By Jason Plummer
Florida, Richard, The New Urban Crisis: How our cities are increasing inequality, deepening segregation, and failing the middle class – and what we can do about it. (New York: Basic Books, 2017)
Florida’s stated purpose for writing The New Urban Crisis to (1) define the new urban crisis, (2) identify the forces that led to this crisis, and (3) outline a pathway to achieve an inclusive urbanism. He uses the first few pages of the preface to describe his childhood neighborhood, a mix of blue collar and middle class residents. Ultimately, implementing the strategies outlined in his new book should recreate this type of mixed-income neighborhood, a “walkable, pedestrian-friendly streets, bike lanes, parks, exciting art and music scenes, and vibrant areas where people could gather in cafés, and restaurants” (p. xv).
The first three chapters expand on his first stated purpose. In these chapters, Florida outlines how cultivating a nightlife, attracting start-ups, and tech firms without thinking about inclusion leads to inequality. The next four chapters identify the forces that led to the new urban crisis and offer a fact-based discussion of gentrification. In final chapter, Urbanism for All, Florida outlines a pathway to achieve an inclusive urbanism: land value tax, tax increment local transfers, investments in mass transit, redirect the home mortgage tax credit from affluent homeowners to low income renters, index the minimum wage to a percentage of the prevailing median wage of the metropolitan area, invest in public education, and in terms of global affairs, transition foreign aid to place-based initiatives.
For those who embraced cultivating the creative class as an economic development strategy, The New Urban Crisis will provide guidance building a more inclusive city. For those who rejected the creative class approach as fueling gentrification and racial stratification, since he does not provide details on how to implement his policies, it is hard to assess whether this revised approach is taming the negative externalities of development or a radical rethink of community development.
The full book review will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Urban Affairs.
Jason A. Plummer
California State University, Los Angeles
Journal of Urban Affairs 