Looking at a Post-Boom NYC

Joel Kotkin, author of The City: A Global History, pontificates on urban social trends over at The Observer, saying that New York should, and may already, be modeling itself after other cities. He warns that "New York has been on what you could call the ‘plutonomy wagon.’ So New York has been the ultimate trickle-down economy—it’s been a relatively small group of people driving the economy. The skills of New York are still here; the roots of some of the industries are still here. But, unless many things are grown to replace this plutonomy, the city’s going to continue to go through this spiral where it becomes more and more bifurcated—there are no middle-class jobs, except in the plutonomy." His solution: look to San Francisco as a model! Or Chicago, though all he really says about the Windy City is that they have good PR.