Nearly a week after the death of 18 year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., protests continue in the 21,000-person suburban community on St. Louis’ north side and around the nation.

Amid the social media and news coverage of the community’s response to the police shooting of the unarmed teenager, a picture of Ferguson and its history has emerged.

The New York Times and others have described the deep-seated racial tensions and inequalities that have long plagued the St. Louis region, as well as the dramatic demographic transformation of Ferguson from a largely white suburban enclave (it was 85 percent white as recently as 1980) to a predominantly black community (it was 67 percent black by 2008-2012).

But Ferguson has also been home to dramatic economic changes in recent years. The city’s unemployment rate rose from roughly 7 percent in 2000 to over 13 percent in 2010-12. For those residents who were employed, inflation-adjusted average earnings fell by one-third. The number of households using federal Housing Choice Vouchers climbed from roughly 300 in 2000 to more than 800 by the end of the decade.

Amid these changes, poverty skyrocketed. Between 2000 and 2010-2012, Ferguson’s poor population doubled. By the end of that period, roughly one in four residents lived below the federal poverty line ($23,492 for a family of four in 2012), and 44 percent fell below twice that level.

These changes affected neighborhoods throughout Ferguson. At the start of the 2000s, the five census tracts that fall within Ferguson’s border registered poverty rates ranging between 4 and 16 percent. However, by 2008-2012 almost all of Ferguson’s neighborhoods had poverty rates at or above the 20 percent threshold at which the negative effects of concentrated poverty begin to emerge. (One Ferguson tract had a poverty rate of 13.1 percent in 2008-2012, while the remaining tracts fell between 19.8 and 33.3 percent.)

Census Tract-Level Poverty Rates in St. Louis County, 2000

Census Tract-Level Poverty Rates in St. Louis County, 2008-2012

As dramatic as the growth in economic disadvantage has been in this community, Ferguson is not alone.

Within the nation’s 100 largest metro areas, the number of suburban neighborhoods where more than 20 percent of residents live below the federal poverty line more than doubled between 2000 and 2008-2012. Almost every major metro area saw suburban poverty not only grow during the 2000s but also become more concentrated in high-poverty neighborhoods. By 2008-2012, 38 percent of poor residents in the suburbs lived in neighborhoods with poverty rates of 20 percent or higher. For poor black residents in those communities, the figure was 53 percent.

Like Ferguson, many of these changing suburban communities are home to out-of-step power structures, where the leadership class, including the police force, does not reflect the rapid demographic changes that have reshaped these places.

Suburban areas with growing poverty are also frequently characterized by many small, fragmented municipalities; Ferguson is just one of 91 jurisdictions in St. Louis County. This often translates into inadequate resources and capacity to respond to growing needs and can complicate efforts to connect residents with economic opportunities that offer a path out of poverty.

And as concentrated poverty climbs in communities like Ferguson, they find themselves especially ill-equipped to deal with impacts such as poorer education and health outcomes, and higher crime rates. In an article for Salon, Brittney Cooper writes about the outpouring of anger from the community, “Violence is the effect, not the cause of the concentrated poverty that locks that many poor people up together with no conceivable way out and no productive way to channel their rage at having an existence that is adjacent to the American dream.” 

None of this means that there are 1,000 Fergusons-in-waiting, but it should underscore the fact that there are a growing number of communities across the country facing similar, if quieter, deep challenges every day.

A previous version of this post misstated the Ferguson unemployment rate in 2000. It has since been corrected.

Introduction

The post-World War II era has witnessed the nearly exclusive building of low density suburbia, here termed “drivable sub-urban” development, as the American metropolitan built environment. However, over the past 15 years, there has been a gradual shift in how Americans have created their built environment (defined as the real estate, which is generally privately owned, and the infrastructure that supports real estate, majority publicly owned), as demonstrated by the success of the many downtown revitalizations, new urbanism, and transit-oriented development. This has been the result of the re-introduction and expansion of higher density “walkable urban” places. This new trend is the focus of the recently published book, The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream (Island Press, November 2007).

This field survey attempts to identify the number and location of “regional-serving” walkable urban places in the 30 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., where 138 million, or 46 percent, of the U.S. population lives. This field survey determines where these walkable urban places are most prevalent on a per capita basis, where they are generally located within the metro area, and the extent to which rail transit service is associated with walkable urban development.

