Richard Florida, Columnist

Urban Inequality Is a Crisis, But Don't Blame Techies for It

In the search for solutions, remember: Cities that are magnets for innovators also have more economic mobility.

April 10, 2017 at 2:18 PM UTC

Richard Florida is a professor at the University of Toronto's School of Cities and Rotman School of Management. He is the author of “The Rise of the Creative Class” and "The New Urban Crisis."

The wrong enemy.
Photographer: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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As technology companies and the techies who work for them have headed to cities, they have increasingly been blamed for the deepening problems of housing affordability and urban inequality.

A few years ago, for example, the San Francisco-based writer Rebecca Solnit complained that the Bay Area’s conflict pitted “writers, artists, activists, environmentalists, eccentrics” against the newly moneyed tech elite.