Eye-opening and thoroughly engaging, this is an indispensible look at American urban/suburban society and its future.

In The Great Inversion, Alan Ehrenhalt, one of our leading urbanologists, reveals how the roles of America's cities and suburbs are changing places-young adults and affluent retirees moving in, while immigrants and the less affluent are moving out-and addresses the implications of these shifts for the future of our society.

Ehrenhalt shows us how the commercial canyons of lower Manhattan are becoming residential neighborhoods, and how mass transit has revitalized inner-city communities in Chicago and Brooklyn. He explains why car-dominated cities like Phoenix and Charlotte have sought to build twenty-first-century downtowns from scratch, while sprawling postwar suburbs are seeking to attract young people with their own form of urbanized experience.

Alan Ehrenhalt was the executive editor of Governing magazine from 1990 to 2009. He is the author of The United States of Ambition, The Lost City, and Democracy in the Mirror. In 2000, he was the recipient of the American Political Science Association’s Carey McWilliams Award for distinguished contributions to the field of political science by a journalist. He lives near Washington, D.C.