The first section defines the key concepts used in the survey, providing relevant background information for those who have not read The Option of Urbanism. The second section outlines the methodology. The third section, which is the heart of the report, outlines the findings and conclusions of the survey.

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Chris Leinberger discusses his book about the most walkable urban and metro areas in the United States with Nicole Lapin from CNN.

NICOLE LAPIN: Walkable Urbanism.  Well, it's spreading beyond the boundaries of inner cities and into suburbs as Gen-Xers and empty nesters are searching for communities offering a walkable lifestyle. Well, all of this is according to a brand new book The Option of Urbanism Investing in a New American Dream.  The book was written in conjunction with the survey by the Brookings Institution. Brookings basically compiled a list of the best places for a car-less walkable urban lifestyle. Where you can basically: work, go home, go shopping, go to school, see entertainment all within a walking distance. So joining me now to talk more about this whole idea, the new 'American Dream,' is the author of that book Chris Leinberger. He joins us live from the Brookings Institution. Chris, thank you so much.

CHRIS LEINBERGER: Why thank you Nicole.

NICOLE LAPIN: Okay, first of all, let’s talk about this list because I got in my car this morning in Atlanta. I'm assuming Atlanta is not on the list?

CHRIS LEINBERGER: It's sort of in the middle of the list – it's not towards the top.

NICOLE LAPIN: Okay, so the top ten, can we start out, what’s number one?

CHRIS LEINBERGER: Number one is Washington, D.C. – and again we are talking about the metropolitan area.

NICOLE LAPIN: So, basically the west end, west of downtown, that has changed so much lately.

CHRIS LEINBERGER: Yes it has, but downtown itself has probably been the most remarkable downtown turnaround in the country. But, then all of the downtown adjacent places like the west end – which was an old industrial section – that's almost now built out. Dupont Circle which was dangerous twenty years ago is now a very elegant place and three or four other places around downtown, so it's not just downtown. 

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Ever since World War II, the American dream has encompassed the four-bedroom house with a white picket fence, tucked away in the suburbs. But this dream has gradually turned into a nightmare, with the increase of traffic, congestion and the general inconvenience of being detached from the city. Whereas people once rejoiced in camping trips to escape metropolitan living, we are now, as a culture, magnetized towards it as the appeal for walking more and driving less steadily increases.

KOJO NNAMDI:Chris you've dubbed this new style of living- "Walkable Urbanism." What is the evidence of a rising demand for it?

CHRIS LEINBERGER: There's demographic evidence; there's consumer research evidence; but probably the most compelling evidence is the price premium people are willing to pay to live in a walkable urban place, that the survey's show anywhere from a 40% to 200% price premium on a price per square foot basis for a walkable urban place as oppose to a competitive near by drivable suburban place.

KOJO NNAMDI: So it used to be that a condo or a townhouse was entry level product for people who couldn’t afford a real house, its beginning to be the other way around?

CHRIS LEINBERGER: In fact in 2003 for the first time in the country's history, condos on a price per square foot basis cost more than single family housing, and that includes all those old condo's that were built to be a alternative to a quote "real house" which was a single family house.  Its fundamentally changed and we've only seen the beginning of this train.

KOJO NNAMDI: I am intrigued about why people's preferences are indeed changing. In your book you give some of the credit to popular culture. Talk about the difference between the baby boomers- who grew up on 'Leave it Beaver,' the 'Brady Bunch' versus Generation Xer's who watch 'Seinfeld, and 'Sex in the City.'

CHRIS LEINBERGER: That’s just a reflection of the market reality. Hollywood does more consumer research than any business in the entire economy, and there out there doing focus groups constantly. So there reflecting what’s going on. Baby Boomers when they would see somebody- an image on the screen of some young woman flimsily dressed, walking down a dark street in a city, they would think- 'Oh my God, Hill street blues, and Blade Runner.' And the Gen-Xer's think, 'oh she is going to go to a new art gallery opening right down the street with all her friends.' Whole different perception of what a city life is like.

KOJO NNAMDI: A generational difference...

Editor’s Note: This piece originally was published on the Guardian’s Sustainable Business website.

I recently returned from Copenhagen, my first time to the Danish capital. Even a three day visit affirms why this city of more than 540,000 residents has received global recognition as a beacon of sustainable development. An incredible 36 percent of all commuting trips to work or school are made by bike along, in many cases, secure bike lanes that protect cyclists from cars and buses. Another 32 percent of city residents either walk or utilize the region's highly-efficient public transportation network of buses and trains.

