Citistates Associate Bill Fulton has written three fascinating blogs assailing urban writer Joel Kotkin’s sometimes simplistic attacks on urbanism and cool cities. All are worth a read. Here they are in reverse order:
21 August 2007 -
So I’ve finally had it with Joel Kotkin.
Joel Kotkin is, of course, the Los Angeles pundit who loves to be hated by planners. Last week in the Los Angeles Times Sunday opinion section. Kotkin flung around a lot of very selective facts and kinda-truths in order to make the argument that Los Angeles is rushing thoughtlessly and without public debate into “Manhattanization”. This article is the latest piece of evidence suggesting that Kotkin’s arguments are getting old and tired.
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27 August 2007 - 9:53am
Last week’s blog about Joel Kotkin and his article in the L.A. Times decrying the supposed “Manhattanization” of Los Angeles stirred up quite a bit of debate. Here’s Part 2 of the Bill Fulton blog on Kotkin.
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4 September 2007 - 11:57am
To succeed in the 21st Century, do cities really have to be cool, as Richard Florida argues? Or do they have to be uncool, as Joel Kotkin insists? Maybe they have to be both.
A few years ago, a little-known academic named Richard Florida turned the economic development world upside down by publishing a book called The Rise of the Creative Class. In a nutshell, Florida’s argument was that to be successful today, cities have to be cool.
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