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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.)