This kind of sustainable development clearly yields significant environmental benefits. Copenhagen achieved the highest ranking in the 2009 European Green City Index, scoring in the top 10 in all eight categories, from energy efficiency to transport and environmental governance.

Growing green is obviously an environmental imperative. Yet the Copenhagen experience shows that it can be a market proposition as well, with a diverse set of economic and fiscal benefits accruing to cities that are at the vanguard of sustainable development. Cities like Copenhagen, in short, may be inventing a clean economy of place.

Monday Morning, the respected Scandinavian thinktank, recently released a report detailing the effect of building a city that is high in spatial efficiency and rich in transport choices. Some of the benefits are direct and local. Residents who cycle to work or school are healthier, so health care costs decline (by an estimated $380 million a year). Fewer cars on the road means less congestion and fewer accidents, so additional savings are realized.

Yet the big effect from sustainable development may be indirect and global, as specialized firms naturally rise and expand to meet the growing demand for clean services and clean products. Monday Morning's report finds that Copenhagen's clean sector has been a critical contributor to the region's economy in the past decade, with green exports outpacing all other sectors by growing at an astounding 77 percent between 2004 and 2009.

Cities in the U.S. are following suit. Portland, Oregon, is also internationally renowned for its commitment to sustainable development. The Portland metropolis has an expansive public transit system and an urban growth boundary to control development at the urban periphery. The city boasts a green investment fund to provide grants for residential and commercial building projects.

Now the city is striving, like Copenhagen, to reap the economic rewards of sustainable development through business formation, firm expansion, job growth and private investment. In February, Portland released its first regional export plan to double exports over five years by building on the region's distinctive economic and physical attributes. A critical pillar of this strategy involves increasing the export orientation of firms in the burgeoning clean technology sector to serve growing markets in Asia, Latin America and elsewhere.

Both Copenhagen and Portland recognize that urbanization is the dominant market-shaping trend of the century. By 2030 it is estimated that China will have one billion residents while India will have 590 million. These nations and others will demand products and services that enable development that is economically supportive, environmentally sensitive and spatially efficient. And those products and services may disproportionately emerge from firms located in cities, in mature economies and rising nations alike, which are first movers on sustainable development.

The economic benefits of sustainable development could be substantial. Last year, my program at Brookings measured the U.S. clean economy at 2.7 million jobs. That means the clean economy has more jobs than fossil-fuel related industries and is nearly twice the size of the biosciences field and 60 percent of the 4.8 million strong IT sector.

The U.S. clean economy is also incredibly diverse (sweeping across five broad categories and 39 separate clusters) and disproportionately located in the nation's top 100 cities and metropolitan areas.

Green architecture and construction services cluster illustrates the potential for growth and the reality of metropolitan concentration. This segment already employs over 56,000 people in the U.S. Some 90 percent of these jobs are located in the top 100 cities and towns (although those communities house only two-thirds of the population). The segment grew by a healthy annual average of 6.4 percent between 2003 and 2010 and includes firms such as Burns and McDonnell Engineering in Kansas City, McKinstry and Co. in Seattle, and Gensler in San Francisco. Conclusion: the clean economy of place constitutes a virtuous cycle between cities, companies, consumers and clusters.

Let me end where I began, in Copenhagen. The city is not resting on its cycling laurels but setting its sights higher, towards achieving a goal of carbon neutrality by 2025. Shakespeare was wrong: all is not rotten in the state of Denmark. Nurturing what is good — and green — embracing it and extending it could provide a platform for economic growth for decades to come.

There will always be winners and losers as the global economy shifts and evolves. For a long period in the mid- to late 20th century, those losers were cities. Across the developed world, suburbanization shrank inner-city populations just as the industrial base that had once fueled growth succumbed to globalization.

At the end of the 20th century, as global cities such as New York and London pulled themselves out of the malaise of the 1970s, economic growth still eluded many smaller, formerly industrial cities across the United States and Europe. Catalyzing recovery in those older industrial areas was the focus of a decade-long effort of the London School of Economics and the Brookings Institution. As is clear in Cities for a Small Continent, a new book from Anne Power at LSE, the potential in these cities is greater now than ever. In our contribution to the volume, we examine the why and the how of economic transformation in several U.S. cities. 

