The New Urban Crisis

malls. Instead, I told them, enduring success in the new people-driven, place-based economy turned on doing the smaller things that made cities great places to live and work—things like making sure there were walkable, pedestrian-friendly streets, bike lanes, parks, exciting art and music scenes, and vibrant areas where people could gather in cafés and restaurants. Cities needed more than a competitive business climate; they also needed a great people climate that appealed to individuals and families of all types—single, married, with children or without, straight or gay.

I travelled across the world, taking this message to mayors, economic developers, and city leaders who still believed that the surest way to grow their cities was to lure big companies with tax subsidies and other incentives, or to dazzle people with downtown mega-projects like stadiums and outdoo

hat I called the “3 Ts of economic development”: technology, talent, and tolerance

my 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, was to attract and retain talent, not just to draw in companies

? My early experience of that original urban crisis left a deep imprint on me

I taught for almost twenty years at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), that I began to sort out

fleeing cities like Newark for the suburbs, leavi

age of highly urbanized knowledge-based capitalism

The future is a clean, dull city populated by clean, dull rich people and clean, dull old people.”

What London is experiencing is not just gentrification—a term originally coined by Ruth Glass to describe the demographic changes in inner London in the early 1960s—but out-and-out “plutocratization”, to use Simon Kuper’s evocative word. For the ultra-rich, high-end London real estate has become a new kind of global reserve currency, a place where they can stash their money.