American cities today are simultaneously the same and different from Wilson’s classic portrayal in The Truly Disadvantaged (1987 2012), first published over 30 years ago. Concentrated poverty and racial segregation endure, as do racial gaps in multiple aspects of wellbeing. But mass incarceration, the dramatic drop in violent crime, immigration, rising income segregation, the suburbanisation of poverty, and other macrosocial trends have transformed the urban scene. The paradoxical result is that cities today are both better and worse off. In this paper, I put forth a unifying framework on persistence and change in urban inequality, highlighting a theory of neighbourhood effects and the higher-order structure of the contemporary metropolis. I apply this analytic framework to examine: (1) neighbourhood inequality as an important driver and mediator of urban transformation; (2) racial disparities across the life course in compounded deprivation, poisoned development, and intergenerational mobility; and (3) how everyday spatial mobility beyond the local neighbourhood is producing new forms of social isolation and higher-order segregation. I conclude with a challenge to dominant policy perspectives on urban racial inequality. 今天的美国城市与威尔逊在30多年前首次出版的《真正的穷人》（1987 2012）中的经典写照既不同，又有相同之处。集中的贫困和种族隔离持续存在，人民福祉的多个方面存在种族差距。但是大规模监禁、暴力犯罪的急剧下降、移民、收入隔离的增加、贫困的郊区化以及其他宏观社会趋势已经改变了城市的现状。矛盾的结果是，今天的城市既变得更好，又变得更坏。在本文中，我提出了一个关于城市不平等的持续性和变化的统一框架，强调了社区效应理论和当代大都市的高阶结构。我运用这个分析框架来研究：（1）街区不平等作为城市转型的重要驱动力和中介；（2）整个生命过程中的种族差异（体现为复合剥夺、被毒害的发展和代际流动性）；以及（3）超越本地社区的日常空间流动如何产生新形式的社会隔离和高阶隔离。最后，我对城市种族不平等的主导政策观点提出了挑战。