreign billionaires aren't the main cause of housingprice increases. But the New Yorkers who live near Billionaires' Row on 57th Street aren't angry about housing prices. They are angry because, thanks to bad zoning, new out-of-scale towers cast shadows on Central Park. Similarly, many people who oppose new development on their blocks aren't "new urban Luddites," as Florida calls them; they are worried that illegal construction practices bring pollution and noise to their streets. Likewise, Florida states blithely that "Uber and Airbnb hope to actually make some aspects of cities work more efficiently." Sure, and BP hopes to end climate change. In the meantime, Uber heavily subsidizes the price of a black-car ride, although streets in dense cities can't handle more cars. Airbnb has allowed people to illegally convert entire apartment buildings into hotels, further constricting housing supply. What's more, Airbnb property owners pay their cleaners informally, something that big-city hotels can't do, and a practice that undercuts one Florida goal: creating higher-paying jobs for service employees. Several of Florida's solutions are sound - although they, too, would benefit from a closer look at individual cities. He suggests more mass transit, including bringing rail to suburbs that have reached the limits of moving people efficiently by car. He suggests more rental housing construction, a good idea for New York, but not so much for shrunken cities that have too much housing. Florida also wants a cabinet-level Department of Cities. Donald Trump might agree with him: The president talks often of the "inner city." But Trump means soaring murders on Chicago's South Side, not the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood where Trump Tower is located. Which city would the new department serve? Both have troubles - but different ones. NICOLE GELINAS is a contributing editor for the Manhattan Institute's City Journal
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 30, 2017]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Urban studies expert Florida (The Great Reset), who first gained acclaim studying the ascendancy of the "creative class," now explores the broader effects of its rise in this timely, data-rich, and accessible work. Florida notes that while people fare better economically in large, dense cities, those cities are also experiencing rising inequality, housing costs, and economic and racial segregation. Moreover, these problems are spreading to the suburbs, the onetime model for improved living standards. These divisions are particularly strong in "superstar cities" such as New York, San Francisco, and London, where concentrated wealth makes the urban core inaccessible to all but the most privileged people. A series of maps show how service workers' neighborhoods have been steadily pushed to the periphery. This worrisome dynamic isn't confined to North America and Western Europe, as Florida's research shows. He recommends changing tax schemes to reflect the value of urban land, rather than the property developed on top of it; intensifying support for mass transit; increasing affordable rental housing in urban core areas; and focusing on schools and better wage conditions in the poorest neighborhoods. These prescriptions are all sound but-in the current political climate-particularly difficult to achieve. Agent: Jim Levine, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
There is a new urban crisis impacting cities and suburbs, maintains Florida (director, Martin Prosperity Inst., Univ. of Toronto; The Rise of the Creative Class). The author considers such issues as increasing inequality, rising housing prices, economic and racial segregation, spatial inequality, and entrenched poverty. He concludes that a "winner-take-all urbanism" is creating a growing gulf between "superstar cities" that have high concentrations of talented people and economic resources, and areas that do not. This "clustering force" is seen as creating "areas of concentrated affluence and concentrated poverty," and leading to the shrinking of middle-class neighborhoods. Florida offers several solutions, along with supporting documentation, that will ensure growth and prosperity for a larger segment of the population. Some of these ideas include building more affordable rental housing in central locations, switching from a property tax to a land value tax, and having the minimum wage reflect the local cost of living. Social theorists may find fault with the conclusions and proposed remedies, but urban planners should consider the case being made for the need to address a new urban crisis. VERDICT A thought-provoking work for those interested in all stages of urban planning and placemaking.-Karen -Venturella Malnati, Union Cty. Coll. Libs, Cranford, NJ © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A prominent urban theorist examines the hidden impacts of gentrification and innovation on (mostly) American cities.Prolific sociologist Florida (Director, Martin Prosperity Institute/Univ. of Toronto; The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, 2010, etc.) builds on his earlier work about the "creative" economy to argue that his optimism about cities' recoveries from the era of white flight and neglect must now be tempered with recognition of "a dark side to the urban resurgence and back-to-the-city movement." He wryly acknowledges backlash against his own ideas and the gentrifying takeovers of blue-collar areas: "What troubled me most of all was the decline and disappearance of the great middle-class neighborhoods." Florida organizes his discussion in thematic chapters, trying to nonjudgmentally demonstrate how well-intentioned elites have managed to repair once-blighted cityscapes while still harming their cultural vernacular, adding further stressors to the lives of the working poor and minority groups in now-coveted neighborhoods. In "The Inequality of Cities," he explores how an economic recovery fueled by tech and media "creatives" inevitably worsens inequality, noting, "our most liberal cities also number among the most unequal." In "The Bigger Sort" and "The Patchwork Metropolis," the author presents data to suggest that racial and class segregation are actually hardening, particularly in glamorous tech cities (San Francisco) and so-called global cities (New York), due to housing prices. Florida also explores the disturbing irony that classic urban pathologies of violence, drugs, and malaise have migrated to cities' suburban belts: "Large swaths of them are places of economic decline and distress." Florida draws subtle, thoughtful inferences from his research, and he writes in slick, approachable prose overly studded with phrases that aspire to be intellectual buzzwords (the title is repeated frequently). Throughout, the author remains an idealistic, perceptive observer of cities' transformations. A sobering account of inequality and spatial conflict rising against a cultural backdrop of urban change. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
