The New Urban Crisis

The New Urban Crisis

Adult nonfiction
"...Many rustbelt cities are still grappling with the
devastating combination of suburban flight, urban decay, and
deindustrialization. Sunbelt cities continue to attract people to
their more affordable, sprawling suburban developments, but few are
building robust, sustainable economies that are powered by knowledge
and innovation. Tens of millions remain locked in persistent poverty.
And virtually all our cities suffer growing economic divides. As the
middle class and its neighborhoods fade, our geography is splintering
into small areas of affluence and concentrated advantage, and much
larger areas of poverty and concentrated disadvantage."
I think many of us intuitively grasp much of what Richard
Florida posits in The New Urban Crisis. A lot of our cities are going
to if not Hell, at least purgatory. The gap between the advantaged
and disadvantaged has widened into an abyss. As the haves become
increasingly sequestered, geography becomes destiny. Not
surprisingly, children's standardized test scores can be almost
perfectly predicted by zip code. And this all is expected to get a
lot worse, particularly under President Pennywise's reign.
If you're not put off by books based heavily on academic
reasearch (as in appendix and notes being one third of the entire
text) you will really want to read The New Urban Crisis. Born in the
late '50s and growing up in a suburb close to Newark, New Jersey,
Florida had seen Newark's collapse.
"Those stark realities haunted me. What was causing people,
companies, and stores to abandon Newark? Why had the city exploded
into racial turmoil and entered into such a steep decline? Why had the
factory where my father worked closed down? My early experience of
that original urban crisis left a deep imprint on me."
Not surprisingly, Florida studied urban issues in college and
went on to teach about them. Teaching at Carnagie Mellon University
he discovered that, even though Pittsburgh had research and innovation
going on, colleagues and students were taking off for places like
Silicon Valley and Austin. He realized that people were no longer
following companies and jobs. Tax breaks were no longer enough to
draw the companies that would provide jobs. Companies were going
where they would find the talent they needed, even though places like
Boston had higher costs than other prospective places.
In his 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, Florida
posited that the third of the workforce that was engaged in knowledge,
technology, and the arts was shaping not only cities, but culture and
society. To succeed, a metropolitan area would have what he calls the
3Ts: technology, talent nurtured by good schools and research
university, and the kind of tolerance that would draw the greatest
talent in a diversity of races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and
genders.
It wasn't long before Florida realized downsides to his vision.
Cities that were flourishing the most were experiencing widening gaps
between the creative class and the less advantaged working and
services classes. Middle class neighborhoods that could nurture
upward mobility were rapidly disappearing. The cities that weren't
flourishing were increasingly suffering. The suburbs, traditional
paths toward a brighter future, were showing the same kinds of poverty
and distress traditionally only seen in cities. In short, the haves
were prospering; the have nots were struggling and going under.
Florida, however, still believed that cities are the only way to
go. They must be changed mindfully to replace "winner-take-all
urbanism" with "more sustainable and inclusive prosperity." His The
New Urban Crisis details the roots of the crisis, the reasons we all
should be concerned, and many steps we can take to go in the right
direction.
A number of the seven pillars Florida endorses have a strong
sustainability componant. Reforming zoning could result in mixed use
neighborhoods where people could walk to work, school, and stores
instead of driving everywhere. Investing in the kind of
infrastructure that encourages density rather than sprawl (public
transit instead of highways) and putting more affordable housing in
accessible distance would further cut down on car dependency. Helping
build stronger cities in rapidly urbanizibg parts of the world could
help combat the desperation necessitated environmental devastation and
human misery of slums."
"The stakes could not be higher. How we come to grips with the
New Urban Crisis will determine whether we become more divided and
slide backward into economic stagnation, or forge ahead to a new era
of more sustainable and inclusive prosperity."
On a personal note, Wednesday in Wilson Center after supper we painted
mezuzahs. Yesterday my friend Katalina and I had lunch and hung out.
We found a baby blue two drawer file cabinet with the key for the
lockable bottom drawer and a free sign on it. Kat is going to paint
flowers on it. She paints lovely flowers. It will look amazing in my
studio and be the perfect size for my counted cross stitch magazines
and books. It continues to be cold in Maine. The jury is still out
on grad school.
jules hathaway


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