Summary of The New Urban Crisis

Urban Evolution

In the 1960s and 1970s, American cities fell into crisis. Crime became rampant, and racial tensions and civil unrest boiled over. In 1967, African-American populations rioted in a wide range of cities, including Newark, Atlanta, Detroit and Cincinnati. By 1975, New York City was on the verge of insolvency. As white flight took hold, middle-class residents and their employers abandoned cities to move to the suburbs. Cities, it seemed, had risen and fallen. Cultural centers like New York were still attractive to pioneering types such as artists, musicians and writers. But urban neighborhoods had turned nightmarishly dirty and unsafe; “the American Dream had moved to the suburbs.” Fast forward four decades, and cities – at least, a handful of “superstar cities” – are on an upward tear. New York, its flirtation with bankruptcy long forgotten, and London are the undisputed kings of global cities. Other hubs, such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris, Singapore, Los Angeles and Seoul, are bustling cities in the second tier of superstars. In rare circumstances, a city still can decline. For instance, Detroit missed the global rebound of cities. For the most part, a successful city tends to get more so. San Francisco, for example, has a stranglehold on venture capital investment, pulling in $6.5 billion in 2012. That figure outpaced even the more suburban San Jose region to the south, which ranked second in VC funding. The list of the world’s 20 top cities for VC includes Boston, New York, Los Angeles, San Diego and London. The rise of these cities marks the victory of the “‘three Ts of economic development’: technology, talent and tolerance.” The most skilled, most ambitious workers tend to congregate in metro areas with plentiful opportunities. This “clustering” effect brings like-minded people together in a climate of acceptance across lines of race and sexual orientation.