Other Sellers on Amazon
FREE Shipping
100% positive over last 12 months
FREE Shipping
100% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the author
OK
The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class-and What We Can Do About It Hardcover – April 11, 2017
Purchase options and add-ons
A bracingly original work of research and analysis, The New Urban Crisis offers a compelling diagnosis of our economic ills and a bold prescription for more inclusive cities capable of ensuring growth and prosperity for all.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBasic Books
- Publication dateApril 11, 2017
- Dimensions6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-100465079741
- ISBN-13978-0465079742
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together

Similar items that may deliver to you quickly
Editorial Reviews
Review
"The New Urban Crisis bracingly confronts [the] tension between big-city elites and the urban underclass."―Wall Street Journal
"[Richard Florida] vividly expose[s] how gentrification, followed by rising housing costs, concentrated affluence, and glaring inequality has pushed the displaced into deteriorating suburbs far from mass transit, employment, services, and decent schools.... [The New Urban Crisis is] nuanced and proposes solutions."―Washington Post
"Florida draws subtle, thoughtful inferences from his research, and he writes in slick, approachable prose.... 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."
―Kirkus Reviews
"Urban planners should consider the case being made for the need to address a new urban crisis. A thought-provoking work for those interested in all stages of urban planning and placemaking."
―Library Journal
"The New Urban Crisis deserves to stand alongside Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century as an essential diagnosis of our contemporary ills, and a clear-eyed prescription of how to cure them."―Steven Johnson
"Richard Florida demonstrates again that he is one of the most discerning (and provocative) observers of the great metropolitan migrations of the past 60 years."
―Governor John Hickenlooper, Colorado
"Cites are engines for prosperity and progress, but it's essential that the benefits extend far and wide. Florida proposes promising ideas for building stronger cities that offer greater opportunities for all."―Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City
"Richard Florida is the great pioneer thinker who first explained how the influx of creative people was reviving cities. Now he takes the next step: looking for ways to make this urbanism more inclusive."―Walter Isaacson
"This is the book we have been waiting for. Richard Florida is the greatest American urbanist of our time....This is an indispensable read for policy makers, students, educators, and all urban dwellers alike."
―Mayor Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles
"A sweeping narrative of the most significant human movement of our times: global urbanization. Richard Florida lays out with unassailable facts and clear vision the convergence of an urgent human development--the drive for more livable cities and the quest for a more sustainable planet. Clear, compelling, and full of vision."
―Governor Martin O'Malley, Maryland
"Like the superstar cities it describes, this book is dense, complex and stimulating. Florida's well-researched and fluent exposé of inequality is a wake-up call to all the major actors engaged in planning, designing and managing cities in the 21st century."
―Ricky Burdett, Professor of Urban Studies, London School of Economics
"The New Urban Crisis is well worth reading for the original research, clear-headed critique, and the skilled analysis of solid data."―New York Journal of Books
"The New Urban Crisis is underpinned by reams of data breezily and readably presented."―Miami Herald
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Basic Books; 1st edition (April 11, 2017)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0465079741
- ISBN-13 : 978-0465079742
- Item Weight : 1.2 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #663,838 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #251 in City Planning & Urban Development
- #297 in Urban Planning and Development
- #745 in Sociology of Urban Areas
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Author of the bestselling The Rise of the Creative Class and Who's Your City? Richard Florida is a regular columnist for The Atlantic. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and other publications. His multiple awards and accolades include the Harvard Business Review's Breakthrough Idea of the Year. He was named one of Esquire magazine's Best and Brightest (2005) and one of BusinessWeek's Voices of Innovation (2006). He lives in Toronto, Canada.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
What I liked the most: Florida complies lots of factual data, and here and there makes a point that is actually interesting. For example:
1. he notes that housing prices have grown by 3.5 percent per year in San Francisco since 1950- more than twice the national average.
2. Florida discusses the toxic impact of land use regulation that limits the housing supply; for example, he cites one study suggesting if everyone who wanted to live in cities like San Francisco and New York could afford to live there, the resulting wage increase would add 13.5 percent to America's GDP.
3. The conventional wisdom is that high housing costs make high-cost metros a bad deal. Florida suggests that (especially for the upper and upper middle classes) the benefits of higher wages outweigh this cost. After housing costs, the average worker has $42,120 left over in New York, and just over $26,000 left over in low-cost Las Vegas. However, this impact varies by class: in the "creative class" (Florida's term for high-income workers) the New Yorker comes out $18,000 ahead, but for the low-wage "service class" the New Yorker only comes out $3,000 ahead. For what's left of the industrial working class, New York only comes out $240 ahead (which I suspect is canceled out by New York's higher taxes).
4. Ch. 7 includes lots of charts and maps showing how metro areas vary. In high-cost, prosperous New York and San Francisco both cities and suburbs have rich areas and poor areas. But in other regions, suburbia has the lion's share of regional wealth. Despite all the public discussion of gentrification, there is no metro area where wealth is concentrated in cities.
Like many liberals, Florida complains about inequality. He writes that inequality "can be, and often is, a drag on economic growth." But a page later he writes: "very few US cities or metro areas have been able to combine high levels of economic growth with low levels of inequality." I'm not sure how these positions fit together.
The last two chapters are the weakest and probably should have been left for another book. In his chapter on global urbanization, he writes that for much of the developing world, "urbanization has been a near total failure." But after showing that even third-world cities are more productive than their rural neighbors, he writes just five pages later: "urbanization, warts and all, is better than the alternative." I am not sure how these statements fit together.
His last chapter is a hodgepodge of tax-and-spend remedies. Unlike extreme progressives, he does not favor huge increases in government regulation; for example, he is skeptical of rent control and favors new housing construction. But unlike conservatives he favors a more generous welfare state and a higher minimum wage. These issues are sufficiently complex that Florida probably should have left them for his next book rather than giving them cursory treatment in this one.
This book shows us where we are and how we can get to a better place by understanding that the mega cities that have grown up are both the problem and the solution to a happier society
Top reviews from other countries
Many of the issues identified were addressed in his previous books. It is sobering how our cities are increasingly segregated based on income, wealth, and ethnicity. The unaffordability of much of southwest B.C. to the middle class is a painful reality in Vancouver. Yes, I agree that the issues portion of the book could have been shorter. Too many tables and graphs.
The most interesting aspect of his book was his last chapter, which could have been expanded upon. Mixed use, walkable moderate density communities that are well serviced with public transit appears to be the way to go. Unaffordable condo canyons are what the Lower Mainland is getting as its light rail public transit system grows outwards.
The issues faced by each city are different. Cookie cutter solutions don’t work.
Reviewed in Mexico on June 12, 2019








