Why cities should embody economic diversity--and upward mobility

Does diversity really mean inequality? Are disparate outcomes really just another way of embracing difference? Edward Glaser at City Journal celebrates cities' ability to create an environment of economic transformation.

Behind the current anger lurks a widespread sense that the benefits of cities are accruing only to a privileged few. Cities should never apologize for inequality: they have poor and rich people because they have been relatively good places to be rich and less difficult places to be poor. Urban density attracts the poor with better public transportation, accessible social services, and plentiful public-sector jobs. Inequality is another name for economic diversity.

But cities should take pride in that diversity only if they fulfill their historical mission of transforming poor people into wealthier people. Impoverished farmers found a better future in the London of 1750 or the Chicago of 1950. Economist Paul Nobosad documents how intergenerational mobility is much higher today in urban India than in that country’s rural areas. 

Yet the children of urban America today appear to be less upwardly mobile than their non urban counterparts. What could account for this difference?

Read the whole thing here.

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