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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.

One evening in the summer of 2013, Richard Florida sat down in the lounge of a SoHo hotel to talk to his New York publisher about writing a new book.

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.