Monthly Archives

April 2017

The New Urban Crisis Press

KPCC: He predicted the revitalization of urban centers like Downtown LA, but Richard Florida now sees the ills

Urban theorist Richard Florida’s 2002 book, “The Rise of the Creative Class” has been both prescient and prescriptive for many city centers in America.

Florida’s book predicted that a class of young, educated millennials who are employed in mostly creative fields would flood deserted urban cores looking for inexpensive housing, thereby changing the fortunes of these neighborhoods.

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April 27, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

Wired: Tech Made Cities Too Expensive. Here’s How to Fix It

IN 2013 PROTESTS broke out in Oakland, California, directed against the private buses that shuttle tech workers from pricey homes in the city’s gentrifying areas to jobs in Silicon Valley. “You live your comfortable lives,” read a flyer that protesters handed out to passengers, “surrounded by poverty, homelessness, and death, seemingly oblivious to everything around you, lost in the big bucks and success.”

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April 26, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

Detroit Free Press: Author Richard Florida now says ‘creative class’ not enough for cities

Back in 2002, urban theorist Richard Florida set the agenda for numerous cities with his book “The Rise of the Creative Class.”

The book made the case that educated millennials in fields such as software design, technology, art and education were the future of cities. They would enhance prosperity and bring the middle class back into urban cores in districts such as Detroit’s Midtown and downtown.

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April 25, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

Urban Toronto: Richard Florida: Toronto Coming of Age Amidst New Urban Crisis

In 2017, the cacophony of Toronto’s urban discourse—and urban realities—makes understanding the city a daunting prospect. The skyrocketing rents, record waitlists for affordable housing, growing economic disparities, and inadequate transit, are being met with staggering development and densification, growing economic status, and a waxing global cachet that’s rivalled by few cities. Our city leads the world in livability and human development indices, while simultaneously facing an affordability crisis that threatens to make good urban housing the sole purview of the rich.

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April 21, 2017
Rana Florida - In the NewsRana Florida Columns

Knight Foundation: HOW THE CREATIVE CLASS GROUP AND FIU’S COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION, ARCHITECTURE + THE ARTS WILL WORK TO IMPROVE MIAMI’S URBAN FUTURE AT MANA WYNWOOD

Miami has been on a roll. It is attracting people at a rapid clip, it is a center of arts, culture and design, and its entrepreneurial ecosystem is growing. Today the region is at a critical inflection point. How can it grow further? How can it deepen its startup ecology? How can it ensure that its growth is inclusive, and that all Miamians can share in a new era of more inclusive prosperity?

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April 19, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

Plan Philly: A New Urban Future with Richard Florida

Richard Florida is feeling reflective. He became the equivalent of an urban planning rock star with the publication of his book The Rise of the Creative Class 15 years ago. In the intervening years, the book’s thesis—attract young creative professionals and your city will flourish—seems to have proven both portentous and problematic.

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April 18, 2017
Opinion EditorialsThe New Urban Crisis Press

Los Angeles Times: L.A. and New York are expensive, but they’re not about to become creative deserts

“If the 1 percent stifles New York’s creative talent, I’m out of here,” musician David Byrne threatened several years ago. New York City’s incredible economic success, he wrote, would be its cultural undoing. “Most of Manhattan and many parts of Brooklyn are virtual walled communities, pleasure domes for the rich,” he continued. “Middle-class people can barely afford to live here anymore, so forget about emerging artists, musicians, actors, dancers, writers, journalists and small business people. Bit by bit, the resources that keep the city vibrant are being eliminated.”

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April 17, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

Toronto Life: Q&A: Urbanist Richard Florida, on rising home prices and Donald Trump

With Jane Jacobs gone, there aren’t too many celebrity urban-studies theorists left in the world—but Richard Florida is one. From his perch at the University of Toronto, where he has run the Martin Prosperity Institute since moving to Canada from the U.S. in 2007, he has promulgated his theories about the way so-called “creative class” workers (high-earning types whose jobs require them to be inventive, or to draw on deep reserves of knowledge) drive prosperity in the urban areas they populate.

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April 13, 2017
Opinion EditorialsThe New Urban Crisis Press

NY Daily News: The new urban crisis is upon us: Success squeezing out the middle class

I was born in Newark in 1957, and witnessed the riots that tipped that city into its long-running decline. As a college student in the 1970s, when New York City was still teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, I observed the first tender shoots of revival that were visible in SoHo, Tribeca and other parts of lower Manhattan, as artists began to colonize its abandoned industrial spaces.

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April 11, 2017
The New Urban Crisis Press

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: ‘The New Urban Crisis’: Richard Florida updates his influential thesis

Richard Florida has extended his series that began with publication of “The Rise of the Creative Class” in 2002. Pittsburgh is far from unfamiliar with the author. Some may be shocked to realize it has been 12 years since the former Carnegie Mellon University professor departed. He is currently based at the University of Toronto. He has repeatedly referenced his home for two decades, and Pittsburgh continues to impact Mr. Florida’s views on all things city.

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April 11, 2017