Richard Florida: From the Creative Class to the New Urban Crisis

Richard Florida will discuss how his research has been shaped by personal experiences in three cities: his childhood in Newark, which led him to urbanism and planning disciplines; his time in Pittsburgh, which inspired his landmark book The Rise of the Creative Class; and his more recent period in Toronto, where mounting inequalities and the populist backlash by former mayor Rob Ford informed his latest volume, The New Urban Crisis.

Richard Florida, University Professor and Director of Cities, Martin Prosperity Institute, University of Toronto; Inaugural Philadelphia Fellow, Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation, Drexel University; and Founder, Creative Class Group. The author of several global best sellers, Florida also serves as senior editor for The Atlantic, where he co-founded and serves as Editor-at-Large for CityLab.

This event is co-sponsored by the Penn Institute for Urban Research.