There has been a lot of focus on the shift in location preferences that is bringing people back to cities. Significant shares of millennials as well as empty nesters are voting for urban communities where they can live, work, and play. At least as important is the restructuring of the U.S. economy—from a closed innovation system where corporations operated isolated research facilities, to an open, networked economy where corporations innovate in collaboration with universities, researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors. Innovation is critical, because as Antoine van Agtmael and Fred Bakker assert in The Smartest Places on Earth, “the era of cheap [in manufacturing] is over; the era of smart has begun.”

These shifts in social preferences and market forces revalue cities and “cityness”—proximity, density, vibrancy, authenticity, and diversity. In particular, population and employment growth is occurring in downtowns and midtowns that have key institutions and assets: universities, medical campuses, cultural venues, historic buildings, walkable streets, and transit connectivity.

This regeneration is being delivered through a new localism in U.S. governance. Every day brings new bottom-up, city-led approaches to the training of workers, the education of children, the mitigation of climate change, the financing of infrastructure, and the development of affordable housing for our workers and quality places for our young and elderly populations.

Across this wide range of activity are some common characteristics.

Cities are harnessing the power of networks of government, business, civic, philanthropic, university, and community institutions and leaders rather than relying on public-sector solutions alone. The focus of the new American localism on unlocking the latent capacity and creativity of public, private, and civic networks differs markedly from the focus of traditional federalism on relationships between levels of government, particularly the federal government and the states.

Cities and metropolitan areas are also deploying capital from an array of public, private, and civic sources at the local, national, and even global levels. With federal investment dwindling, financing of critical projects will increasingly come from public-private collaboration and require experimentation around new forms of innovative finance.

Our chapter highlights four cities in the United States—Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Detroit—where this new localism has delivered tangible results. Though each city is at a different point of recovery, all have experienced growth in their cores that has been enabled and co-led by anchor institutions, major philanthropies, private-sector leaders, and civic groups. The biggest investments and decisions in these places have been the results of collaborative processes—proof that cities and the institutions that invest in them can be a source of long-term, strategic thinking that ultimately leads to healthier and more prosperous urban economies.

Similar efforts are spreading across the United Kingdom and Europe, though the systems there tend more toward public-sector leadership. In Sheffield, England, a concerted effort by business and academic institutions to “upskill” the manufacturing base, enabled by the flexibility of a “city deal” from the central government, has made the city a global center of advanced manufacturing. Bilbao, Spain evolved from a manufacturing base to a vibrant urban cultural hub by leveraging the value of publicly owned land and other assets for regeneration purposes. Stories such as these are featured throughout Cities for a Small Continent, as well as in a new series of seven case studies from LSE.

We are still in the early stages of this rebalancing of growth. Cities and metropolitan areas experienced decades of population and employment decentralization, poverty concentration, racial separation, and de-industrialization. Such patterns do not get changed overnight. But they are changing. As cities innovate, those solutions must be captured and codified and then replicated across the world.

Watch the May 24, 2016 LSE launch event for Cities for a Small Continent here: 

Before the international Urban Age conference in Berlin, Bruce Katz argued that if cities are the organizing units of the new global order, then a broad range of policies and practices at the city, national, and supra-national levels need to be reevaluated and overhauled around new spatial realities and paradigms.

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The geography of innovation is shifting. For proof, start with Google, which over the past 10 years has taken the core R&D and innovation-oriented activities it once housed only in Silicon Valley and extended them into cities. The company’s presence in London’s Tech City, New York City’s Chelsea district, and Pittsburgh’s Bakery Square reflects management’s calculation that being in cities increases the company’s access to growing tech-oriented ecosystems, advanced research institutions, deep pools of talent, and distinct regional specializations.

In its decision to go urban, Google has been joined by not only other tech firms such as Twitter, Microsoft, and Spotify, but also companies like Comcast, Amazon, Pfizer, Quicken Loans, and countless numbers of small start-ups and entrepreneurs. (Our recent research for the Brookings Institution, “The Rise of Innovation Districts: A New Geography of Innovation in America,” provides the larger context for these corporate choices.)

