This is The Guardian.

Welcome to The Guardian Long Read,

showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.

For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to TheGuardian.com

forward slash long read.

How to reduce the damage done by gentrification

by Ian Golden and Tom Lee Devlin.

Cities are now home to more than half of the global population,

a share that will rise to two-thirds by 2050.

That means the forces shaping life in cities now also shape our world as a whole.

Cities throughout history have been the great incubators of human progress,

through their power to bring us closer together, something we need now more than ever.

Many of the answers to our greatest challenges are to be found in reforming our cities,

but if we fail to take action, cities will magnify the perils that lie ahead.

The populist politics of recent years has been tinged with resentment against global

metropolises such as London and New York. These cities have boomed while others have struggled.

But while the gulf between thriving cities and everywhere else has widened,

so too has the disparity within these cities.

Inequality has risen in most metropolitan areas in the US since 1980,

but it has risen fastest in large thriving cities such as New York, San Francisco,

and Chicago, where it is now much higher than the national average.

Wages for high skilled knowledge workers in these places have soared,

...