The game’s up between cities and suburbs and the suburbs are the hands-down winners, now and as far into the future as one can see, writer Joel Kotkin opined in a Washington Post Outlook section article February 6. The latest trend, Kotkin asserted, is suburbs finding ways to make themselves less monotonous, more diverse and interesting with cultural and religious institutions and village centers that can even draw the empty-nesters today’s cities are counting on for revival.
Not so fast, replies our Citistates colleague, Peter Katz, urban guru and founding executive director of the Congress for New Urbanism. “True urban life will prevail, simply because the value it generates is SO much greater than the suburban crap we’ve been building,” Katz maintains.
Here’s how the exchange has been running:
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