For the past 50 years, the landscape of innovation has been dominated by regions like Silicon Valley—suburban corridors of spatially isolated corporate campuses, accessible only by car, with little emphasis on the quality of life or on integrating work, housing, and recreation. After visiting dozens of U.S. and European cities, interviewing hundreds of practitioners and experts on the ground, and scouring scholarly analyses of investor and firm behavior, we are convinced that a complementary new urban model is now emerging, in the form of what we and others are calling “innovation districts.”

These districts, by our definition, are “geographic areas where leading-edge anchor institutions and companies cluster and connect with start-ups, business incubators, and accelerators. Compact, transit-accessible, and technically-wired, innovation districts foster open collaboration, grow talent, and offer mixed-used housing, office, and retail.”

Globally, Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Medellin, Montreal, Seoul, Stockholm, and Toronto all contain emerging innovation districts. In the United States, the most iconic districts can be found in the downtowns and midtowns of Atlanta, Cambridge, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. In each, advanced research universities, medical complexes, and clusters of tech and creative firms are sparking business expansion as well as residential and commercial growth.

Other innovation districts are developing in Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle. Former industrial and warehouse areas are undergoing a renaissance, powered by their enviable location along transit lines, proximity to downtowns and waterfronts, and recent additions of advanced institutions. (Note, for example, Carnegie Mellon University’s decision to place its Integrative Media Program at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.)

Perhaps the greatest validation of this shift is the fact that traditional exurban science parks like Research Triangle Park in Raleigh-Durham are now responding with efforts to meet the new demand for more vibrant and collaborative work and living environments.

Innovation districts are already attracting an eclectic mix of firms in the app economy and high tech sector as well as in high-value, research-oriented sectors such as life and material sciences, clean energy, and data computing. They are also home to companies in highly creative fields like architecture, design, theater production, advertising, and marketing. We even see a return to cities of small-scale and customized manufacturing, made possible by 3D printing, robotics, and other advanced techniques.

Much of this activity reflects a fundamental rethinking by corporate management about how and where innovation happens. In turn, it is making the case that discrete urban geographies can be instrumental in strengthening the competitive advantages of specific firms and clusters.

Rather than being the outgrowth of heavy-handed government programs, innovation districts are instead emerging from broader trends and market forces. For example, an economy increasingly oriented toward innovation (particularly through open collaborations) naturally rewards urban density. Companies, researchers, and entrepreneurs working in close proximity are able to share ideas rather than invent in isolation. No one company can master all the knowledge it needs, so they rely on a network of industry collaborators. A recent New York Times article on the growth of Pfizer, Novartis, and other major pharmaceutical companies in Cambridge, makes the point explicitly:

Pharmaceutical companies traditionally preferred suburban enclaves where they could protect their intellectual property in more secluded settings and meet their employees’ needs. But in recent years, as the costs of drug development have soared and R&D pipelines slowed, pharmaceutical companies have looked elsewhere for innovation. Much of that novelty is now coming from biotechnology firms and major research universities like MIT and Harvard, just two subway stops away.

If the benefits of urban density were already being experienced, they take on heightened importance in what Michael Mandel has called the “age of convergence” —when companies must simultaneously push forward with technology and content. Other analysis by the Center for an Urban Future in New York City finds many tech players focusing less on building new technologies and more on “applying technology to traditional industries like advertising, media, fashion, finance, and health care.” These shifts reinforce the importance of proximate location as companies strive to be physically close to the individuals and companies they partner with.

The rise of a convergence and collaborative economy also raises questions of how commercial buildings—offices, research labs, business incubators, and innovation institutes—should be designed. Thus, the creative solutions being tried in vanguard innovation districts will yield broad lessons. With their many variations on incubator space, collaborative venues, social networking, product competitions, technical support, and mentoring, they are beginning to sort out the best physical and social platforms for entrepreneurial growth.

Finally, large-scale demographic migrations are putting new value on cities and demanding more and better choices in where workers live, work and play. The City Observatory recently found, for example, that the number of young college graduates living within three miles of city centers (i.e., where innovation districts tend to be located) has surged, up 37 percent since 2000. This is happening not just in talent magnets like Denver, Portland, OR, and San Diego, but also in older industrial cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh.

The confluence of these disruptive economic, social, and demographic dynamics has changed corporate calculus. As companies design forward-looking strategies, they should be asking whether and how a greater commitment to urban locales could help them squeeze out even more success.

This commentary was originally published by Harvard Business Review.