FIRST, WE KILL ALL THE URBAN PLANNERS

The secret to a thriving city is not what you may think (Kim Campbell, Christian Science Monitor, June 8th, 2005)

When city officials contact urban expert Joel Kotkin for guidance on how to attract people to their locales, they often ask about things that make him cringe. Instead of improving schools or infrastructure, they want to construct performing arts centers and pump up cultural offerings to lure the artsy and the hip.

That's not the way to revitalize cities, argues Mr. Kotkin, author of "The City: A Global History." To him, attracting and keeping people in urban environments is less about projecting an image of "cool" and more about providing the basics that encourage and support a strong middle class: jobs, schools, churches.

Kotkin's skepticism about relying on cultural enticements - which is not shared by all urbanists - is informed in part by his latest work, which looks back at the evolution of cities.

"No urban civilization has flourished long without middle-class families," he says in a recent interview in New York. The key to keeping people interested in city living is the idea of upward mobility. "That aspiration is very critical to urban life, it's important to the social order that people feel they can go somewhere."

By looking at the history of the city, from its origins in the Middle East to today's metropolises, he's observed that as cities evolved, their health typically rested on three factors: "the sacredness of place, the ability to provide security and project power, and ... the animating role of commerce," he writes. He argues that to be successful, today's cities must still be places that are "sacred, safe, and busy."

Without the idea of sacred space, for example, it's unlikely cities anywhere could have existed, Kotkin suggests. Religious leaders not only set the calendars that organized life, they also helped groups of people who were not related learn how to get along together. In today's secular cities, it is financial and cultural buildings that dot skylines, and religion and moral cohesiveness are more muted, in part, he says, because families are increasingly less common in major cities. "Who's got time for babies?" he asks, arguing that the high cost of living and small apartments are contributing to low birthrates in some cities.

And then we move on to the family planners.