The notion of a deep and enduring divide between thriving, affluent, progressive urban areas and declining, impoverished, conservative rural areas has become a central trope—if not the central trope— in American culture today. In May 2017, the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “Rural America Is the New Inner City”.1 Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, […]
Richard Florida, Director, Cities
Richard Florida is University Professor and Director of Cities at the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management; Distinguished Visiting Fellow at NYU’s Shack Institute of Real Estate; and the co-founder and editor-at-large of The Atlantic’s CityLab. He is the author of the New Urban Crisis and the best-selling The Rise of the Creative Class.
He previously taught at Carnegie Mellon and George Mason University, and has been a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers College and his Ph.D. from Columbia University.