I first heard of Richard Florida when I was an undergraduate student in an urban planning class. I thought his perspective was interesting and I finally got around to reading his most recent book. There is a lot of research here. Unfortunately, the visual data was presented very poorly. The graphs and charts require color while these were printed in black and white only. They were pretty impossible to decipher, dulling the impact. That left me with relying only on the narrative description of the data.

When I wasn’t sloughing through descriptions of charts and reading statistics, the gist of the book was interesting. The very reasons that make cities so successful are also making them fail in many other ways. The ideal would be for a city to provide a place to live and work for all segments of society. In many cities, this is becoming more and more difficult.

As more people focused on technology and creative careers move back into cities, they are pushing others out, often long-time residents. The service class which these upper crust lean on are barely able to even commute to work as they live in more affordable areas, far from transit lines and city centers. What has been created are segregated cities, divided by race, class, education, and profession.

He presents some ways to solve the problems of this ultimately unsustainable state of affairs. He describes seven pillars that puts cities at the center of the agenda: build smarter through regulation reform and land value taxes, improve transit, more affordable rental housing, improve wages of service jobs, combat poverty with a negative income tax, global efforts for more resilient cities, and allowing cities to make pragmatic decisions to create programs of intentional urban development.