The revival of great urban centres including New York, Los Angeles and London has caused unprecedented inequality and has led to the populism of Donald Trump, according to Richard Florida.
"I think this is the central crisis of capitalism," Florida said in a video interview last week.
"A very small group of cities and metropolitan areas get the lion's share of talent, the lion's share of economic assets, of technology, finance, media and entertainment industries," the writer and academic told reinvent.net.
"That is creating a gaping geographic inequality of the urban elite and the rest of the country. It is that gaping geographic inequality that gave us, quite terrifyingly, Donald Trump and Trumpist populism." Florida, whose seminal 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class provided a blueprint for the regeneration of decaying city cores, has released a follow-up that documents the negative side effects of urban renewal.
In the new book, called The New Urban Crisis, Florida argues that new models of urbanism that generate meaningful jobs and help raise living standards are required.
Photograph of Richard Florida is by Lorne Bridgman
"We must break down the barriers separating rich from poor and rebuild the middle class by investing in infrastructure, building more housing, reforming zoning and tax laws, and developing a new national urban policy," he argues.
Florida, an Italian-American, was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1957 and sa...