“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.
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.
