Why fixing America’s housing crisis requires repairing older homes—and not just building new onesThe United States is in the throes of a housing crisis, framed by the media as a crisis of affordability. People pay too much for housing—and the solution, it seems, is to increase the supply to drive down the cost. But the national conversation on housing affordability ignores the issue of housing quality. Most people find affordable housing not through public subsidie...

The headlines about cities celebrating their resurgence—with empty nesters and Millennials alike investing in our urban areas, moving away from car dependence, and demanding walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods. But, in reality, these changes are taking place in a scattered and piecemeal fashion. While areas of a handful of cities are booming, most US metros continue to follow old patterns of central city decline and suburban sprawl. As demographic shifts change housing markets and cli...

Over the past hundred years, the global motto has been “more, more, more” in terms of growth – of population, of the built environment, of human and financial capital, and of all manner of worldly goods. This was the reality as the world population boomed during the 1960s and 1970s. But reality is changing in front of our eyes. Growth is already slowing down, and according to the most sophisticated demographers, the earth’s population will begin to decline not hundreds of years from now, b...

The Changing American Neighborhood argues that the physical and social spaces created by neighborhoods matter more than ever for the health and well-being of twenty-first-century Americans and their communities. Taking a long historical view, this book explores the many dimensions of today's neighborhoods, the forms they take, the forces and factors influencing them, and the people and organizations trying to change them.Challenging conven...

What is a decent home? Does it simply provide shelter from the elements? Is it affordable enough that you can buy the other necessities of life? Does it connect you to a community with adequate social and economic resources? Noted housing expert Alan Mallach turns his decades of experience to these questions in "A Decent Home".Mallach's nuanced analysis of housing issues critical to communities across the country will help planners evaluate the housing situation in their own commun...

Who really benefits from urban revival? Cities, from trendy coastal areas to the nation’s heartland, are seeing levels of growth beyond the wildest visions of only a few decades ago. But vast areas in the same cities house thousands of people living in poverty who see little or no new hope or opportunity. Even as cities revive, they are becoming more unequal and more segregated. What does this mean for these cities—and the people who live in them?In The Divided City, urban...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone—not just for people of color.**WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, B...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a “provocative and compelling” (NPR) argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Oprah Daily, Time, The Star Tribune, Vulture, The Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Public Library, Esquire, California Review of...

**Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Best Book of the Year Award in 2011“A masterpiece.” —Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics“Bursting with insights.” —The New York Times Book ReviewA pioneering urban economist presents a myth-shattering look at the majesty and greatness of cities**America is an urban nation, yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly . . . or ...

In recent years, the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline. And yet all is not well, Richard Florida argues in The New Urban Crisis. Florida, one of the first scholars to anticipate this back-to-the-city movement in his groundbreaking The Rise of the Creative Class, demonstrates how the same forces that power the growth of the world's superstar cities also generate their vexing challenges: gentri...

“An exacting look at gentrification” (New York Times Book Review)—and the lives devastated in the processThe term gentrification has become a buzzword to describe the changes in urban neighborhoods across the country, but we don’t realize just how threatening it is. It means more than the arrival of trendy shops, much-maligned hipsters, and expensive lattes. The very future of American cities as vibrant, equitable spaces hangs in the balance....

A Wall Street Journal and Washington Post Bestseller"Tyler Cowen's blog, Marginal Revolution, is the first thing I read every morning. And his brilliant new book, The Complacent Class, has been on my nightstand after I devoured it in one sitting. I am at round-the-clock Cowen saturation right now."--Malcolm GladwellSince Alexis de Tocqueville, restlessness has been accepted as a signature American trait. Our willingness to move, tak...