The Divided City

As America has grown more unequal and divided, its cities and metro areas have become even more so. New York’s level of inequality is comparable to Swaziland's, L.A.’s to the Dominican Republic's, Chicago's to El Salvador's, and Seattle's to Nigeria's.

Our cities and metro areas also face deep class divides, according to a report by me and my Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI) colleagues, released today at the second annual CityLab Conference in Los Angeles. (The conference brings together mayors and city leaders from around the world). The report, “The Divided City”, coauthored by Zara Matheson, Patrick Adler and Taylor Brydges, extends and synthesizes my class-divided series. The study tracks the location of the three major socioeconomic classes: the creative class, made up of knowledge and professional workers; the growing service class, which toils in low-skill, low-wage jobs; and the shrinking blue-collar working class. Our research charts these three classes at the neighborhood level in 12 of America’s largest cities and their surrounding metro areas: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, and Detroit. Together, these metros account for almost 30 percent of the total U.S. population—and 37 percent of the country’s economic output.